In 1938, David Kurtz traveled from his home in Flatbush, Brooklyn, for a vacation across Europe. He stopped in the small Polish village of Nasielsk, where he was born — a pinpoint on the map that would have been ignored by any tourist, and has been mostly overlooked by history.
But he happened to bring a 16mm camera, bought expressly for the trip. And in 2009, his grandson Glenn Kurtz found three minutes of footage, brittle with age, that pulls this tiny village back into our collective memory.
Kurtz wrote a beautiful book about his experience in 2014, called “Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film.” Director Bianca Stigter found the book, and then the footage, which was added to the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She was inspired by both to make a short film essay, “Three Minutes — Thirteen Minutes — Thirty Minutes,” which she has...
But he happened to bring a 16mm camera, bought expressly for the trip. And in 2009, his grandson Glenn Kurtz found three minutes of footage, brittle with age, that pulls this tiny village back into our collective memory.
Kurtz wrote a beautiful book about his experience in 2014, called “Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film.” Director Bianca Stigter found the book, and then the footage, which was added to the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She was inspired by both to make a short film essay, “Three Minutes — Thirteen Minutes — Thirty Minutes,” which she has...
- 8/25/2022
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
In one of the hardest sequences to look at in “From Where They Stood” (it’s also one of the hardest to look away from), we see four photographs taken inside the Buchenwald concentration camp by Alberto Errera, a Jewish prisoner from Greece who was a member of the Sonderkommando — the inmates who were allowed to live, at least for a time, because they agreed to be part of the grisliest work detail. There is no known photograph that exists of what went on inside the gas chambers. But Errera came close by taking several clandestine photographs from the gas chambers, giving us a window into what happened before and after.
One of his images shows a group of women prisoners, several of them naked, against a woodland setting; they think they’re about to take a shower, which is the lie that was told to prisoners to get them to enter the gas chambers.
One of his images shows a group of women prisoners, several of them naked, against a woodland setting; they think they’re about to take a shower, which is the lie that was told to prisoners to get them to enter the gas chambers.
- 8/5/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
The phrase “bear witness” is often used to describe the perpetual requirement to expose, affirm, and explain the events of the Holocaust. But how do we continue to meet this need for history and humanity when the witnesses themselves are gone?
This is the question with which French documentarian Christophe Cognet has grappled for much of his career. Cognet’s specific interest is in the art left behind, and therefore carried forward, by victims who would otherwise have been silenced. “From Where They Stood” continues his quest by examining the few photographs that were taken by prisoners in concentration camps and still exist today.
Each segment of the film is dedicated to the photos captured by one person, like Rudolf Cisar, who managed to take around 50 photos at Dachau. Or Georges Angeli, who took 11 clandestine pictures at Buchenwald, or Alberto Errera, who was killed after attempting to escape Auschwitz in...
This is the question with which French documentarian Christophe Cognet has grappled for much of his career. Cognet’s specific interest is in the art left behind, and therefore carried forward, by victims who would otherwise have been silenced. “From Where They Stood” continues his quest by examining the few photographs that were taken by prisoners in concentration camps and still exist today.
Each segment of the film is dedicated to the photos captured by one person, like Rudolf Cisar, who managed to take around 50 photos at Dachau. Or Georges Angeli, who took 11 clandestine pictures at Buchenwald, or Alberto Errera, who was killed after attempting to escape Auschwitz in...
- 7/29/2022
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
The festival runs July 21-31.
Alexandru Belc’s Metronom has picked up the award for best international film at the 39th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival (Jff) this week.
The Romanian film was selected from 11 international titles, which included Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave and Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning. It centres around a teenage couple spending their last few days together in 1972. Belc also won the best director award when the film played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard selection earlier this year.
Berlinale managing director Mariette Rissenbeek, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes and Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson comprised the jury.
Alexandru Belc’s Metronom has picked up the award for best international film at the 39th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival (Jff) this week.
The Romanian film was selected from 11 international titles, which included Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave and Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning. It centres around a teenage couple spending their last few days together in 1972. Belc also won the best director award when the film played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard selection earlier this year.
Berlinale managing director Mariette Rissenbeek, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes and Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson comprised the jury.
- 7/29/2022
- by Ellie Calnan
- ScreenDaily
Christophe Cognet: 'I discovered the book of an Israeli writer, Leïb Rochman, À Pas aveugles de par le monde' Photo: l’atelier documentaire Christophe Cognet with Anne-Katrin Titze on a film always being in the present: 'Hic et nunc in Latin. It’s very important for me. It’s the same in Alain Resnais’s film Nuit et Bruillard' Claude Lanzmann’s masterpieces, Four Sisters, The Last Of The Unjust, and, of course, the incomparable Shoah, for which no archival footage was ever used, broke the ground for the sense of the perpetual present, which is the prerequisite to begin to understand. Alain Resnais with his devastating Nuit et Brouillard, and I would add Hiroshima Mon Amour and its focus on forgetting and remembering, are also never far. Christophe Cognet’s extraordinary and far-reaching From Where They Stood (À pas aveugles) begins at a pond in the rain surrounded by birch trees.
- 7/21/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Christophe Cognet’s extraordinary and far-reaching From Where They Stood (À Pas Aveugles) begins at a pond in the rain surrounded by birch trees. Little white pebbles appear to have been washed ashore, only they are not stones and where they originate is soon revealed. The earth spits them out. The hard physical remains carry history.
A few clandestine photographs, taken by courageous prisoners in Dachau, Buchenwald, Dora, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz-Birkenau are at the core of the documentary in which Cognet with the help of his cinematographer Céline Bozon, his team, experts, and translators at the respective memorial sites attempts to find out more about the individual circumstances. In reconstructing the angles of where and when the photographs were taken, an important path into the past opens up.
The life-size transparent prints of the images when placed at the original sites, have an uncanny, provocative and very bracing effect. Tourists or.
A few clandestine photographs, taken by courageous prisoners in Dachau, Buchenwald, Dora, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz-Birkenau are at the core of the documentary in which Cognet with the help of his cinematographer Céline Bozon, his team, experts, and translators at the respective memorial sites attempts to find out more about the individual circumstances. In reconstructing the angles of where and when the photographs were taken, an important path into the past opens up.
The life-size transparent prints of the images when placed at the original sites, have an uncanny, provocative and very bracing effect. Tourists or.
- 7/17/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, a kind Cinderella story for older women with a Dior twist, arrives in 978 theaters this weekend with strong reviews and great word of mouth. The film is a known property among that demo given its prime trailer treatment before Focus Features’ fan favorite Downtown Abbey: A New Era — not a bad setup.
Deadline review here. The film by Anthony Fabian with Lesley Manville, Isabelle Huppert and Jason Isaacs has a 92/critics, 94/audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It shares the pond with a handful of strong studio holdovers and new wide releases Paw Patrol: The Movie and drama Where The Crawdads Sing. Like Crawdads, Mrs. Harris is based on a popular book – the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico – and book clubs are prominent in a large marketing push.
Manville plays Ada Harris, a British housekeeper and widow who dreams of buying her own couture Christian Dior gown.
Deadline review here. The film by Anthony Fabian with Lesley Manville, Isabelle Huppert and Jason Isaacs has a 92/critics, 94/audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It shares the pond with a handful of strong studio holdovers and new wide releases Paw Patrol: The Movie and drama Where The Crawdads Sing. Like Crawdads, Mrs. Harris is based on a popular book – the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico – and book clubs are prominent in a large marketing push.
Manville plays Ada Harris, a British housekeeper and widow who dreams of buying her own couture Christian Dior gown.
- 7/15/2022
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
Greenwich Entertainment has acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to Christophe Cognet’s “From Where They Stood,” a searing WW2-set documentary which premiered at the Berlinale.
Represented in international markets by MK2 Films, “From Where They Stood” went on the win the Spirit of Freedom Award for best documentary at last year’s Jerusalem Film Festival.
Produced by Raphaël Pillosio, “From Where They Stood” retraces the footsteps of a handful of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who managed to take clandestine photographs of the hell the Nazis were hiding from the world. These photos were either smuggled out or hidden and retrieved after the war.
Greenwich’s Edward Arentz negotiated the acquisition with Fionnuala Jamison of MK2 Films on behalf of the filmmakers.
“In contrast to today, when thankfully, evidence of war crimes and genocide can be gathered often remotely and disseminated worldwide with startling precision and detail,...
Represented in international markets by MK2 Films, “From Where They Stood” went on the win the Spirit of Freedom Award for best documentary at last year’s Jerusalem Film Festival.
Produced by Raphaël Pillosio, “From Where They Stood” retraces the footsteps of a handful of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who managed to take clandestine photographs of the hell the Nazis were hiding from the world. These photos were either smuggled out or hidden and retrieved after the war.
Greenwich’s Edward Arentz negotiated the acquisition with Fionnuala Jamison of MK2 Films on behalf of the filmmakers.
“In contrast to today, when thankfully, evidence of war crimes and genocide can be gathered often remotely and disseminated worldwide with startling precision and detail,...
- 7/4/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Colcoa, the Los Angeles-based French film festival, will be launching a competitive documentary section at its upcoming 25th edition.
The documentary lineup will tackle contemporary and historical topics such as climate change, immigration, transgender inclusion, holocaust revelations and centenary celebration. Seven documentaries will vie for the 2021 Colcoa Best Documentary Award.
“Documentary films have grown in prominence in France in the past few years, with more than 150 released in theaters in 2019 and strong sales worldwide,” said Colcoa’s deputy director Anouchka van Riel. “We are showing seven of the most innovative documentaries coming out of France today that cover the gamut of style, approach, and artistic vision.”
The roster include the North American premieres of actor-turned-filmmaker Aissa Maiga’s “Above Water” which opened at Cannes in the climate section; Jacques Loeuille’s “Birds of America” about Jean-Jacques Audubon, the American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter; Christophe Cognet’s “From Where They Stood...
The documentary lineup will tackle contemporary and historical topics such as climate change, immigration, transgender inclusion, holocaust revelations and centenary celebration. Seven documentaries will vie for the 2021 Colcoa Best Documentary Award.
“Documentary films have grown in prominence in France in the past few years, with more than 150 released in theaters in 2019 and strong sales worldwide,” said Colcoa’s deputy director Anouchka van Riel. “We are showing seven of the most innovative documentaries coming out of France today that cover the gamut of style, approach, and artistic vision.”
The roster include the North American premieres of actor-turned-filmmaker Aissa Maiga’s “Above Water” which opened at Cannes in the climate section; Jacques Loeuille’s “Birds of America” about Jean-Jacques Audubon, the American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter; Christophe Cognet’s “From Where They Stood...
- 9/10/2021
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
The Jerusalem Film Festival has named the winners from its various competition strands this year, with Juho Kuosmanen’s Finnish drama Compartment No. 6 winning Best Film in the international competition.
“Compartment No. 6 is a cross-cultural road movie – entertaining, clever, and remarkably endearing. This is free cinema, released from confinements, where an entire world exists within a cramped train car and where impossible connections are forged between people from different borders and cultures,” said the jury, which was comprised of Ari Folman, Nili Feller and Shai Goldman. A special mention was also given to Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee.
Compartment No. 6 previously shared the Grand Prix in Cannes Competition with Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero.
Elsewhere, in Jerusalem’s First Feature Competition, Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta won the Gwff Award for Best First Feature.
In the the Spirit of Freedom Competition, the Cummings Award for best Feature Film went to...
“Compartment No. 6 is a cross-cultural road movie – entertaining, clever, and remarkably endearing. This is free cinema, released from confinements, where an entire world exists within a cramped train car and where impossible connections are forged between people from different borders and cultures,” said the jury, which was comprised of Ari Folman, Nili Feller and Shai Goldman. A special mention was also given to Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee.
Compartment No. 6 previously shared the Grand Prix in Cannes Competition with Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero.
Elsewhere, in Jerusalem’s First Feature Competition, Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta won the Gwff Award for Best First Feature.
In the the Spirit of Freedom Competition, the Cummings Award for best Feature Film went to...
- 9/2/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Lee Isaac Chung's Minari. Nomadland, Minari, Soul, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm are among this year's Golden Globe winners. Find our complete list of nominees and winners here. Canyon Cinema Foundation has announced a new curatorial fellowship, Canyon Cinema Discovered, that will offer four fellows the opportunity to curate programs from Canyon's collection of films. Applicants can be based in anywhere in the world. Spike Lee and HBO will be teaming up for the multi-part documentary NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021½, described as “an epic chronicle of life, loss and survival in the city of New York over the twenty years since the September 11th attacks.” The film will include first-hand stories told by over 200 New Yorkers. Recommended VIEWINGThe official teaser trailer for Barry Jenkins' series The Underground Railroad, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel,...
- 3/3/2021
- MUBI
Set to premiere at Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum section this week is From Where They Stood (aka À pas aveugles), which takes a unique look at Holocaust history through archival photographs and real-life locations. During the war, a handful of prisoners in WWII camps risked their lives to take clandestine photographs and document the hell the Nazis were hiding from the world. In the vestiges of the camps, director Christophe Cognet retraces the footsteps of these courageous men and women in a quest to unearth the circumstances and the stories behind their photographs, composing as such an archeology of images as acts of defiance. Ahead of the premiere, we’re pleased to present the first teaser.
“The discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, camera in hand, created an aperture for cinematic representation. In The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller stages his own discovery of the Falkenau concentration camp.
“The discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, camera in hand, created an aperture for cinematic representation. In The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller stages his own discovery of the Falkenau concentration camp.
- 3/3/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Collapsing the time and space between our present and the horrors of the Holocaust, one can’t help but be moved by Christophe Cognet’s From Where They Stood, a documentary premiering in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival. It uses as its base the few astonishing photographs clandestinely taken at various concentration camps by prisoners themselves, with cameras smuggled in, negatives smuggled out, and with every step of the process taken at the risk of death. Photography, in this context, becomes a fierce and courageous act of resistance. Cognet doesn’t just show us these photographs, but goes to the places from which they were taken, and with the assistance of camp historians, explores the details—some known, others only guessed at—revealed by their raw transmission of an unfathomable experience. Crucially, they also attempt to pinpoint exactly from which position in space the photographs were...
- 3/1/2021
- MUBI
The work takes its cue from a collection of photos shot clandestinely by prisoners held in concentration camps.
Paris-based company mk2 films has acquired world sales rights for French director Christophe Cognet’s documentary From Where They Stood ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum strand.
It is one of 17 features selected for the Forum line-up which has been slimmed down this year to half its normal size as part of the Berlinale’s compact two-part 2021 edition, which kicks off with an industry-focused online-only event from March 1-5.
The work takes its cue from a collection of...
Paris-based company mk2 films has acquired world sales rights for French director Christophe Cognet’s documentary From Where They Stood ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum strand.
It is one of 17 features selected for the Forum line-up which has been slimmed down this year to half its normal size as part of the Berlinale’s compact two-part 2021 edition, which kicks off with an industry-focused online-only event from March 1-5.
The work takes its cue from a collection of...
- 2/19/2021
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Christophe Cognet’s second feature film – produced by L’Atelier Documentaire and sold by mk2 Films - will world premiere at the Berlinale Forum. For some fifteen years now, Christophe Cognet has been working on pictures taken in secret and at risk of death by deportees in Nazi camps. And after the drawings and watercolours of Parce que j’étais peintre (revealed in the Cinema Xxi section of Rome Film Fest 2013), it is these very photos which form the focus of Cognet’s second documentary feature From Where They Stood, which has been selected for the Forum section of the 71st Berlinale and will be unveiled online, in a world premiere, during the festival’s Industry Event (running 1 – 5 March). In Dachau, Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, a number of deportees managed to take clandestine photos of their surrounds. Given the great efforts that these women and men went to in...
Day 2 of this week’s Berlinale announcements see the selections for its Forum, Forum Expanded and Shorts programs revealed.
The Forum program contains 17 movies, primarily from filmmakers at the beginning of their careers, though with some establish directors included such as Israeli documentarian Avi Mograbi and Berlin directors Chris Wright and Stefan Kolbe. In total, 14 are world premieres.
The Forum Expanded selection consists of shorts, medium-length films and features, and will screen 17 films as well as art installations. In the Shorts program, a total of 20 titles will compete for the Berlinale prizes this year. Scroll down for the full line-ups.
Yesterday, the festival unveiled its Generation and Retrospective programs.
As previously reported, buyers will get the chance to view these movies during the virtual EFM, which runs March 1-5. Juries will also be appointed to decide on the festival’s awards during this period. Audiences will hopefully have a chance...
The Forum program contains 17 movies, primarily from filmmakers at the beginning of their careers, though with some establish directors included such as Israeli documentarian Avi Mograbi and Berlin directors Chris Wright and Stefan Kolbe. In total, 14 are world premieres.
The Forum Expanded selection consists of shorts, medium-length films and features, and will screen 17 films as well as art installations. In the Shorts program, a total of 20 titles will compete for the Berlinale prizes this year. Scroll down for the full line-ups.
Yesterday, the festival unveiled its Generation and Retrospective programs.
As previously reported, buyers will get the chance to view these movies during the virtual EFM, which runs March 1-5. Juries will also be appointed to decide on the festival’s awards during this period. Audiences will hopefully have a chance...
- 2/9/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
The selection is half the size of last year’s line-up.
The Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the 17 features selected for this year’s Forum line-up, which will first be seen at the industry-focused, online-only event from March 1-5.
The strand aims to highlight challenging and thought-provoking filmmaking that brings together film with visual art, theatre and literature.
The 17-title selection, which includes 14 world premieres, is just half of last year’s line-up of 35 titles, as the festival slims down for its first virtual edition.
Physical screenings of the selection are planned to take place during the Berlinale’s first Summer Special event,...
The Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the 17 features selected for this year’s Forum line-up, which will first be seen at the industry-focused, online-only event from March 1-5.
The strand aims to highlight challenging and thought-provoking filmmaking that brings together film with visual art, theatre and literature.
The 17-title selection, which includes 14 world premieres, is just half of last year’s line-up of 35 titles, as the festival slims down for its first virtual edition.
Physical screenings of the selection are planned to take place during the Berlinale’s first Summer Special event,...
- 2/9/2021
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
“I drew all of that because I was a painter. It was an inner necessity." So goes the opening statement of Christophe Cognet's documentary focusing on art created in and on the subject of Nazi camps. The quote's excerpted from a lecture by artist and Dachau survivor Zoran Music and read aloud on camera by the director; Cognet's further examination of the statement leads him to the sites of concentration camps across Europe, the salvaged artworks featured at the Ghetto Fighters' House museum in Israel, and the homes and studios of a handful of artists. Cognet's curiosity is less focused on recovering factual information or cataloging artifacts than it is in delving into the minds of these artists as they reflect, in words and art, on their own memories of the Holocaust....
- 4/22/2015
- Village Voice
Because I Was A Painter (Parce que j’etais peintre) Cinema Guild Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for CompuServe ShowBiz. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes. Grade: B- Director: Christophe Cognet Screenwriter: Christophe Cognet Cast: Samuel Willenberg, Yehuda Bacon, Walter Spitzer, Jose Fosty, Krystyna Zaorska, Dinah Gottliebova Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 3/10/15 Opens: April 24, 2015 We usually think of paintings as beautiful creations to hang in our homes and museums, and strangely enough, drawings from the Holocaust are no exception. As one artist opinrd in the doc “Because I Was a Painter,” if a painting on whatever subject is not beautiful, a potential audience will give it no more than a few [ Read More ]
The post Because I Was a Painter Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Because I Was a Painter Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 4/21/2015
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Documentary about Vienna’s world famous Kunsthistorisches Museum is screening in the Forum
Paris-based documentary specialist Wide House has sold Forum screener The Great Museum to French distributor Jour2Fete.
Austrian director Johannes Holzhausen’s candid and touching work goes behind the scenes at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, home to the largest Bruegel collection in the world.
Jour2Fete plans to release the documentary in France later this year.
Other upcoming titles on its slate include Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, Christophe Cognet’s Because I Was A Painter and Markus Imhoof’s Taste of Honey.
Wide House’s Efm slate also includes Italian work The Special Need, about a road trip by am autistic boy and a friend; The Circle, a hybrid work about the Swiss gay rights organisation Der Kreis in the 1950s, which screened in the Panorama section; and Ballet Boys, about a group of teenage ballet students in Norway.
Paris-based documentary specialist Wide House has sold Forum screener The Great Museum to French distributor Jour2Fete.
Austrian director Johannes Holzhausen’s candid and touching work goes behind the scenes at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, home to the largest Bruegel collection in the world.
Jour2Fete plans to release the documentary in France later this year.
Other upcoming titles on its slate include Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, Christophe Cognet’s Because I Was A Painter and Markus Imhoof’s Taste of Honey.
Wide House’s Efm slate also includes Italian work The Special Need, about a road trip by am autistic boy and a friend; The Circle, a hybrid work about the Swiss gay rights organisation Der Kreis in the 1950s, which screened in the Panorama section; and Ballet Boys, about a group of teenage ballet students in Norway.
- 2/8/2014
- ScreenDaily
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