Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival
The Danish Cinemateket in Copenhagen hosts May 20-23 the Jewish Film Festival that offers a programme of feature films, animation, short films and documentaries.
I had a preview of the documentary ”Auf Wiedersehen: Til We Meet Again”, a family story filmed primarily in Vienna, where the directors (Linda Mills and Peter Goodrich, 76 mins.) go to look for places and memories of Mills family, including the comments and reactions of her mother and aunt. Austrian historians take part in the revealing of the past of the family’s fate and give the frame of the history about how efficient the deportations to the camps were organised, as well as how many escaped before the war thanks to the Jewish administration. A story about survivors but also about perpetrators.
The festival not only show new films and for the documentary addicts two films stand out: Marc Isaacs neo-classic ”The Lift”, (photo), 24 mins with different people entering a lift to face the camera of the director in an appartment block in London. Lots of funny situations and indirectly a vision of a multicultural society.
The highlight, however, is ”David Perlov’s Diary”, filmed in the years 1973-78, considered a masterpiece in Israeli documentary film history, as it is written at the site of Cinemateket: a testimony of the turbulent reality in a country in constant conclict, threatened by war. Two of six chapters will be shown, 1 and 3.
