Screening the Holocaust | HKHTC-supported Holocaust Films @ Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival 2022
The Hong Kong Holocaust & Tolerance Centre was pleased to support a number of Holocaust-themed films as part of the 23rd Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival.
These public screenings took place during 12-20 November 2022 at the Golden Scene Cinema at 2 Catchick St, Kennedy Town. Please see the list below for film descriptions.
Supported Films 2022
1. The Rhapsody (Sunday, 13 November, 4:25pm)
“TO SEE SUCH A SIGNIFICANT TIME COME TO LIFE THROUGH A MEDIUM SO CLOSE TO SPELLMAN’S HEART AND THAT OF HIS FAMILY IS INCREDIBLY MOVING”
– POV MAGAZINE
The Rhapsody tells the astonishing story of Polish-Canadian composer Leo Spellman, whose long-lost musical masterpiece and secret wartime diary provide the framework for a remarkable journey towards artistic liberation at the age of ninety-nine.
Spellman spent eighteen harrowing months in hiding to survive the Holocaust. His diaries, found after he passed away, are among the most revealing documents of their kind from WWII.
The Rhapsody unfolds as Spellman prepares to record his musical masterpiece, a piece composed in a German DP camp and lost for over fifty years. Weaving together interviews with Spellman and his family, excerpts of his lost diary brought to life through animation and narrated by Stephen Fry, and live-orchestral performances of Spellman’s music; this moving documentary tells a remarkable tale of survival.
Link to trailer here.
2. Three Minutes – A Lengthening (Monday, 14 November, 7:00pm)
“USING FOOTAGE FROM A THREE-MINUTE AMATEUR MOVIE SHOT IN 1938, THIS ROUSING DOCUMENTARY ABOUT A JEWISH TOWN IN POLAND IS A HAUNTING MEDITATION ON THE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST”
– THE NEW YORK TIMES
The only nonfiction film to be selected for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival’s Spotlight section — a prestige category highlighting movies that have already premiered to acclaim elsewhere — Bianca Stigter’s feature-length directorial debut Three Minutes: A Lengthening is an inspired piece of cinematic archaeology. Stigter does exactly what the title of the piece invitingly and enigmatically implies: she examines a short section of 16mm home movie footage from every possible angle, stopping and starting and running and re-running the images without ever cutting to talking heads.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening shows footage of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk, a small town north of Warsaw, Poland. The film in question was taken by David Kurtz in 1938 while on vacation, and later discovered by his grandson, Glenn, in 2009. Given that the celluloid was brittle, faded and on the very edge of salvageable, the movie was rescued and restored through the efforts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Within seven years of Kurtz’s 1938 visit to Nasielsk, only about 100 of the town’s approximately 3,000 Jews would be alive.
Link to trailer here.
3. Death of Zygielbojm (Wednesday, 16 November, 7:00pm)
“I CANNOT BE SILENT AND LIVE WHEN THE REMNANTS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN POLAND ARE DYING”
– THE WORDS OF THE FAREWELL LETTER OF SZMUL ZYGIELBOJM
London 1943. A young British reporter was looking for topics that would push his career forward. One day he came across the case of the death of a mysterious stranger from Poland. The deceased’s name was Szmul Zygielbojm. In occupied Poland, he left his wife and three children to set off on a secret mission, first to New York and then to London. He was to inform the leaders of the Western world about the enormity of the crimes committed by the Germans against millions of European Jews. Zygielbojm’s efforts met with a wall of indifference and incomprehension. In the end, he realized that he was unable to make anyone go to help his brothers, who, in an act of ultimate desperation, took up arms in the Warsaw ghetto. Devastated by his helplessness, he decided to sacrifice his life in the hope that such a victim would not go unnoticed. Now his story is in the hands of a young journalist who will try to make the shocking truth finally see the light of day…
Death of Zygielbojm is a moving true story of one man’s heroic struggle for the world to finally perceive the tragedy of millions.
Link to trailer here.
4. 消失的安妮日記 Where is Anne Frank (Sunday, 20 November, 12:00pm)
中、英文字幕 Chinese and English Subtitles
“THE DIRECTOR BEHIND ‘WALTZ WITH BASHIR,’ THE SUPERB ANIMATED ACCOUNT OF THE HALLUCINATORY HORRORS OF WAR, ARI FOLMAN WAS NEVER GOING TO TAKE THE PREDICTABLE ROUTE WITH HIS RIFF ON THE MUCH LOVED, MUCH TRANSLATED DIARY OF ANNE FRANK”
– THE GUARDIAN
Kitty, the imaginary girl to whom Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, comes to life in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Her memories reawakened by reading the diary, believing that if she’s alive, Anne must be alive as well, she sets out on a quest to find Anne. We follow Kitty as she travels across Europe and back to Anne Frank’s time, armed with the precious book, in search of her beloved friend…
In Where is Anne Frank, Kitty tells Anne Frank’s story.
相信大家對安妮法蘭克及其著作《安妮日記》都不會陌生。
入圍康城影展非競賽單元
多倫多國際電影節特別推介
耶路撒冷電影節開幕電影
Link to trailer here.
