At The Movies
`The
Last
ays'
The Oscar-nominated
documentary, a production
of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation, comes to the
Detroit Film Theatre.
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to The Jewish News
o Hollywood script ever
was written for The Last
Days, the third documen-
tary of the Shoah Visual
History Foundation. Instead, the five
heroes of the film, survivors of Nazi
tyranny in Hungary, talk about and
show the area they once called home.
The emotionally charged journey,
filmed and edited to capture yet
another series of atrocities triumphed
over through the spirit of the people
experiencing them, will have its
Michigan debut Friday, Saturday and
Sunday, Feb. 19-21, at the Detroit
Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute
of Arts. It just received an Oscar nom-
ination for Best Documentary Feature.
"I approached the film with an
open mind and essentially allowed the
survivors to direct it," says director
James Moll. He previously worked on
Survivors of the Holocaust and The Lost
Children of Berlin, both produced by
the foundation created in 1994 by
director Steven Spielberg to videotape
and archive interviews of Holocaust
survivors the world over.
"They decided, for the most part,
Holocaust survivor ever elected to the
where they wanted to go and the per-
U.S. Congress; artist Alice Lok
sons they wanted to speak with. Other
Cahana; teacher Renee Firestone; busi-
than deciding in advance which home-
nessman Bill Basch; and grandmother
town or camp we would visit, we didn't
Irene Zisblatt.
know day-to-day what
"Our team of
would happen."
Above: A former acquaintance researchers and I went
Waged at the end of from Irene Zisblatt's hometown
through hundreds of
the war, when Hitler
stands with Irene, right, during videos to find people
knew he was being
the filming of the Shoah
who had varied person-
defeated, the horrors
Foundation production.
alities and experi-
perpetrated in Hungary
ences," Moll explains.
were carried out in a
"I
felt
that
would
give audience mem-
matter of months.
bers a chance to relate to one [sur-
The people who convey their sto-
vivor] more than another, and I felt it
ries of escape and spirit are U.S. Rep.
was important to cover different
Tom Lantos of California, the only
Steven Spielberg is still devoted to his quest.
Los Angeles
I
is been six years since Steven
Spielberg directed Schindler's
List and established a founda-
tion that has videotaped the
testimonies of tens of thousands of
survivors worldwide, but his emotion-
al connection to the Holocaust
remains as intense as ever.
After hearing thousands of testi-
monies, each is more compelling
than the last, and the next is even
more compelling," he said in a recent
plane-to-ground phone interview.
To occasional critics who complain
2/12
1999
72 Detroit Jewish News
that enough has been written and
filmed about the Holocaust, Spielberg
responds, "I just wish that Hitler had
stopped in 1938. It will take hun-
dreds and hundreds of years to come
to terms with what he did."
Even Spielberg's latest triumph, the
World War II. saga Saving Private
Ryan, bears on the Holocaust.
"The film is really an extension of
Schindler's List," he says. "It honors
the men whose bravery ended the war
in 1945, rather than 1947, when no
Jew would have been left alive in
Europe."
Although he is
listed as executive
producer of The
Last Days," which
depicts the experi-
ences of five
Hungarian Jewish
survivors, he played
no active role in its
production.
"I find the film
both heartbreaking
and hopeful," he
says. I have
immense admira-
"The LaSt Days" executive producer Steven Spielberg,
producer June Beallor and director James Moll.