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Project Team | Project Resources | Board Members | Support & Sponsorship |
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A documentary film will be created that tells the Kulturbund story through both the words of former Kulturbund members, as captured in recently filmed interviews, and — more dramatically and accessibly — through the actors that will portray these artists in the live production, scheduled to be presented at Hofstra’s Cultural Arts Center in 2011. Gail Prensky project creator and executive producer will collaborate with Wild At Heart Films (Los Angeles), Ottonia Media (Germany) and Cinephil (Israel). Three-time Oscar-winning director Mark Jonathan Harris will direct the film (credits include Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport). The rehearsal process for performers is one of learning, experimentation, expression, and transformation. As the young 21st-century performers immerse themselves in these characters from the first part of the last century, they will explore their characters — hopes, dreams, and fears — their reality as well as their fantasy. From the first-table read to the blocking rehearsals, and finally to opening night, the movie audience will be admitted to peer in on this process, all through the camera lens. Vicariously, we will experience the Kulturbund as these performers do, in a way that is immediate, startling, and real. Yet the most compelling aspect to this process will be experiencing firsthand how each of these performers, born into a generation for whom the events of Nazi Germany in the 1930s are only a distant cultural memory read in history books and seen in movies, responds to the knowledge and extreme emotional challenges to which they are exposed. Some will be able to make a direct connection back to these events through relatives, while others will find this beat of history totally foreign and somewhat hard to digest. It is through the performer’s determination to connect to the characters they portray, through the real events of these characters they discover, and through the journeys each performer must undertake, that the audience will learn about the Kulturbund, and in turn make their own journey. And it is through these performers’ responses to the story that the audience will be transported through time and space from the depth and beauty of music, dance, and drama to the dark realities of 1930s Germany and back again, embracing the Kulturbund legacy: power of music, resiliency of the human spirit, and will to survive. |
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Gail Prensky The Jüdische Kulturbund 4000 Cathedral Avenue, NW 202.333.8624 |
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Copyright © 2010 The Jüdische Kulturbund Project |
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