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Filmstill aus "Im Land meiner Eltern" • Photo: Malenafilm
Present Perfect II: Jewish Perspectives on Post-War Germany
Documentary films and discussion, featuring Jeanine Meerapfel, among others
Back to the future!
On the weekend of December 5–7, we will address the question “Where to now?” from post-migrant Jewish perspectives. Through literature, film, stand-up comedy, and discussions, we will address immigration from the countries of the former Soviet Union to Israel and Germany, from Ethiopia to Israel, and, of course, re-immigration into postwar German society. This brings the program focus, which began with the immediate postwar period, to a close in the present. In the end, the question from the beginning remains: Where to now?
The artistic symposium ‘Present Perfect – Back to the Future’ will take place from 5 to 7 December, exploring Jewish migration movements since the 1980s through readings, plays, documentaries, short films and discussions. The three days can be attended individually or as a complete package with a combination ticket.
(1981 / GER / 87 min) by Jeanine Meerapfel
The paradoxical existence of Jews in Germany after the Shoah finds its most concise cinematic expression in Jeanine Meerapfel's documentary “Im Land meiner Eltern”. Meerapfel, born in Buenos Aires in 1943 as the daughter of German-Jewish emigrants, moved to Germany in 1964 to study—the country of her parents and, at the same time, the country of the perpetrators. Jeanine Meerapfel reflects on this seemingly irresolvable contradiction in her documentary, made in West Berlin in 1981, drawing on her own family history as well as conversations with Jewish contemporaries such as theater director Luc Bondy and painter Sarah Haffner. The backdrop of the walled island city lends the film an additional elegiac note.
(2013 / GER / 96 min) by Yael Reuveny
Yael Reuveny's documentary “Yesterday's Snow” tells the story of the search for her grandmother Michla's brother, who disappeared during the Shoah. Born and educated in Israel, the filmmaker unfolds the story of a dramatic decision that separated the siblings Michla and Feiv'ke forever. Reuveny follows in the footsteps of Feiv'ke, who began a new life in Brandenburg in 1945 under the name Peter Schwarz. Her documentary is a powerful testimony to the enduring, fateful connection between Israel and Germany.
Jeanine Meerapfel and Yael Reuveny talk to film and media scholar Lea Wohl von Haselberg about their lives and work as Jewish filmmakers between migration, trauma, and feminism.
(2012 / GER / 76 min) by Alexa Karolinski
Life is beautiful and precious: that is the simple yet touching message of “Oma & Bella.” Alexa Karolinski portrays her grandmother Regina and her friend Bella Katz, who share an apartment in Berlin Charlottenburg. Both protagonists are widows and Shoah survivors with roots in Eastern Europe. “Oma & Bella” is about everyday life in the overly tidy German capital, about the love of Yiddish cuisine, and about the enduring bitterness of the Jewish experience.
- With Yael Reuveny, Jeanine Meerapfel, Lea Wohl von Haselberg
