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Films

The Maelstrom

A Family Chronicle

The Maelstrom makes extraordinary artful use of considerable cache of home movies shot in the Netherlands before and during World War II and dealing with the extended Peereboom family.


Information is conveyed through subtitles and instead of voice-over, the soundtrack consists of period sound, usually from radio broadcasts, and brooding, disturbing jazz score by Tibor Szemzõ. What wee see is a Jewish family first living unknowingly in the shadow of the Holocaust and then trying to cope with it still unaware of what it will finally mean. A shot of the film's photographer Max Peereboom, and his family we've come to know, cheerfully sewing and doing general preparation for a trip to a "work camp" when their destination was in reality the nightmare of Auschwitz adds a devastating dimension to our understanding of the Final Solution that nothing else, no Hollywood movie, no documentary, has been able to provide.


 Credits  Awards  Festivals  Bibliography

Credits


1997 - 60 minutes - Video
Director Péter Forgács
Music Tibor Szemzõ
Editor Kati Juhász
Advisor Albert Wulffers
Sound mix Zsolt Hubay

see Geerd Mak on The Maelstrom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiHh_dbHfAk&feature=player_embedded#!
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Awards


2000 • Grand Prize • Out Of That Darkness” International Film Festival, London
1999 • The MAYOR'S Jewish Experience Prize • Jerusalem International Film Festival, Israel
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Festivals


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiHh_dbHfAk&feature=player_embedded#! back to top>

Bibliography


 Ernst van Alphen: Visual Archives and the Holocaust
 Ernst van Alphen: Visual Archives and the Holocaust: Christian Boltanski, Ydessa Hendeles, Peter Forgacs
 RICHARD KILBORN : ARCHEOLOGY OR ALCHEMY
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