The Maelstrom - A Family ChroniclePéter Forgács
1942. A family sits gloomily at the table, in semi-darkness. The women mend clothes, their suitcases ready in the background. It is not the opening scene of a fiction film, but an amateur film of the Peereboom family, a Dutch-Jewish family that continued to film until the night before they were deported. The tragedy of the Second World War told through family films that - with the knowledge of what is about to happen in mind - strike you in the heart.
Throughout his career, Hungarian filmmaker Péter Forgács has enjoyed working with archival images as a means of reconstructing history. There are plenty of archival images of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but Forgács uses sources from that time that are rarely discussed: amateur films. This remarkable and striking addition to the official history documentaries is based on a collection of films made by the Dutch-Jewish Peereboom family in the period 1938-1942. Only one family member will survive the war. The images of the Peereboom family are supplemented with family films by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Reichskommissar for the Netherlands appointed by Hitler.
Info
Directed by Péter Forgács
The Netherlands
1997 60 min.
Dutch
Subtitles: English
Programme
Fond of Footage
credits
Director
Péter Forgács
Script
Péter Forgács
Producer
Cesar Messemaker
Production company
Lumen Film
Editing
Péter Forgács
Music
Tibor Szemzö
Contact info
Bekijk Contact info(en screener)
(beschikbaar vanaf 20.03)
