Broken Silence

Starring:Jack Fuchs, Liza Zajak-Novera, Robert Lamberg, Benjamin Mehl, Alejandro Horvath, Mira Kniazniew-Stupnik, Pedro Boschan, Eugenia Unger, David Galante, Victor Oppel, Moises Borowicz, Valeria Wollstein-Cohn, Kati Sabella, LÃ¡szlÃ³ Kiss (II), Judith Yagoda
Director: JÃ¡nos SzÃ¡sz, Pavel Chukhraj, Vojtech Jasny, Luis Puenzo, Marcel Lozinski
Studio: Universal Studios
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
From Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation comes Broken Silence, a series of five films about human courage, heroism, and triumph over intense adversities during World War II. This critically acclaimed series was produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Moll.

Some Who Lived

Argentine filmmaker Luis Puenzo (director of the Academy Award-winning film, The Official Story) directed this Spanish-language film, weaving together testimonies from Holocaust survivors now living in Argentina and Uruguay with archival and modern-day footage. Puenzo also explores the connections between Nazism and the darker chapters of Argentine history.

Eyes of the Holocaust

Director Janos Szasz, the son of Holocaust survivors, made this Hungarian-language documentary that focuses on the experiences of survivors who were children during the Holocaust.

Children from the Abyss

Russian Holocaust survivors detail their experiences of resistance, betrayal, collaborators, rescuers, bystanders and the desire for revenge. Directed by Pavel Chukhraj (Academy Award Nominee for his film, The Thief).

I Remember

Academy Award Honoree, Andrzej Wajda directed this Polish-language documentary about four survivors who were either helped or betrayed by their Polish neighbors.

Hell on Earth

Description

Autumn 1944, 21-year-old Lucia returns to the small mountain village where her parents live. The town is split between Franco's fascist supporters and the Republicans. Lucia falls in love with Manuel, a young blacksmith who supports the Maquis, guerrilla warriors hidden in the mountains, who do not accept Franco's triumph. Manuel flees the village to join them, and Lucia discovers the harsh reality as silence, horror and fear populate the village's empty streets. Invierno de 1944. Lucía, de apenas 21 años, llega a un pequeño pueblo de montaña. Allí se reencuentra con Manuel, un joven herrero que colabora con los del monte, los maquis: guerrilleros que, ocultos en la sierra, no se resignan al triunfo del franquismo. Cuando Manuel huye al monte, Lucia descubre la inhóspita realidad que oculta la montaña y, también, que por las vacías calles del pueblo sólo deambulan el silencio, el horror y el miedo. A pesar de ello, la pasión que siente por Manuel hace que Lucía mantenga viva la illusión y la esperanza de que llegarán días mejores.

Customer Reviews:

As a substitute for hard-to-find 'Ay, Carmela!', you could do better.......2007-05-06

I went looking for the great Spanish Civil War movie '¡Ay, Carmela!' only to find out (¡Que Lastima!) that there's no US-compatible DVD release of that Carmen Maura film. If you can somehow get your hands on that one, it'll be worth your time and effort to track down.

However, Amazon's recommendation engine suggested I take a look at 'Silencio Roto' which, I guess, strives to be the great post-Spanish Civil War film. As the product description (see Amazon's intro) notes, 'Roto' follows "guerrilla warriors hidden in the mountains, who do not accept Franco's triumph." Given that Franco was firmly entrenched in power until his death in 1975, it's not difficult to predict a denouement not advantageous to the film's protagonists.

'Roto' is a good, not great, film. However, without some historical understanding of the Spanish Civil War, I believe the casual but earnest viewer will lose the plot or their interest fairly quickly.

"Strangers fight for a short time--families for a lifetime.".......2006-01-04

The Spanish film, "Silencio Roto" begins in 1944 when Lucia (Lucia Jimenez) arrives in a remote mountainous village. Lucia left the village as a child, and she's returning to work in her aunt and uncle's bar. Franco now rules Spain, but the village is a hotbed of activity by the Maquis--Republican guerillas in the mountains who continue to fight after the collapse of the Spanish Civil War.

Soldiers garrisoned at the village maintain a tight atmosphere of fear over the residents. Soldiers publicly humiliate villagers, and relatives of known guerillas are ordered to the garrison for sessions of questioning and torture. In spite of the fact that the villagers, are in many ways kept hostage by the army presence, some of them still find time to aid the rebels. Lucia forms a relationship with the young blacksmith, Manuel (Juan Diego Botto) until he too is forced to take to the mountains and hide out with the guerillas.

As rebel activity increases, reprisals against the villagers occur in the form of crackdowns and punishments. With informers everywhere, it soon becomes impossible for anyone to remain neutral, and Lucia's involvement with the guerillas becomes increasingly dangerous.

"Silencio Roto" is highly romantic--and the fate of these star-crossed lovers--Lucia and Manuel is set against the national discord in Spain. The film illustrates that the Spanish Civil War--although conveniently forgotten by the rest of the world--still raged in parts of Spain long after the end of WWII. The film examines the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and the point is made that it just wasn't possible to lay down one's arms and return home. The length of the conflict ensured the involvement of several generations of family members, and this idea is well conveyed in this sad, and yet beautiful film. From the Basque director Montxo Armendaria, the film is in Spanish with English subtitles, and it joins the growing ranks of Spanish films that are now free to announce and examine the atrocities of Franco's Spain--Rated 4 stars, but unable to correct rating--displacedhuman

Great Movie, especially for 'left wing' europeans.......2005-06-19

I loved this movie so much. I did not know much about 'los maquis' but I knew a lot about 'partigiani' which are the Italian fighters against the Mussolini's men. I thought that, since Spain had had a civil war to get rid of Franco, and did not make it, that was it. Watching this movie I learned that that was not it. Brave men and women had tried to resist the Spanish dictator, as Italians, and to a less extent - whatever it is believed outside Europe- French people had done, Hiding up in the mountains and fighting for their ideas, fighting to get their friends free.
Montxo Armendàriz has done a great work again. Maybe a little slow for American people, it flows perfectly for European eyes. Very realistic, the story is very believable.
The actors, most young, did an excellent job. But, as two of them Juan y Marìa Botto, were trained by the actress who also trained Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, this comes as no surprise. Lucìa Jimenez, the main character, and Carmen Sanpietro, who plays tha aunt, render the feeling of fear and suspect almost touchable. You feel the pressure they had to feel those days. Juan Diego Botto gives the idea of being thorn between fighting for what he believes and living the joys of family life very well in the scene that takes place in the kitchen, and his siter Marìa, which usually is a very talented comedy actress, demonstrates she is great in dramatic roles as well, showing how the desire of fighting for your your ideas can fade away when those you love are sistematically killed.
One last word about the musical score. It's only one piece played differently, but it gives you goosebumps.

beautiful.......2004-06-18

A very beautiful and well-acted movie about a rural town in Spain where the Civil War didn't end after Franco took Madrid. A young woman returns to her family town in the mountains to live with her aunt and finds herself in the middle of a bitter revenge-filled guerilla war between the "dead-ender" republicans in the mountains and the Franquist Civil Guard. All the people she loves seem trapped by destinies they can't or won't escape, ending either in front of a firing squad or living without hope.

Description

From Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation comes Broken Silence, a series of five films about human courage, heroism, and triumph over intense adversities during World War II. This critically acclaimed series was produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Moll.

Some Who Lived

Eyes of the Holocaust

Director Janos Szasz, the son of Holocaust survivors, made this Hungarian-language documentary that focuses on the experiences of survivors who were children during the Holocaust.

Children from the Abyss

I Remember

Academy Award Honoree, Andrzej Wajda directed this Polish-language documentary about four survivors who were either helped or betrayed by their Polish neighbors.

Hell on Earth

Customer Reviews:

Powerful stuff.......2006-07-12

This disc consists of five short films about the Shoah, narrated by survivors living in various countries. The idea behind this collection was to make films in nations that have never really heard of or been taught about the Shoah, where such tales of horror are not familiar or well-known the way they are in a place like America or Canada. (It was also surprising to see that the people in four of the films obviously went back to their homelands, even after all they'd been through there and how in many places the townspeople were willing accomplices for the Germans.) Side one of the disc contains 'Some Who Survived,' 'Eyes of the Holocaust,' and 'Children from the Abyss.' Side two contains 'I Remember' and 'Hell on Earth.'

'Some Who Survived' ('Algunos Que Vivieron') was originally released in Argentina, though it contains interviews from survivors now living in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. This is interesting because we ordinarily hear about survivors who moved to America, Canada, Israel, and sometimes Australia and England, but not so much about survivors who began new lives in South America, even though quite a few of them did move there. I also enjoyed the fact that it was in Spanish, a language I haven't really had much of a chance to hear or make much use of in awhile despite the fact that I studied it for 7 years. The survivors in this film all came from Eastern Europe, though they weren't all from the same place, which gives this film a bit more variety in its approach. In the other films, the survivors being interviewed were all from the same nations. This film is also of interest because towards the end it goes into the anti-Semitic terrorist acts committed in Argentina in recent decades, and the fact that many Nazis fled to South America, proving that hatred hasn't died yet and that many perpetrators evaded justice.

'Eyes of the Holocaust' ('A Holocaust Szemei') concerns the Shoah in Hungary, and is based around a young girl who has taken refuge from a heavy rain by going into a building where she finds a book with the abovementioned title. She sits down on a staircase and reads the book by candlelight. The book is kind of a dictionary/encyclopedia of the Shoah, with key words, events, and dates, and after she starts reading each selected entry aloud, we cut to the testimony of the survivors talking about the emotions and experiences behind them, making them more than just routine definitions and explanations in a book.

'Children from the Abyss' ('Dyeti iz Bezdna') is about the survivors from the former Soviet Union, and is narrated by the director Pavel Chukhrai in between the interviews with the survivors, who were children at the time of these events. The situation in the former Soviet Union was many times quite different from that in a place like Hungary or Poland, because a lot of these people never even made it to the camps. Many times entire villages were shot down into mass graves, such as in Babiy Yar. Very rarely did someone manage to run away, to be spared by one of the executioners (German or Soviet), or to crawl out of the pit of bodies and make it to safety when the coast was clear. The director explains that some of the pictures and films do not feature the children who are now elderly survivors, since many times they had no families or pictures to go home to afterwards, but that it shouldn't matter, since they represent all of the children, both the miraculous few who survived and the countless more who were murdered. Those who managed to escape into the part of the Soviet Union beyond Nazi control often had a better chance of survival, but for those who remained in the part of the country invaded by the Germans or who didn't flee in time, their odds of survival were much much lower.

'I Remember' ('Pamietam') was directed by the legendary Andrzej Wajda, and employs a different technique than the other films. It's shot entirely in black and white and contains no historical film footage or still pictures from the past. Unlike the other films, here only four survivors are interviewed. We periodically cut between their testimonies and images of a group of young people on the March of the Living. This strategy could be considered very effective in that it forces the viewer to pay attention to the testimonies and not be distracted by other images, but it can also seem a bit dull at times because it's not backed up by accompanying footage or pictures that bring to life what these four men are talking about. It's also interesting to note how for the most part, these men relate their stories in a steady manner, quite keeping their emotions under control instead of, like a number of the other survivors do, sometimes having to temporarily stop because they were overwhelmed by the memories and broke down.

'Hell on Earth' ('Peklo na Zemi') is from the Czech Republic, where the majority of people were taken to Terezin (Theresienstadt) before being deported to Poland. There are some pretty horrifying images here (not to say that the other films don't have stark and shocking pictures and film footage). The images of dead emaciated corpses and the living-dead here are perhaps so shocking and horrifying because some of them are in color, and we're so used to seeing and thinking about these events in black and white. Color just brings them to life in a shocking and vivid way, makes the horror even more real and undeniable. Some of the survivors were children at the time, and some of them were teenagers or young adults. They all have compelling stories to tell, even in spite of their different backgrounds and ages.

All in all, these films are highly recommended. They represent a wide range of experiences and were made to bring these stories to people who don't really know anything about the Shoah, and the linguistic variety was also an added bonus to someone who loves languages and has studied three of the five represented and is interested in the other two. These aren't exactly the types of films you watch on a rainy day or to kill time, but they are important moving historical documents that should be seen by anyone who cares about remembering the past and preventing such things from happening ever again. It's easy to refuse to watch such images and to hear such testimonies because of how shocking, disturbing, unsettling, and heartbreaking it is, but sometimes one has no choice but to hear and see such things, to honestly face the past, to be shocked and jolted out of complacency. Who could ever forget such words and images, and who wouldn't be angry and compelled enough to want to work to ensure that it never happens again?

Survivors speak.......2005-11-07

This is a very good collection of 5 short documentaries-relating the tales of holocaust survivors.
Personally, I liked "Some who lived" the best--but this may be partially due to the fact that it was in Spanish and I wasn't as preoccupied with sub-titles as in the other four. Comparisons between Nazi Germany and Argentina are worthy reminders of how soon the past could be forgotten.
"Eyes of the Holocaust" and "Hell on Earth" relaying Hungarian and Czech experiences are about equal in interest--tying for second best stories.
I really like Wajda--but his epidsode "I Remember" is probably the least interesting--probably since it consists almost entirely of spoken remembrances--very little use of visual aids of any sort. Additionally, one of the survivors seemed to be embellishing his story--I could be wrong--but it was the impression I got. For those unfamiliar with Wajda--this is from a Polish persepctive.
The worst--although not the dullest is "Children from the Abyss"-from a Russian perspective-I had problems with this film because it included scenes from movies--interspersed with genuine footage-although admissions of these liberties were included-they were still potentially misleading. Aside from that--it was quite an interesting episode.
All in all a very good presentation. Though these documentaries represented five different countries--several pictures of victims were repeated in several episodes--one crippled girl appeared in three of these five stories for instance--not a major problem-but the over all effect of this collection would have been stronger in my opinion if this had been avoided.
Definitely worth watching however--though Wajda's "I remember" may be a little dry for some, and I regret Chukhraj's use of movie clips.

Shalom!

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