Returning to New Orleans

Prisoner of Her Past plays a little differently in front of every audience, but nowhere like in New Orleans.

Though only a brief – if significant – sequence of the film was shot in the Crescent City, the audience embraced that passage. In the Q-and-A session following the screening at the National World War II Museum on April 4, more than half the questions concerned the way PTSD has wracked New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.

What’s being done to help children who experienced horrors during and after the storm (like the Xavier Prep students shown in the film)? What about adults? Where are New Orleanians supposed to go for help? Why doesn’t language express what trauma survivors feel? How do you deal with the guilt of surviving? How do you replace friends who left and are never coming back? How do you save your city?

The avalanche of questions made me particularly glad that we had brought my mother’s story into the present by showing modern-day trauma in New Orleans. You don’t have to be a Holocaust survivor or a war veteran, the film is saying, to be haunted by traumatic memories.

Answering the questions were two of New Orleans’ leading PTSD experts, Drs. Joy and Howard Osofsky, who were first responders after Katrina and appear in Prisoner of Her Past. As I sat on the post-screening panel with them, listening to their answers, I felt as if I were listening to a city communing with itself, grappling with some of the same troubles that have so deeply disturbed my mother.

But this wasn’t the only revelatory screening in New Orleans. Earlier in the day, we screened the film for more than 200 students at Xavier University Preparatory School, the same Catholic high school shown in the doc. Though the girls we filmed in 2006 have long since graduated, the current students fell to a hush as the Xavier Prep sequence in the movie unfolded. Their questions, too, were unlike any I’ve encountered elsewhere: Have you ever met a Holocaust survivor who also survived Katrina? Did you ever hear again from the girls you filmed? Will you come and film in New Orleans again, to keep covering the story?

Toward the end of the session, Xavier Prep principal Carolyn Oubre told the students about what their teachers had suffered during the storm, how many had lost loved ones and homes and cars, how arduously they battled to come back to New Orleans, “to minister to you,” she said.

The kids instantly burst into applause.

Bravo to them all.

- Howard Reich

Some Very Savvy 8th Graders

Bravo to the kids, teachers and staff at Westview Hills Middle School in Willowbrook, Illinois – they just set a new standard for presenting Prisoner of Her Past in class.

The teachers and social workers at Westview didn’t just show the film (on Jan. 12) and ask for questions. Instead, they convened all the eighth graders in the school, then screened the movie in three segments. In between, they discussed Prisoner of Her Past in small groups.

By the time I stood in front of 150 students, they were bursting with ideas, observations and an outpouring of inquiries. Such as:

“Why does your mother keep saying in the film, ‘I’m a married woman, I’m married to one man?’”

“Did your mother tell your father what happened to her?”

“How did you feel when you got to Dubno, and what were conditions there like?”

“What happened to your father during World War II, and did he have PTSD?”

“Did your mother scare you?”

“Why didn’t you notice your mother’s strange behavior when you were a kid?”

“How did your family react to you telling this story?”

“Have you ever met an ex-Nazi?”

The discussion ran over an hour. Afterward, kids came up to me, shook my hand and said they were going to download the book that inspired the film.

Eighth graders have come a long way since I was in school.

A few days later, I received a deliciously fat package in the mail stuffed with cards and comments from the kids. These are keepers.

Thanks to school social worker Debbie Collins and her colleagues for putting this together.

I learned a lot.

- Howard Reich

Reaching Students Where They Live

Photo Courtesy of Don Chan

A critical new audience has opened up for “Prisoner of Her Past” in the past several weeks: students.

Though we had shown the film once before to teenagers – at Northwestern University’s National High School Institute – the scope and breadth of our student audience expanded dramatically last month. “Prisoner” has played to hundreds of youngsters in Arlington, Tx., and hundreds more in St. Louis and elsewhere

The demographic has been immense, spanning college-age to middle school; black, white, Latino and Asian; American-born and African immigrants.

Their comments have been striking.

“I come from a place that was a cruel dictatorship, and I’ve seen some things, and my mom knows much more,” said a student from the People’s Republic of Congo at Tarrant Community College, in Arlington, after watching “Prisoner.”

“I can understand why your mother never wanted to talk about what happened to her.”

A friend of his from Ghana echoed the thought.

“My family was very secretive about how we lived in the past, when I was very young,” said the TCC student, comparing his family’s traumatic experiences to those my mother, and her cousins Leon and Fanka, suffered 60 years earlier.

“Leon had something to hold on to – the family who hid him,” the student said. “That’s why they coped in different ways.

“Your mother was on her own. She was forced to become harsh.”

The insights of these young adults suggested that they could see elements of their own stories – their own lives – in “Prisoner of Her Past.” Which is precisely why we made the film: to shed light on childhood trauma, past, present and future.

But you don’t need to have suffered a trauma as a child – or even to be in college – to hear this film’s message.

In St. Louis schools, pre-teens and others asked pointed questions:

“How did it feel to stand there, in Dubno, where all those terrible things happened?” inquired one student, referring to Shibennaya Hill, where thousands of Jews from Dubno were massacred. “Did you have nightmares about  being there?” (Yes, indeed – and before traveling there, too.)

“Were you surprised that some of the kids in New Orleans were acting just like your mother?” (Shattered, actually.)

At one point, I was walking between classes in a St. Louis school, and a group of students surrounded me in the hallway to ask more questions. Minute by minute, more kids gathered, to talk about the film.

Now I was sure we had made contact.

Since then, invitations to bring the film to various public and religious schools have been picking up.

Once we’ve developed a study guide for “Prisoner of Her Past,” the film’s lessons will be that much more potent.

- Howard Reich

“Prisoner of Her Past” Premieres in Greece

I had the pleasure of being the guest of the Kos International Health Film Festival for the Greek premiere of Prisoner of Her Past on September 5th this year, on the island of Kos. There were about 60 people at the screening – a very respectable number for an out-of-competition film at such a faraway festival.

The audience was extremely passionate about Prisoner and we had a lively Q&A after the screening. There was a great question from the audience about the camera’s relationship to Sonia, and her habit of directly addressing the camera. I told them about how Sonia would always stop talking when I turned the camera off in order to change tape. Once the camera was back on my shoulder and rolling, she would continue what she was saying. This is how we knew that on some level, Sonia was an active participant in the making of Prisoner of Her Past.

The post-screening conversation continued in the lobby and clearly many people in the audience were greatly moved. Luckily, they had free samples of a few items provided by festival sponsors in the theater lobby – condoms and Kleenex. As you’d image, our audience went for the Kleenex.

The Kos Health Film Festival is great and allows lots of time to hang out with other filmmakers to discuss issues like the consent of film subjects who have diminished capacity. I saw documentaries on diverse topics – from the politics of menstruation and orgasm, to the vibrant lives of the elderly through dance and song.

Although Kos is really a festival for talking about film and aesthetics rather than business, I did manage to make some contacts who will likely allow us to broadcast the film in Israel. A doctor took a copy of Prisoner of Her Past and is going to set up a showing at her hospital in Kos. There was also interest in future screenings of other Kartemquin films, including The Chicago Maternity Center Story, In the Family, Stevie, and The Interrupters.

– Gordon Quinn, Director

A Haunting Theme in Warsaw

Photo courtesy of the Warsaw Jewish Historical Institute

One question kept coming up during the Warsaw premiere of “Prisoner of Her Past,” Oct. 18 in an exhibition space near the Jewish Historical Institute.

Though audience members in the SRO crowd phrased it in different ways, they kept returning to the same motif: Why didn’t my mother talk about her Holocaust trauma after the war? Why was she so silent? Wouldn’t she have avoided the disaster of her current PTSD-induced psychosis if she had just told her story? Don’t people who speak about trauma function much better than those who refuse to speak?

If only it were that simple.

For starters, the medical literature suggests that most survivors did not seek psychiatric help; that those who did generally were not helped significantly; that psychiatrists themselves cued survivors not to share the most gruesome details of their experiences (further discussion of these points can be found in my book “The First and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich”).

In short, there was virtually no forum through which the survivors could tell their stories, nor did they feel they had the words to describe the chaos and horrors they witnessed and endured.

Yet there were other reasons not to speak, as well.

“Survivors who don’t tell stories are protecting themselves and their listeners,” said Lukasz Biedka, a psychologist who illuminated the panel discussion following the Warsaw screening.

“The listeners are as helpless to what happened as the survivors themselves. The listeners wouldn’t know what to do with this story.

“And the survivors didn’t want to expose themselves to not being understood.

“It’s impossible [for the listener] to feel empathy if you haven’t lived through this yourself. And anyway, empathy isn’t enough.”

For the survivors, added Biedka, “It’s a second trauma when you tell people what happened, and they can’t understand.”

One member of the audience – a daughter of survivors – said she would never make a film about her own mother, thereby putting her mother “under a microscope.”

But this sounded to me like an unfortunate plea for more of the old silence.

As a son and as a journalist, I feel compelled to tell this story, to unveil the truth of what happened as I discover it.

Plus, as psychologist Biedka added, “The film is not just about [Sonia’s] PTSD. It’s about Howard working through his own thoughts.”

Post script: Deep thanks to Edyta Kurek and Olga Zienkiewicz, of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and Andrew B. Paul, cultural attaché of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, for organizing this unforgettable event.

– Howard Reich

Lessons From Prague

Dr. Helena Klimova (photo courtesy of Prague Jewish Museum)

One of our most enlightening screenings unfolded in Prague, before a standing-room-only audience at the American Center, on Oct. 14. Presented by several organizations, including the Jewish Museum and the U.S. Embassy, the event was striking for who was in the audience (as well as the sweet fact that an additional room had to be opened up to accommodate the overflow).

For starters, several psychiatrists and psychologists from the Rafael Institute offered revelatory insights. They were led by Dr. Helena Klimova (pictured above), a child survivor of the Holocaust herself.

Dr. Klimova pointed out that my mother’s refusal to acknowledge any semblance of her past — as seen in the film — attests to my mother’s iron will.

“The way she defends herself is a sign of her strength,” said Dr. Klimova to the crowd. “This is the way she is holding her life together.”

Dr. Klimova, in other words, sees my mother not as a victim of her current psychiatric condition but as a fighter who is ferociously battling a past that continues to haunt her.

Dr. Klimova also emphasized the very different way my mother’s cousin Leon, also a child Holocaust survivor, has drawn upon his own strength: not by blocking his past but by rushing toward it. Dr. Klimova found Leon quite unusual in this regard, but she said this may point to Leon’s growth since his trauma. “It is possible there may be a development that leads you to mental health” following trauma, she said. She added that the very making of the film is a sign that a second and third generation is able to begin to recover from a family’s trauma.

Other experts analyzed how survivors who had to fend for themselves during the war, as my mother did, were isolated anew afterward. For unlike concentration camp survivors, who shared common experiences, the children who ran and hid for their lives experienced singular journeys. The places in which they hid and the people they encountered were unknown to the rest of the world and often unidentified even to themselves. Therefore these solitary survivors, like my mother, often were left alone with their traumas for the rest of their lives.

One observer pointed out that behaviors by my mother that might seem bizarre now — such as packaging and storing little bags of bread — were not strange during strange times. My mother’s unusual rituals regarding food and other aspects of her life may represent her attempt to control a past that she could not control in her childhood and, ironically, does not want to remember now.

But it wasn’t just psychiatrists who shed light on the story of “Prisoner of Her Past.” Also in the audience was the daughter of Vladimir Loukotka, who 70 years ago risked his life to save my mother’s cousin Leon and Leon’s sister, Fanka. When the two orphaned children, Leon and Fanka, arrived in the tiny farming village of Ozirko, they were barefoot and starving, said Loukotka’s daughter, whose father spoke of them “every day” of his life after the war.

Loukotka died many years ago, and his daughter said, “It’s too bad he didn’t live to see this film.” More important, though, Loukotka saw that Leon and Fanka had survived the war, and he knew that he had made that possible.

Loukotka’s widow, Olga, who also helped hide the children, was unable to come to the screening because she recently was hospitalized with a broken hip. But her two grandsons, strapping men in their 30s, attended with their mother (the Loukotkas’ daughter). As the film played, the family seemed to radiate pride in their grandparents’ heroism, and they stayed practically until the place was empty, soaking up a story that was as much theirs as mine.

As the evening drew to a close, one grandson insisted that I meet 84-year-old Olga at the hospital. So on Saturday evening, he indeed picked me up and drove me an hour-and-a-half to Olga’s bedside. She reminisced on how she and Vladimir saved the children.

Why did they risk their lives for Leon and Fanka?

“Because they were children,” said Olga. “With big eyes, crying. That’s all.”

– Howard Reich

Hope, Optimism, and Courage

I’m sorry to say that George Kennedy, a personal hero of mine and a champion of “Prisoner of Her Past,” died Sept. 1 at age 86.

George, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, was one of the first people to support the film, and he appeared on the panel following our premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center, in April.

George epitomized hope, optimism and courage to everyone lucky enough to have known him. He always used to say to me that he went to see all the Holocaust films, even though the subject is so difficult. Why?

“Because I beat the Nazis,” he would explain.
“I lived.”

– Howard Reich

Galvanized by Students

Until Tuesday night (July 13), I wondered whether “Prisoner of Her Past” would mean anything to teenagers. Could kids in 21^st Century America really relate to the story of my mother, who is reliving traumas she experienced in Eastern Europe in WWII?

It all seemed a bit remote.

But the youngsters who crowded into the McCormick Tribune Center at Northwestern University, in Evanston, gave me a swift education in their sophistication, sensitivity and wisdom.

We were screening “Prisoner of Her Past” for journalism students at Northwestern University’s National High School Institute, famously known as the “cherubs” program. Bringing the film here was going to be particularly meaningful for me, because I had been a journalism “cherub” myself – in 1971! And the same Northwestern prof who headed the program back then, Roger Boye, had invited me back to show the movie.

What’s more, two close personal friends would be in the audience: Owen Youngman, a former editor of mine at the Tribune who’s now a Medill professor; and Howard Dubin, an ardent supporter of Medill and of our film, who’s also my cousin.

But as the students settled into their seats – talking, laughing, joking – I feared they might feel that “Prisoner of Her Past” belonged to some distant time and place. Once the screening began, their silence seemed to confirm my suspicions.

Yet as the story progressed, they gasped at particular passages, laughed at others, then – at the film’s end – burst into shattering applause.

The house lights went up, and they proceeded to shower me with savvy questions: How did it feel to switch from being a lifelong print journalist to working in film? (Thrilling and scary.) How did I deal with the emotion of telling such a personal story? (With some difficulty.) How did I get people in Poland and Ukraine to open up to me? (They seemed eager to talk.) How did my family respond to the idea of making the film? (With tremendous support.) The questions kept coming for over an hour.

Then something even more startling happened. After the Q-and-A session ended, a large group of kids surged to the front of the room to tell me their own stories, one-on-one. Many wept as they recounted what happened to their grandparents in Europe, and how similar their family narratives were to mine. Others told of relatives who experienced horrors in Japan during World War II … and only reluctantly told their grandchildren the tale.

Over and over, I was struck by the maturity of these students, their awareness of the suffering of their elders and their own heroism in sharing this information with me. Many said they were determined to tell these stories through the course of their careers, to keep the memories alive, to try to help others.

I felt lucky to meet them, talk to them, spend an evening in their presence.

– Howard Reich

Joy at the Tivoli

Gordon Quinn & Howard Reich at Tivoli Theater

More than 400 people poured into the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove on Monday night (July 12, 2010), to catch “Prisoner of Her Past.”

Just seeing the film’s title sprawled across this theater’s glorious, glittering marquee was a thrill. You don’t encounter movie houses like this very often anymore. The historic theater, which opened in 1928, has been sumptuously restored, complete with gold-painted lobby (real gold), glowing proscenium and 1924 Wurlitzer organ (which rose up from the orchestra pit to thunder once more).

I guess that’s what going to the movies used to be like.

The event was organized by the great After Hours Film Society. Thanks to board member Allen Carter, who has been championing our film, and executive director Debbie Venezia, who introduced it.

The audience seemed thoroughly in sync with the movie, responding robustly to its humor. The Q-and-A session ran for roughly an hour after the screening, and I was especially moved by two groups of people who talked to me later.

First was a trio of college students who said they’d never seen a film quite like this. They then went on to discuss what the movie meant to them, and how it would make them look differently at older people:  seniors in their midst, whose personal tragedies often go unspoken. I exulted that young people – just barely out of their teens – now would carry the message of “Prisoner of Her Past” when they talked to their friends.

Next came a group of women who had read the book that inspired the film, “The First and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich,” as part of their book club. I told them that if they’d like to have another club meeting, this time with the author present, I’d be happy to oblige. I hope they take me up on it.

Anyone who goes to the trouble of placing tabs throughout the book – to highlight key passages – can call me any time.

— Howard Reich

The Film Takes Flight

The long and thrilling process of making “Prisoner of Her Past,” which began in 2004, has ended.

And the journey to bring the film to audiences around the world has begun.

With this first blog entry, I’ll recap where we’ve shown the film so far, as we prepare to take “Prisoner of Her Past” wherever there’s a screen, an audience and, if possible, a popcorn machine.

Feb. 28, 2010, Illinois Holocaust Museum, Skokie. I always hoped to have the first public screening here, in Skokie, where so many survivors (including my parents) converged after the war. The theater was sold out a couple of weeks in advance for this official “sneak preview,” a crush of visitors packing every inch of the place. Patty White, of the museum staff, gave a stirring introduction, and the crowd laughed, cried and sighed at all the key moments. Dr. David Rosenberg, the brilliant Highland Park psychiatrist who diagnosed my mother with late-onset PTSD, spoke eloquently after the film and helped us address an avalanche of questions from the audience. With so many survivors in the audience, it would have been difficult to imagine a more emotionally charged beginning.

April 9-15, 2010, Gene Siskel Film Center, downtown Chicago. We all felt privileged to be given a weeklong run at this prestigious venue, which justly calls itself “Chicago’s premier movie theater.” Barbara Scharres, director of programming at the Siskel, had been a champion of “Prisoner of Her Past” since its inception, telling me years ago that Kartemquin Films was the best company, by far, to bring my mother’s story to the screen. During the course of this week, I saw “Prisoner of Her Past” 14-1/2 times (sorry – I had to run out for food before one screening). Each screening felt different because each audience responded differently. Some laughed loudly at every hint of humor; some gasped audibly at tragic scenes in the film; some sat almost silent, leaving me to guess what they were thinking.

After each showing (most sold-out or close to it), we opened the floor to questions, and they came flooding in: How is your mother today? (About the same.) Will she see the film? (Doubtful). How did people in Ukraine react to you? (Quite helpfully.) Is there any way to help your mother today? (Apparently not.) After every Q-and-A session, some in the audience continued the conversation in the lobby.

The most dramatic screening unfolded on Sunday afternoon, April 11, with a capacity audience attending the official downtown premiere. Scharres and Tribune editor Gerould Kern offered eloquent opening remarks, and all the filmmakers convened on stage afterward for a panel discussion. To see director Gordon Quinn, editor Jerry Blumenthal, producer Joanna Rudnick and associate producer Zak Piper in one place, at one time (which occurs about as frequently as a lunar eclipse) was to realize anew how much talent, time and devotion had made this moment possible.

This event – and every one before and since – was choreographed by the unstoppable Xan Aranda, who routinely makes the impossible possible.

Considering the high-toned production values of the Siskel, I realized – for the first time – that we actually had succeeded in making a movie, and that the quest to bring it to viewers around the planet had just begun.

— Howard Reich