contact: joanrg@earthlink.net
Directed by Joan Grossman (2005) 60 min. Commissioned by Capriccio Music, Germany.
A non-narrative film that illustrates a symphony by the Russian composer Isaac Schwartz. The music was inspired by writings from the Kovno Jewish ghetto and the film is a collage of images from Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Russia that uses Nazi propaganda films, photographs, original footage and writings.
YELLOW STARS - excerpt “Nocturne” movement
Yellow Stars
Yellow Stars commemorates a tortured but enduring human spirit as it moves from morning to evening to the “Last Night in the Ghetto.” Like the creation story, it has seven movements – the seven days of the week - but the symphony is an extinction story, an allegory that starts with “Morning Prayer” and ends with a catastrophic death dance...A meditation on fragments of film and writings, remnants of countless people who for the most part did not survive.”
– from the DVD booklet
YELLOW STARS - excerpt “Finale” - (liquidation of the ghetto)
(scroll down)
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