Yom HaShoah Service and Film Program
Sunday, April 7 at 7:00 P.M.
Featured film: Never Forget to Lie (USA, 2012, 55 min.)
[English & Polish with English Subtitles, Directed by Marian Marzynski]
Over the course of his 50-year career, filmmaker Marian Marzynski has occasionally turned his cameras on himself and his story of surviving the Holocaust, which claimed the life of his father and millions of other European Jews.
In his latest film, Marzynski returns to Poland and the Jewish ghettos of his childhood. But this time, he is not alone. In Never Forget to Lie, Marzynski chronicles the poignant, painful recollections of other child survivors. The film rescues haunting pieces of the past while exploring the conflicting feelings about national, cultural, and religious identity that mark many survivors.
“The Holocaust story has been told by others; this is our turn,” Marzynski says. “In our old bodies, we are still children.” In this film, he explores his own wartime childhood and the experiences of other child survivors, teasing out their feelings about Poland, the Catholic Church, and the ramifications of identities forged under circumstances where survival began with the directive "never forget to lie."
Marzynski began his 40-year career as a journalist and popular television show host in Poland. A wry observer of life and a pioneer of European cinéma-vérité, Marzynski, has worked alongside Roman Polanski and taught many American filmmakers including Gus Van Sant. In addition to his landmark documentary Shtetl, Marzynski's films include Settlement, and dozens of films broadcast on PBS's Frontline and European TV.
The FJC is one of select locations, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage (NYC) and the Coolidge Corner Cinema, where the film will be aired before it is aired on Frontline in late April. Learn more about the film at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/never-forget-to-lie/. Google the film to find radio interviews (NPR's "Here and Now") and press articles and interviews (Boston Globe, April 2012; Jewish Advocate, April 2012).
is made available by the National Center for Jewish Film, housed at Brandeis University.