Gefilte Fish and the Ghost of Germany: Jewish American Artists in the New Berlin

Director Holly-Jane Rahlens is a writer, actress and nice Jewish girl from Berlin via Queens, New York who turns her camera on six Jewish artists currently living in Berlin. They include a performance artist, a choreographer, a pianist-composer, a photographer, a director, and the only Jewish member of a Polish-German theatre troupe specializing in the works of Jewish dramatists. With intelligence, humor and charm, these six characters discuss the vital cultural life in Berlin where the murky cloud of the not-so-distant past still hovers.

Holly-Jane Rahlens grew up in New York City. After completing her university studies in Theater Arts and English at the City University of New York (Queens College) she moved to Berlin, Germany where she has worked as a broadcast journalist, radio music show host, and was for many years a columnist for the Berlin International Film Festival. A writer and documentary film director for German (ARD / ZDF) and American television (PBS), she has also appeared as an actress in her own self-produced one-woman-shows, as well as in various stage, film, radio play and television productions, including the adaptation of her stage monologue ONE FINE DAY, OR HOW I LEARNED TO WALK STRAIGHT. Ms. Rahlens is currently developing two of her novels for the screen: BECKY BERNSTEIN GOES BERLIN and its sequel CONFESSIONS OF A LAS VEGAS BRIDE.