Nothing to Be Written Here

Tracing her father's exile from Austria in 1938, director Wendy Oberlander excavates a silent chapter of Canadian history. Transferred to Canada by the British in 1940, Oberlander's father was one of more than 2,000 Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany held behind barbed wire, alongside Nazi POWs - as "dangerous enemy aliens." The public and private silence surrounding her father's experience compelled Oberlander to examine public archives, unpublished memoirs and stories from former internees to discover her own inheritance. The result is a layered and vivid essay that combines historical accounts, personal narrative and an impressionistic treatment of the fragmented memories her father related to her as a child. First Place Award, 1996 Judah Magnes Museum Video Competition; Bronze Award for Documentary, 1996 New York Expo for Short Film and Video.

During the last 18 years, Wendy Oberland has exhibited multi-media installations in Canada, Iceland and the United States. In 1996 she completed the award winning documentary Nothing to be Written Here, a vivid and personal essay telling the story of the internment of European Jewish refugees in Canada during World War II. Still (Stille), a new film tracing her mother's exile from Berlin in 1938, has just been released. Oberlander teaches at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. "If I must find in word, I would say that my projects lie with the hidden- what survives in the margins is what prompts my curiosity and questions. Here the silences and the gaps are revealed, alongside the paradoxes: the past is part, do not forget; speak up, do not volunteer; find your own way, do not ask too many questions. This in-between is what disturbs and begs me to look. "Here lie the questions and the answers and the unraveling. I know that I do not choose these projects. They appear to me as an imperative, waiting to be revealed." "Nothing to be Written Here" was Oberlander's first video production. The film excavates one silent chapter from Canadian history, and records yet another unknown moment in the Jewish diaspora of the twentieth century. Mixing personal narrative and historical documentary, Nothing to be Written Here traces Wendy Oberlander's discovery of her father's wartime experiences. AWARDS First Place Award for Holocaust Biography, 1996. Judah L. Magnes Museum Video Competition, Berkeley, California. Bronze Award for Documentary, 1996. NY Expo for Short Film & Video, New York, NY.