Full Description
Defiant amateur filmmaker Ella Arnhold Lewenz used some of the earliest known color movie-film to document life in Germany during the 1920's and 30's. She was passionately devoted to pacifism and the dream of a united Europe. Her footage recorded the carefree life of a wealthy, cultured family, providing a fascinating glimpse of the German-Jewish aristocracy. Ella's everyday scenes include images of Albert Einstein, Rabbi Leo Baeck, actress Brigitte Helm and other future exiles at parties. She also documented the elaborate spectacles the Nazis staged during their rapid take-over of Germany. Her diary reveals the startled reaction of a woman whose identity was wholly German. Still, Ella kept her wits about her. She used her position of privilege to secure safe passage to America and escape the fate of the less fortunate millions. When she died in 1954, her films were stored in an attic.
In 1981, Ella's granddaughter, director Lisa Lewenz discovered them and began a unique intergenerational collaboration where grandmother and granddaughter's footage are woven into a complex juxtaposition of two different historical periods and cultures. A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS is not only a moving first-person account of family history, it is an excavation of German Jewish identity and memory.
Filmmaker Bio(s)
Writer, Director, Director of Photography Lisa Lewenz is an award-winning multimedia artist and director whose projects have been widely exhibited in America. Her work has been frequently recognized for its merit, with three Fulbright Research Fellowships to Germany, two NEA Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to Berlin, the '89 Ferguson Award, numerous state artist fellowships, and the Baltimore Mayor's Commission fellowships, with residency fellowships to LaNapoule, France and Amherst College, as well recognition from other organizations.
Her projects have ranged from a documentary on nuclear power in 1984, A View from Three Mile Island, and Idol Worship/Idle Warship, based on obsolete Civil-Defense fallout shelters.
In addition to production work, Lewenz has taught full time at several universities (New York University, The University of Illinois, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) and worked as a documentary researcher in Germany for CBS News and The Discovery Channel.
She has worked as a project director with the artist Christo, and as programming assistant for filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow. Lewenz received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978, and a MFA from CalArts in 1982. A Letter Without Words is Lewenz's first film.
