Emigration, N.Y.

While uncovering the painful Austrian past, this film illuminates the distinctively American experience of immigration. Using archival footage to weave the past into the present, the film merges many voices into one while still honoring individual stories. With extraordinary candor and sensitivity, Austrian émigrés share their perceptions of New York. The film suggests that each family developed its own unique culture and means of coping with exile and loss. A history emerges, as yet untold, of how displaced Austrian Jews became Americans. Among those interviewed is film critic Amos Vogel, founder of the New York Film Festival.

Producer & Director Egon Humer was born in 1954 in Wels, Upper Austria. He studied at the Film and TV Department of the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from 1977 to 1983. He then studied at the Cultural Management Institute in Vienna 1984 - 1985. He lives in Vienna. Egon Humer has an extensive World Wide Website documenting his current and completed film projects amongst which is Emigration, N.Y. - The Story of an Expulsion. The site is rich with photographs of- and background material on- the 12 interviewees appearing in the film. The director's statement included below is but one of many documents found at the fabulous Emigrati on, N.Y. - The Story of an Expulsion website.