Intervals of Silence: Being Jewish in Germany

Nationally known avant-garde filmmaker and media activist Deborah Lefkowitz explores the perspectives of Germans, Jews and non-Jews after the Holocaust. As an American Jew married to a German Gentile, she examines with great sensitivity how residents of her husband's hometown view themselves, each other, and the past. A highly original and experimental film language is used: visual fragments of daily life, written texts, and layered images with alternating voices. All combine to create a moving statement.

DEBORAH LEFKOWITZ studied dance, pantomime, and musicology at the Academy for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria before completing a degree in visual studies and film at Harvard University. Her films, which have received awards and critical acclaim both nationally and internationally, interweave layers of image and sound to portray complex relationships of historical time and personal memory. INTERVALS OF SILENCE: BEING JEWISH IN GERMANY engages audiences of diverse ethnicities and cultures--including those who are neither Jewish nor German--and encourages viewers to re-examine their feelings about the Holocaust and acknowledge related personal issues, such as the sense of being an outsider in the American cultural mainstream. INTERVALS OF SILENCE was awarded First Place Documentary at the North Carolina International Film and Video Festival (1991); Outstanding Social Documentary at the New England Film and Video Festival (1991); Special Jury Award, USA Festival/National Short Film and Video Competition (1991); and Special Mention by the Festival Staff at the Oberhausen Festival of Short Films/Germany (1991). Festival screenings also include: Brighton Jewish Film Festival/England (1998); Leipzig Documentary Film Festival/Germany (1991); Amiens International Film Festival/France (1991); Montreal World Film Festival/Canada (1991). Selected publications about INTERVALS OF SILENCE include Deborah Lefkowitz, "Silence and Other Disruptions," in FEMINISM AND DOCUMENTARY (University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Matthew Bernstein, "A Review of Deborah Lefkowitz's Intervals of Silence: Being Jewish in Germany," FILM QUARTERLY (Summer, 1994); and Deborah Lefkowitz, "Editing from Life," in WOMEN AND GERMAN YEARBOOK, Vol. 8 (University of Nebraska Press, 1993). Since 1994, Ms. Lefkowitz has been excerpting image sequences from her films and recontextualizing them in large-scale, site-specific installations for galleries and museums. These installations combine light, photographic images, sculptural forms, movement, and occasionally sound, to suggest the tenuousness with which both memory and photography allow the past to inhabit the present. Solo exhibitions have included the University of Judaism's Platt Gallery, Los Angeles; California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside; Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum at California State University, San Bernardino; Memorial Union Art Gallery at University of California, Davis; and Galerie Am Scheunenviertel in Berlin, Germany. In Fall, 2001 Ms. Lefkowitz will tour several German cities with INTERVALS OF SILENCE under the auspices of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Dresden and the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum in Leipzig. She is also creating new installations at the Pico Rivera Centre for the Arts, Pico Rivera, CA (September 8 - October 17, 2001) and the Museum of Neon Art, Los Angeles (January 8 - April 21, 2002), and will be Artist-in-Residence at California State University, Sacramento in April, 2002.