Abstract
Viennese filmmaker Ruth Beckermann is one of Austria’s crucial essayists and documentarians. This interview is focused on the personal and political dimensions of the Jewish experience in her body of work since the 1980s, when she started a cinematic inquiry for identity and the subjects of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Her films, from 1983 onward, and particularly The Paper Bridge (1987), Towards Jerusalem (1991), East of War (1996), and Homemad(e) (2000), are a testimony to the core concerns of her generation—the second generation of Holocaust survivors. The interview also explores the themes and subjects of more recent films, like Zorro’s Bar Mitzvah (2006), American Passages (2011), and The Waldheim Waltz (2018) and gets into different aspects of her perspective on filmmaking.
Recommended Citation
Kantor, Débora G.
(2020)
"Ruth Beckermann: Documentarian of the Present,"
Jewish Film & New Media: Vol. 8:
Iss.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/jewishfilm/vol8/iss2/5