European backlot at Universal Studios
Synopsis
The film is set in Germany in 1935. A ten-year-old girl, Eva, and her family witness an
older woman taunting a Jewish family at an outdoor cafe. The gathering crowd watches on
with amusement. Eva's initial delight at the spectacle is replaced with confusion when the
taunts grow increasingly more humiliating.
Suddenly she senses the competing worldviews this scene provokes in others -- everything
from laughter to disgust and apathy. Yet no one steps in for the family. Just as Eva
begins to identify and empathize with the family's terrified young son, violence erupts
unimpeded by anyone. The boy watches helplessly as his father is beaten, and his horror
becomes Eva's horror. She finally looks to her father to help, and when Arthur refuses to
get involved, Eva's perfect faith in him is lost.
Understanding the Holocaust
"Mr. Dorman [a Holocaust documentarian] believes it is time to pay
more attention to the perpetrators. Film, he says, has proved "an ideal
medium" for allowing the victims to tell their stories, but where, he
wonders, are the far more complex stories of the criminals? Books have
been written about them … yet filmmakers have exhibited a greater
reluctance than historians to examine this aspect of the Holocaust.
Perhaps they are fearful of humanizing the inhuman."
By Barry Gewen
"Holocaust Documentaries: Too Much
of a Bad Thing?"
New York Times. February 15, 2003
Read more about how The White Rose explores this
territory...
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Thank you so much for your help with this production!
Please review the current draft of credits.
Materials
FULL
SCRIPT
Visual plan
Sound design plan
Sample music clips that are guiding my thoughts on sound (a chant and music from
Seven Years in Tibet).
Production
location at Universal Studios
I'll add other materials to this space as time permits, including
quicktime videos of my two other short films, Namaste and The
Fitting.
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