2 mins 40 secs
My parents belonged to a generation of Jews who faced extermination. Through their stories as in a cracked and tarnished mirror, I see myself reflected as if I were formed before my birth by the choices which they made.
Look a Doll! explores my mother’s childhood in Russia and Poland, using interviews, photomontage and archive film clips. I had started to interview my mother on tape in 1994, having had a dream in which I saw her fall from our collapsing home. I have lost everything, I thought either during or just after the dream, even my name and renamed myself Sylvana Bismark. This I then decided was to be the title of my autobiography. When I began to write, I realised I knew very little about my origins or my parents. From this belated interest came Her Mother’s Voice, and having completed that book, I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to film my mother and ask her to tell the same story…
In this film she evokes in intimate and moving detail the history of a Jewish woman born into the 20th century and a memory of family life for the survivors of the holocaust.
62 minutes shot on Sony digital video, edited on Beta SP
Camera: John Bulmer, Editor: Michael Franks, Rostrum Camera: Ken Morse
Made with the financial aid of the London Production Fund