The Yatzkans at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum

After having played on French Television & Arte, it has been playing every Tuesday, with special guests (cf. below), at Paris’ Latin Quarter movie theater, the St. André des Arts… now it will play at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum & Learning Center (12 Millstone Campus Drive MO 63146)

on
Sunday February 24, 2019 at 1 p.m.
(a free screening)
France, 2014, 75 minutes – in French with English subtitles.

Viewing great historical events from a highly personal perspective, “The Yatzkans” traces the journey of the film’s eponymous family across war-torn 20th-century Europe. When Anna-Célia Kendall’s mother dies, the filmmaker must deal with the remaining personal effects, and the process of sifting through those paintings, letters, and photos sends her down a rabbit hole. As Kendall investigates her family’s background — taking an intriguingly postmodern approach that incorporates the search for information into the fim’s structure — she discovers that her maternal grandfather was a pioneering figure in Yiddish journalism in Europe. The oppression and persecution of European Jews thus become central elements in the Yatzkans’ story, with the Holocaust assuming an increasingly prominent place in the film. Through her research, the filmmaker also connects with till-now-unknown Yatzkan relatives, and several gather in Paris to discuss their shared legacy. Serendipitously, one of Kendall’s cousins is a conceptual and performance artist who has used some of the same family material in her own work. That art is then incorporated — in an interestingly mediated fashion — into the film, and the cousin becomes a collaborator as the pair travels in search of key places in their family history.

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EXTRAS!

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Mémoires Vives (Mémorial de la Shoah Podcast) reçoit cette semaine Anna-Célia Kendall Yatzkan, réalisatrice, pour le film très personnel qu’elle consacre à son héritage familial, les Yatzkan. Une histoire qui raconte comment son grand père Shmuel Yaacov Yatzkan a fondé à Varsovie le journal yiddish Haynt, ainsi que sa version parisienne Der Parizer Haynt. Une histoire qui parle aussi des femmes de sa famille, sa mère, sa tante, sa grand mère, et de la difficulté à « tricoter » avec les restes épars de cette histoire et à en faire le deuil.

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Extraits de la Revue IMAGES DE LA CULTURE n° 30_propos recueillis par EVA SEGAL
Revue-IMAGES-DE-LA-CULTURE-n°-30_propos-recueillis-par-EVA-SEGAL_Pages-extraites

Tiya Kendall – “De son père elle avait hérité le raffinement, la vivacité d’esprit, l’humour piquant, et un amour immodéré pour la polémique… Un fort tempérament. Et chaque année plus espiègle. Un charme fou.” A.K.

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Dernières nouvelles de France (hier!)… des mots du président Macron sur la France et sa communauté juive.

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