“Making Light in Terezin”

“I had to tell this story.”
Richard Krevolin
Making Light in Terezin director

One of the most memorable video shoots in my life was one day in the ’90s when I shot two interviews of Holocaust survivors for what was then called the Shoah Foundation that Steven Spielberg helped launch after making Schindler’s List. It’s hard to forget when a man tells you his job at a concentration camp was to collect the bodies of those who died overnight and were placed on the side of the road.

So when I was in the Twin Cities last Sunday and saw that it was the last day of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival I was drawn to the documentary Making Light in Terezin. The story is about a troop of Minneapolis actors who traveled to Terezin, about 40 miles from Prague, to perform plays that were originally written and performed when Nazi’s controlled the city between 1942 and its liberation in 1945.

And it was a bonus that the film’s producer and director Richard Krevolin would be at the screening. I’ve been familiar with Krevolin ever since his book Screenwriting from the Soul came out over a decade ago. And I’ve quoted him a few times over the years. After the film showed Krevolin told the audience that he self-funded the film on his credit cards and spent two years editing down 40 hours of footage down to an 86 minute film.

The ad for the film stated:

“Even in the darkest places on earth, there is always the need for light, for laughter. ‘Making Light in Terezon’ explores the little known role that theater, cabaret and comedy played in improving and even saving the lives of some of the Jews who lived in the Terezin ghetto in WWII.”

It was a chapter in that era that I was unfamiliar with and glad that Krevolin was able to interview survivors who were able to tell their story. Right now Krevolin is looking for distribution and I hope this film finds a larger audience.

Related post:

Cheap Therapy (Quote by Krevolin)
Put Down the Megaphone! (Another Krevolin Quote)
Screenwriting Quote #182 (Richard Krevolin)
After Darkness, Light
“More Light”

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote #182 (Richard Krevolin)

I was in Minneapolis Sunday and saw the debut of the documentary  Making Light In Terezin at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. It was produced and directed by Richard Krevolin who wrote the book Screenwriting from the Soul. I’ll write about his film tomorrow, but here’s a quote of his for today:

“All characters are wounded souls, and the stories we tell are merely an acting out of the healing process. They are the closing of open wounds, the scabbing-over process.”
Richard Krevolin
Screenwriting from the Soul

P.S. Making Light In Terezin tells another chapter of Jewish people during World War II. Though it’s about people who use humor and entertainment to help them survive —it’s still a film about wounded souls.

Scott W. Smith

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