Fighter screening raises important questions

The Center for Social Media held a screening of Fighter as a part of the campus wide Terezin Project, which aimed to explore the experience of the Holocaust through a variety of artistic lenses. The screening of Fighter explored the memory of two Holocaust survivors through a documentary film lens.

Fighter follows two men, Jan Weiner and former AU professor Arnost Lustig, survivors of Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. What Director Bar-Lev first envisions as a historical documentary soon becomes the personal story of the battle between two very different men—one the bitter, angry fighter, the other, the wise and cynical philosopher—who have very different ways of dealing with memories of the Holocaust. As they retrace the steps of Weiner’s escape from the Nazis, they regale one another with thrilling exploits, revisiting scenes of romance, humor, narrow escapes, and life-or-death confrontations.

The film screening was followed by a Q&A with Pepi Lustig, Arnost Lustig's son and filmmaker, Nina Shapiro-Perl, an SOC professor and filmmaker who is producing a film about a Holocaust survivor who expressed her story through embroidery, and Jana Svehlova, a social scientist. The Q&A yielded some fascinating questions about the nature of memory and trying to make sense of someone else's experience -- both pertinent questions when considering the process of documentary filmmaking. The Q&A session was filmed and will be available on our website soon.