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Family Treasures Lost & Found
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Film Screening & Discussion
Co-presented by American Jewish Historical Society and YIVO Admission: $10 |
Join the American Jewish Historical Society and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research for a film screening of Family Treasures Lost and Found, followed by a talkback with filmmakers Karen A. Frenkel and Marcia Rock.
In Family Treasures Lost and Found, journalist Karen A. Frenkel investigates her parents’ unspoken WWII stories. She knew little about their lives before and during the Holocaust, but her detective work leads to astonishing revelations of her family’s riveting journeys through Europe, Cuba, Mexico, and New York. Karen shares steps in family history research such as using digital and real-world archives to fill gaps in what she was told. A family archive of portraits, photos, documents, and artifacts also reveals the cultural life of pre-war urban assimilated Polish Jews. The process deepens Karen’s appreciation for her relatives’ resistance to fascism, luck, altruism, and the reasons for their silence. She honors her parents, sole surviving grandfather, and lost relatives, who cease to be mere names. Ultimately, Karen’s sleuthathon ensures that memories of a vanished culture will endure and shows why filling in the blanks of lives lost is important not only to her, but to the history of the Jewish people and society as a whole.
Family Treasures Lost and Found is a Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program Project. Established in 1972, Women Make Movies is a 501(c)3 nonprofit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State.
About the Speakers
Karen A. Frenkel (www.karenafrenkel.com) is an award-winning journalist, author, and documentary producer. Previous documentaries: Minerva’s Machine: Women and Computing (1995) won Best Documentary in a Small Market, 1997 EMMA (Exceptional Merit Media Award) given by National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College, Best Documentary, Brooklyn Arts Council, 30th Annual International Film and Video Festival, Best Television Series, Runner Up, Eleventh Annual Computer Press Award. Net.LEARNING (1998) won the 1998 National Education Reporting First Prize, Television Documentary and Feature. Both documentaries aired on public television. Ms. Frenkel co-authored with Isaac Asimov Robots: Machines in Man’s Image (Harmony 1985). Her articles have appeared in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CACM, Discover, Essence, FastCompany.com, Forbes, Scientific American, Technology Review, and The New York Times among others. She blogs for The Times of Israel about her parents’ survival during World War II, fascism, and political parallels today.
Marcia Rock’s documentaries cover international dilemmas, women’s issues as well as personal perspectives. Before Family Treasures, Rock co-produced and directed UnReined, about an Israeli equestrian champion, Nancy Zeitlin, who built the first Palestinian equestrian team. Rock also produced SERVICE: When Women Come Marching Home about women transitioning from active duty to civilian life, NY Emmy. She covered the changing role of women in Northern Ireland, Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories, AWRT Grand Documentary Award. McSorley’s New York is about the history of the NY Irish and won a NY Emmy. She experimented with personal storytelling in Dancing with My Father. Rock started and is the director of News and Documentary at the NYU Carter Journalism Institute and co-authored with Marlene Sanders, Waiting for Primetime: The Women of Television News.