September 18, 2000 Holocaust film opens second annual Santa Cruz Documentary Film & Video Festival By Jennifer McNulty An extraordinary documentary account of the trial of convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann will open the second annual Santa Cruz Documentary Film and Video Festival on Sunday, October 1. In image from The Specialist, which will open the second annual Santa Cruz Documentary Film and Video Festival next month. The two-hour film, The Specialist, is a highly acclaimed work directed by Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan. The 1961 trial, which was filmed in its entirety at the request of the Israeli government, was immediately recognized as an event of great historical significance. Eichmann, who organized the deportation of millions to death camps during World War II, was convicted of crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. He was hanged in 1962. Sivan edited hundreds of hours of unreleased footage to create The Specialist, which takes place entirely in the Jerusalem courtroom where Eichmann, who escaped the Nuremberg trials, was on trial for more than eight months. The result is a powerful film in which Eichmann asserts that he was simply following orders. "Eichmann provided much of his own defense, portraying himself as a government bureaucrat who was simply following orders in an extreme situation. The film raises important questions about individual responsibility," said film festival cofounder Hugh Raffles, a UCSC assistant professor of anthropology. The Specialist is one of 18 films being screened during the festival, which runs October 1-7. Each night features films that relate to a specific theme, including Crimes and Punishment on opening night. Other themes are Making Babies, In the Face of Globalization, Roma ("gypsies") in Cinema, Transgender Identities, Stories of Travel, and Remembering Vietnam. Several directors will attend the festival to discuss their films with local audiences. Cosponsored by the UCSC Anthropology Department, the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History, Sasquatch Computer, and KUSP Radio, the event features outstanding films that are unavailable to general audiences. Shows begin nightly at 7 p.m. Admission is $3 per night; festival passes are available for $15. Tickets and passes are available at the door or in advance from the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium at 307 Church Street, or from the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History at 1305 East Cliff Drive. Screenings take place at the UCSC Media Theater and at Louden Nelson Community Center, 301 Center Street, Santa Cruz. A full schedule is on the web at www.meadfilmfest.org, or view a simplified schedule here. For more information, call the museum at (831) 420-6115. Please note: The presenters advise discretion in bringing children under age 12 to the screenings. In addition to The Specialist, opening night features Zyklon Portrait, an amazing 13-minute film about Zyklon B, the crystal that produces the deadly gas used in Nazi concentration camps. "Stylistically, it combines a factual description of what Zyklon B is and how it works, with home movies taken by the filmmaker's parents of her grandparents, who were killed at Auschwitz," said festival cofounder Sharon Simpson. "It's a very powerful juxtaposition of scientific information and the personal narrative of the filmmaker's mother. The third element is the use of abstract, handpainted images that add a dreamlike quality. It is a perfect piece of filmmaking." The festival continues October 2 with two films about making babies, including The Child the Stork Brought Home, an intimate film that follows an infertile couple and surrogate mother from embryo transfer through the birth of a baby girl. Director Gillian Goslinga-Roy, a doctoral student in the UCSC history of consciousness program, will lead a discussion after the showing. On October 7, the theme is Remembering Vietnam, and all three directors whose films are being shown will attend the festival. Directors John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson have created a powerful antiwar film in Riding the Tiger, a short, experimental film that presents a chronology of the war and a visual essay that combines newsreel footage and the recollections of Vietnamese farmers, soldiers, villagers, and American journalists. Also attending that evening will be Mickey Grant, director of The Cu Chi Tunnels, an hour-long documentary about the elaborate network of underground tunnels built by the people of Cu Chi province in North Vietnam. Grant obtained rare archival film taken in the tunnels during the war and combined it with present-day interviews with the survivors of the tunnels, some of whom express powerful anti-American sentiments. The festival is made possible in part by generous support from the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival; the Santa Cruz Museum Association; George Ow and Gail Michaelis Ow; Liz Sandoval and David Lewis; and the UCSC Division of Social Sciences, the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research, the Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Endowed Chair at UCSC, and the UCSC Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community. The UCSC Media Theater is located in the Theater Arts Center at UCSC. To get to the theater, take the UCSC west entrance off Empire Grade at Heller Drive. After the fourth stop sign, turn right onto Meyer Drive; free parking is available in the Performing Arts parking lot. Return to Front Page