Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1987. július-december (41. évfolyam, 26-48. szám)
1987-12-03 / 45. szám
Thursday, Dec. 3. 1987. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 11. ÁmÉRlCMI HÜhCARÍAhs Behind bars: Maruschka Detmers displays the dignity and spiritual strength of Hanna in the hands of her captors • ASKOLD KRUSHELNYCKY in Budapest reports on Cannon’s success in the glasnost zpne The film maker Menahem Golan, looking like an ebullient Moses, feels he has led his people to the promised cinematic land - rather improbably located in central Europe. For the past four months Cannon, the film company plagued by financial problems, has been working on what Golan hopes will be his salvation in a Hungary seized with the spirit of glasnost. The film, Hanna's War, has become an obsession for the Israeli director and co- chairman of the Cannon group. It tells the true story of Hanna Senesh, a young Jewish woman partisan parachuted by the Allies back into her Hungarian home land to set up an escape route for Allied airmen and to help the persecuted Jews. She is captured almost immediately and the film shows how Hanna played by Maruschka Detmers, fights relentless tortures in her hopeless captivity with a spiritual strength and dignity that Golan believes elevates her to the same category as Anne Frank. The film also deals with the littleknown and remarkable offer by the Germans to trade 800,000 Hungarian Jews for lorries from the Allies to evacuate soldiers trapped on the Russian front in 1944. The deal fell through and only 80,000 Jews escaped tha gas chambers. The project is a political break-through because it is remarkable that the Hungarians are allowing it to be made at all. Golan says he asked permission to film the story in Hungary in 1964 but drew a blank. The memory of what had happened to the Jews was still too sensitive a subject for the Hungarian authorities to wish to see it made into a film. After the World Jewish Conference held its first convention in Eastern Europe in Budapest this summer, the climate seemed right for Golan to move in and start work on his long-cherished dream. He said: "I first heard about Hanna as a school child. Everyone in Israel knows the poems she wrote until she was executed at 23. Hanna's mother was eager for me to make the movie so she could still be alive when it was released. For me this was an obligation demanded by my heritage. For years I did not want to deal with the Holocaust because I did not think it was a subject for the cinema or for entertainment. "I was interested in showing the Holocaust from a different angle, not the death camps but as a story to tell of a young woman in a world of hatred and fascism, in a man's world, who stood out and stood up for her beliefs and ultimately gave her life for them. Hanna's story is about how the human spirit fights terror. For me Hanna is not a Jewish heroine but a heroine for the whole world and one the Hungarians should be proud of." Golan who is ensconced on an entire floor of the Hungarian Mafilm building in the southern outskirts of Budapest, is full of praise for the co-operation and technical skills of his Hungarian crew. The authorities have helped him not only by permitting access to locations but also by cordoning off whole sections of Budapest, with its heavy Hapsburgian buildings, as hundreds of Hungarian extras dressed as German soldiers tramped through the city. He was even allowed to shoot scenes in the capital's prison, where inmates in their cells were deeply perplexed by the intrusion of the film company. Golan said: "The Hungarians are among the best film makers I have come across, certainly in Eastern Europe. They are very professional and know what they are doing. We have had to work through interpreters but they have all been very enthusiastic and there have been no problems at all." Apart from Maruschka Detmers, who made her screen debut in Jean-Luc Godard's Prenom: Carmen in 1983, the film's other stars are mainly British. Golan said: "The British actors are the best in the world. It would have been incongruous to have American accents in the film. I have been very pleased with the stylish performances turned in by the British cast." Donald Pleasence adds another villain to his long list in the role of a sadistic Hungarian interrogator. David Warner plays an equally repellent Hungarian fascist official while Denholm Elliot plays the Jewish community leader. Golan says that residual Hungarian nervousness may stop the film being screened there when it is released in Europe next summer. But he says the Hungarian film authorities have proposed forging links with Cannon that might include joint productions and making use of Cannon's distribution network. "It's something we're studying very carefully," Golan added. "Anywhere else this film would have cost $15m to make, here the budget is $7m. I think opportunities are opening up in Eastern Europe and I believe that glasnost is unstoppable. There could be a very good future for western film makers in this part of the world." Time To Try Candles? First came the warnings about exposure to the sun. Now comes word that fluorescent light produces an array of ill effects. And your students may be the prime victims. Professor H. Wohlfarth of Canada's University of Alberta compared children studying under fluorescent lights with those working under "full-spectrum" lights. Wohlfahrt found that fluorescentlit students had more health-related absences, lower scores on tests of selfconfidence, higher rates of behavior problems... and more cavities. The professor's conclusion: you can't fool Mother Nature. Full-spectrum light that more closely resembles sunlight, is to your students' advantage. BŐRGYÓGYÁSZ J. Baral, M.D. Dermatologist \ mac varok '•/iu'« \/<>!calatara \z Amerikai Bőrgyógyász Szövetség diplomás tagja Bőr és nemibetegségek gyógyítása Hajátültetés • Bőrrák operáció Collagen injekció ráncok ellen AMERICAN DFRMATOLOGY CENTEK 2io Central Park South (5>)th Si. between Ah A ve and Broadway) Manhattan, NYC (212) 247-1700 . . i- .n a .«Ifi >t> iriitnW 1 Heroine for the whole world
