ONE SURVIVOR REMEMBERS, ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED: Oscar’s Docs

One film historian friend once (half-)jokingly suggested that the Academy should have a special Oscar category for Holocaust documentaries, as those seem to get nominated — and to win — an inordinate number of times. Two such documentaries, the 1995 Oscar-winners One Survivor Remembers and Anne Frank Remembered, will be screened as part of the series “Oscar's Docs, Part Four: Academy Award-Winning Documentaries 1988–1997” at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, November 10, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.

In the 39-minute (longish) documentary short subject One Survivor Remembers, which was co-produced by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Research Institute, Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein describes her six years as a victim of the Nazis. Oscar-winning producer-director Kary Antholis (right, with Weissmann Klein) and co-producer Michael Berenbaum will be on hand to take part in a post-screening discussion.

"There is a challenge to reviewing Holocaust recollections," wrote Jeff Silverman in Variety. "The stories themselves are so horrible, so moving and so powerful that attempts to stand in judgment are banal.

"Weissmann's is one such story, captured by HBO to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. It's a beautiful story, filled with hope and triumph and an ending that soars beyond imagination."

The documentary feature Anne Frank Remembered chronicles the brief life of the German-born Jewish girl whose diary became a worldwide bestseller. The evening will feature an onstage discussion with Oscar-winning producer-director Jon Blair (top photo, with Miep Gies, the Dutchwoman who helped to hide Frank and her family).

"As much a Holocaust saga as a biographical portrait," wrote Edward Guthmann in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Anne Frank Remembered frames its young subject in a world gone unbelievably mad, and demonstrates the tragedy of millions through her example. Anne's story, Blair asserts through narrator Kenneth Branagh, 'is just as fresh today as 50 years ago.'"

(I've been to Anne Frank's hiding place in Amsterdam. While there, I remember wondering what she would have thought of her sanctuary being transformed into a tourist attraction, overflowing with loud idiots with no understanding of — or concern about — what transpired in that small attic.)

“Oscar's Docs” is a comprehensive screening series of every short subject and feature to win the Academy Award for documentary filmmaking since the category was established in 1941. The retrospective is supposed to feature the best available prints – often newly struck or restored editions from the documentary collection of the Academy Film Archive.

Tickets to each “Oscar's Docs” screenings are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID.

Tickets are available for purchase by mail, online at www.oscars.org, or in person at the Academy box office at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard during regular business hours. Doors open one hour prior to the start of the event. All seating is unreserved.

The Linwood Dunn Theater is located at 1313 Vine Street in Hollywood. Free parking is available through the entrance on Homewood Avenue (one block north of Fountain Avenue).

For additional information, visit www.oscars.org or call (310) 247-3600.

Photos: Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library

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