2014 OSCAR-WINNING FILMMAKER TO SPEAK IN EAST QUAD, NOVEMBER 10
Malcolm Clarke, a filmmaker who won an Oscar in this year’s Academy Awards, will screen and discuss two of his award-winning documentaries--Prisoner of Paradise and The Lady in Number 6--on Monday, November 10, 2014, in the Keene Theater, East Quad, 701 East University Avenue, at 5 pm (Prisoner) and 8 pm (Lady). There will be a reception at 7:15 pm. Admission is free to screenings and reception. Both films are scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of Kristallnact, the 1938 November Pogrom, and both concern the complex roles of art in complicity and resistance during the Holocaust. For information contact Henry Greenspan at hgreensp@umich.edu.
At 5:00 pm, Clarke will screen and discuss Prisoner of Paradise, which tells the story of Kurt Gerron, a German Jewish cabaret star whose credits include singing the original “Mack the Knife” in Brecht’s Three Penny Opera and co-starring with Marlene Dietrich in “The Blue Angel.” Gerron was eventually imprisoned in Theresienstadt and "commissioned" to direct the infamous Nazi propaganda film depicting the camp as a "Jewish paradise.”
At 8:00 p.m, Clarke will screen and discuss The Lady in Number 6, which features Alice Herz-Sommer, a concert pianist who was able to perform throughout her own imprisonment in Theresienstadt—a fact to which she attributes her survival. She died at age 109, just before Lady won the 2014 Oscar for best short documentary.
Sponsors include The Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, The Sheldon Cohn Fund in U-M Department of Screen Arts & Cultures, U-M Department of History, U-M Department of German Languages and Literatures, U-M School of Music, Theater and Dance and U-M Residential College

"Prisoner" screening and discussion 5-7:15pm; "Lady" screening and discussion 8-10