ACFNY SUPPORTED | BERNHARD HETZENAUER: AND THERE WAS FIRE IN THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
And There Was Fire in the Center of the Earth / Und in der Mitte der Erde war Feuer
The documentary film, Austria/Germany/Ecuador 2013, 78 min.
GERMAN AND SPANISH ORIGINAL VERSION WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Written, directed and produced by Bernhard Hetzenauer
Starring Vera Kohn
Script and production consultants: Wim Wenders, Pepe Danquart and Bernd Schoch
Funded by the HFBK Hamburg, Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, DAAD, Zukunftsfonds Austria, BMUKK, BmeiA, Land Steiermark
PRECEDED BY THE SHORT FILM THE MURAL, DIRECTED BY DANIELA MERINO, CO-PRESENTED WITH KATRA FILM SERIES & FOLLOWED BY A Q&A WITH FILMMAKER BERNHARD HETZENAUER
ABOUT THE FILM
Born in 1912 in Prague, Vera Kohn escaped Czechoslovakia a few months after Nazi Germany had invaded her country. In 1939 she made her way with her family to Ecuador where many Jews found refuge. Here she began a new life. After a career as a leading actress in Quito, she traveled to Europe because of a severe mental crisis to undergo psychotherapy with German Gestalt psychotherapist Karlfried Dürckheim. After three years of studying Dürckheim’s “Initiative Therapy,” Vera returned to Ecuador, where for many years she was a practicing psychologist and teacher of Zen Buddhism. This film tells Vera’s story, which the film’s director contrasts and merges with his personal questions of collective guilt and individual responsibility as he attempts to come to terms with his family’s legacy: his Austrian grandfather had been a member of the SS, the Nazi military corps.
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL:
Derived from an original initiative by María Amalia Viteri in Washington DC, brought to New York by Gabriel Roldós and the Consulate of Ecuador in New York, and fostered by Maravilla, the Ecuadorian Film Showcase brought to the New York community the very best of Ecuadorian Cinema for seven straight years, hosting some of the most recognized filmmakers from Ecuador, and creating a growing community of Ecuadorian film followers. The Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York, EFFNY, now in its second edition, continues with this tradition targeting an even bigger and more diverse audience.
Festival homepage: www.ecuadorianfilmfest.com
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Bernhard Hetzenauer (*Austria) is a filmmaker, visual artist, writer and curator. After participating in a directing workshop at the New York Film Academy, he graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Diploma in Media Arts) and the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg (MFA in Film), where he studied with German film directors Pepe Danquart and Wim Wenders. Hetzenauer also studied Gestalt therapy and humanistic psychology in Ecuador and Argentina. His award-winning films have been released theatrically and shown on TV, at film festivals and exhibitions in Europe, Asia and Latin America. In 2013 his book “Das Innen im Außen” (The Inside on the Outside) on Jacques Lacan’s concept of the gaze and filmmaker Béla Tarr’s visual language was published in Berlin. For his Oral History documentary film “And There Was Fire in the Center of the Earth” he received the Anni und Heinrich Sussmann Scholarship, the Theodor Körner Prize for Art and the Erasmus Euro Media Award in Vienna, as well as a DAAD Prize in Hamburg, the Hamburg Cultural Foundation’s HFBK Film Prize, the 2nd Jury Prize at the Visual Arts Biennial in Toluca/Mexico and the St. Petersburg Film Press Federation Diploma. Currently, he is working on a documentary project on the decline of the Greek health care system in Athens. He lives in German, Austria and Mexico.
VENUE
SYNDICATED BAR THEATER KITCHEN
40 Bogart St, Brooklyn, NY 11206
Ticket Price: $10 Single Ticket