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| FREE SCREENING |
| RETROSPECTIVE: 25th Anniversary Screening |
| Jacob the Liar (1974) |
| East Germany, 1974,
16mm, 101 minutes German with English subtitles Director: Frank Beyer Sunday, December 12, 2:30 pm Both screenings are SOLD OUT.
The Goethe-Institut
Washington |
| This is the 25th Anniversary presentation of the 1977 Oscar®-nominated East German original version of Jacob the Liar. Trapped in a Polish ghetto with thousands of other Jews facing starvation or deportation to the death camps, Jacob is detained one evening at Gestapo headquarters. Eavesdropping, he overhears a radio report about a nearby Russian victory. At first he is silent, but circumstances compel him to pass on the good news of hope. In order to be believed, he feigns access to a hidden, strictly forbidden radio. Quickly he becomes a one-man bulwark against despair, although he is ultimately powerless to see or change the fate of his people. The Oxford History of World Cinema says that, "Julien Becker’s Jacob the Liar broke with the tradition of the anti-fascist genre by treating the story of the Jews in a Nazi ghetto as a sentimental fairy tale." The film stars Vlastimil Brodsky as Jacob and Armin Mueller-Stahl (who also appears in the 1999 version) as Roman. |
Co-Sponsored
by |
Welcoming Remarks:
Sylvia Blume, Program Coordinator,
Goethe-Institut Washington
Distributed by
Goethe-Institut Munichhttp://www.goethe.de/eindex.htm
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This screen last updated 12/09/99 12:53 DJH