Director Orson Welles once said of Jack Garfein, who passed away in 2019, that "if Jack Garfein hadn't existed, Hollywood would have invented him”. In this film by the French director, screenwriter and producer Tessa Louise-Salomé, Garfein has his say. Film excerpts, photographs and interviews with film experts, actors, family and friends bear testimony to a youth in what was then Czechoslovakia, his escape from the Nazis, the eleven concentration camps he survived, his arrival in the USA, his first theatre and film projects and his time in Hollywood. Narrated by award-winning actor Willem Dafoe, this moving film portrays a controversial filmmaker, one who was often ahead of his time, taught legendary actors like James Dean at the famous New York Actors Studio and, together with Lee Strasberg, the founder of method acting, co-founded the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute.
Text: Stefanie Borowsky
English: Peter Rickerby
Presented by the Claims Conference.
On 16.6. at 17:00 at Filmkunst66 Tessa Louise-Salomé, director, and Helene Pivette, former assistant to Jack Garfein, will be present for a film talk after the film.
On 17.6. at 19:00 at Bundesplatz Kino Tessa Louise-Salomé (director), Gael Rakotondrabe (Composer), Katja Hoerstmann (Studio Babelsberg) and Abigail Prade (Claims Conference USA) will be present for a film talk after the film.