section KINO FERMISHED

The Illegals

Meyer Levin
PS/IL
1950 (2019 restauriert)
77

Jewish refugees attempt to illegally enter Palestine immediately after the Second World War: This unique film is at once a feature film and historical resource, depicting as it does the immediate postwar period and the drama of escape. The refugee treks across the Alps, as well as the sea crossings, take the form of documentary footage from 1947.

At the end of 1947, American war correspondent and author Meyer Levin shot this docudrama while accompanying groups of Jewish refugees illegally undertaking the difficult and dangerous journey from the DP camps in Germany to Palestine. They crossed the Alps on foot and arrived in Palestine on the overcrowded ship The Unafraid. Levin complemented his documentary images with a fictional subplot featuring a young couple, Sara and Mika Wilner. Sara is played by his wife, Tereska Torres, who later recorded her observations and impressions of the filming in a diary published by the Jewish Museum Berlin in 2004.

Supporting film: REMINESZENZEN AUS DEUTSCHLAND (Jonas Mekas, US/LT 2012, 21 min)

Part of a Matineé in cooperation with Centrum Judaicum

On May 8, we present a matinee programme in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. This day marks not only the defeat of Nazi Germany, but also the beginning of the immediate postwar years, marked as they were by mass migration, upheaval, and radical change. This programme is dedicated to these events.

The event is the last in a joint series with the Centrum Judaicum. On its conclusion, a discussion is to take place featuring Knut Elstermann and Lea Wohl von Haselberg.
Language: German

Credits

original title The Illegals

international title The Illegals

german title The Illegals

JFBB section KINO FERMISHED

director Meyer Levin

country/countries PS/IL

year 1950 (2019 restauriert)

duration 77

Meyer Levin

BIO Born on October 5, 1905 in Chicago, Illinois; died on July 9, 1981 in Jerusalem) was an American writer and journalist. His extensive oeuvre ranges from socially critical, historical and documentary novels to fictional and non-fictional works about Judaism, Israel and the Holocaust. Literary scholars view his 16 novels primarily in the context of proletarian American literature of the 1930s and Jewish-American literature of the 20th century. After 1955, Levin was involved in a long-running legal dispute over a stage adaptation he had written of Anne Frank's diary, which has been the subject of several studies.

Credits

performances