The Walnut Tree

A film by Elida Schogt

2000 | 11 minutes | Color | 16mm/DVD | Order No. 01722

Available only as part of Elida Schogt Trilogy.

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SYNOPSIS

Through a striking combination of documentary and experimental approaches, THE WALNUT TREE examines Holocaust memory, the family, and the role of photography in history. As its point of departure, the film shows three girls in Dutch costumes posing for their father's camera. This sweet but fleeting moment, made static in a snapshot, is contrasted with live-action images of railway tracks--tracks that carried the death transports--now blurred by the passage of time. Fragments of an interrupted childhood emerge in the matter-of-fact narration by the filmmaker's mother, recounting the fate of the family's photo album, her parents' walnut tree, and her final memories of her mother and father in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. A follow-up to her award-winning ZYKLON PORTRAIT, Elida Schogt's latest film is an eloquent mediation on survival and the stories called forth from within and beyond the frame.

PRESS

“Elida Schogt brings craft back to the art of filmmaking; this non-sentimental film on family history and the Holocaust achieves more in 11 minutes than many six-hour epics on similar topics. The director makes every frame count.”

Elaine Charnov Margaret Mead Film Festival

“Schogt returns to the well of her family's experience of the Holocaust, and finds elegant, elegiac use both for archive images and for the moments that were never captured.

Cameron Bailey NOW Magazine

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Toronto Festival of Festivals
  • Margaret Mead Film Festival
  • WYBE Through the Lens Series

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Elida Schogt

Elida Schogt is a Toronto-based filmmaker and media artist whose work mines personal experience, challenges story-telling conventions and questions power systems.

Best known for her innovative visual treatment of the collapse of representation in Zyklon Portrait, her internationally-acclaimed short documentary on Holocaust memory, her films have screened at festivals around the world.

She holds an MA in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research, New York and a practice-based PhD in Visual Arts from York University, Toronto. She is currently working on a memoir. (07/19)

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Elida Schogt Trilogy

Elida Schogt’s deeply personal trilogy of short documentaries on Holocaust memory: ZYKLON PORTRAIT (1999), THE WALNUT TREE (2000) and SILENT SONG (2001) have been screened around the globe, garnering numerous awards. This trilogy includes: ZYKLON PORTRAIT, a Holocaust film without Holocaust imagery that combines archival instructional films with family snapshots, home movies, underwater photography, and hand-painted imagery for an expressive exploration of how history and memory are related to one family's loss. THE WALNUT TREE examines Holocaust memory, the family, and the role of photography in history through a striking combination of documentary and experimental approaches. As its point of departure, the film shows three girls in Dutch costumes posing for their father's camera. This sweet but fleeting moment, made static in a snapshot, is contrasted with live-action images of railway tracks--tracks that carried the death transports--now blurred by the passage of time. “In SILENT SONG Schogt deftly conjures an elaborate dialogue around issues of memory in its various forms - personal, historical, filmic… [her] rich and nuanced economy of style is brilliantly illustrated here as these meditations lead to the most basic, yet most cogent statements on the nature of memory itself. Perhaps more importantly, Schogt points to the unstable nature of the recorded image, one that history has come to rely on.” - Barbara Goslawski, Independent Film Critic and Curator, Toronto
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Silent Song

Available only as part of Elida Schogt Trilogy.
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Zyklon Portrait

Elida Schogt's moving portrait of her family's experience during the Holocaust. Available only as part of Elida Schogt Trilogy.
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