The Metamorphosis of the Good Neighbor

Screening Schedule

Nov 24 (Sat.) 20:00 at Yokogawa Cinema

See Time Table

Details

©Peter Nestler

＜Story＞
Thomas Blatt, sent to the Sobibor extermination camp in Eastern Poland in 1943 when he was 15, is one of the 53 people who experienced the Sobibor uprising and lived to tell about it. He visits present day Poland and the site of the camp while talking about the situation at the time. He speaks calmly with no dramatizing, just laying out the facts of the matter. One could call this film the antithesis of Claude Lanzmann’s Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001).

＜Staff＞Director：Peter Nestler

Year of production: 2002
Running time: 84’
Country: Germany

Director

Peter Nestler
Born on June 1, 1937 in Freiburg, Germany. Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, while also appearing in films and on television as an actor.
His first work as a director was the documentary short By the Dike Sluice, produced in 1961–1962. After that, he remained active as a TV actor, using the income to finance further documentary shorts. His style, characterized by the poetic technique of combining distant shots with historical photographs and illustrations, was not understood by contemporary critics. Before long, German TV stations stopped commissioning documentaries from him, and at the end of 1966, he relocated to Sweden, the home country of his mother. He soon found a job making children’s programs for a Swedish television station. In between those, he produced critical documentaries that engaged with history and society. From late 1980s onwards, he would once again start getting requests from German TV stations. This resulted in works on a variety of themes such as life of Jewish people during the Nazi period, customs and history of Native Americans in South America, or Hungarian artists.
Presently living in Stockholm, Nestler is considered the leading documentary filmmaker in Europe.