ZGram - 03/06/2003 - "Prisoner of Paradise"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

March 6, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Before I forget - there is a new news service that might be of 
interest to you.  I haven't yet had a chance to check it out myself, 
and I invite your comments.  Here is the information:

AlterMedia is  proud to announce AlterMedia Canada. The new Canadian 
news site is in English and in French and is updated very regularly.

http://ca.altermedia.info/

AlterMedia is a free news service which relies on the work of 
volunteers. If you wish to be part of AlterMedia, tell me more about 
you and your motivations, I'll send you a user name and a passwords 
so you can post your own news.

The AlterMedia team wishes to express its support to Mr. Zundel. We 
neither condone nor condemn what Mr. Zundel says, but we believe that 
freedom of speech should also apply to people who disagree with the 
official version of history.

***********************************************
If you feel the traditional media lies to you, if you find that is 
biased against Europeans, Euro-American and people of European 
descent, if you would like to give your version of the truth but the 
so called open (leftist) media censor your comments, be part of the 
growing AlterMedia community. If you want to inform people of your 
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AlterMedia WebMaster
contact@altermedia.info

AlterMedia U.S.A : http://us.altermedia.info
AlterMedia France : http://fr.altermedia.info
AlterMedia Belgium : http://be.altermedia.info
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=====

Next leaf:

I had a chance to talk a bit longer yesterday to Ernst, and also 
received the first letter from the Canadian Detention Facility where 
he is still held in Maximum Lockup - ostensibly because he is a 
"flight risk" but in reality to keep him from talking to media.  He 
told me he felt "very calm inside", and that he looks forward to 
"taking a strip out of CSIS" if and when those barbaric hearings 
commence.

I read the transcript yesterday of his first immigration interview 
regarding his asylum claim and/or his landed immigrant status - what 
a phony issue to drag up by the hairs that he should be a "security 
risk" - not for what he has ever done or even MIGHT do in the future, 
but for what somebody else might do who comes into contact with him!

Threadbare is all I can say!

There are a few small light beams emerging from the Zundel-Saga, but 
I would rather wait until things are firmed up and the direction is 
clearer.  I talked at length to various people last night and had 
some feedback regarding the Wiesenthaler's back-pedalling on the 
German arrest warrant, for which they have lobbied for years - and 
the concensus is that Jews world-wide, and the Canadian Jews 
specifically, are extremely jittery at this point, what with all the 
anger buidling to almost critical mass about the looming Iraq war 
that no one wants, it seems, except the Zionists.  Those folks don't 
need another spotlight on Ernst Zundel's claim that all those 
gruelling "gassing stories" of the Jews in Germany just do not meet 
the test of truth for verifiable scientific reasons.

Besides, were concentration camps really that bad?  I personally 
never was in a concentration camp, but I can tell you that it was no 
picnic either being outside.  Hasn't Ernst argued for years, perhaps 
decades, that the German concentration camps, put into service at a 
time of mortal national crisis to neutralize people perceived as a 
danger and a menace to their struggle, were NOT the murderfactories 
the Holocaust Lobby has claimed?

Was there not a swimming pool for detainees?  Didn't inmates have art 
lessens, musicals, their own script money, sanitary hospitals where 
3,000 babies were born, not one of which was harmed at birth?  Didn't 
they even have - get this!  It upsets me, prude that I am! - a 
brothel?

So what do you say to the newest artistic development below?

To mind comes a vignette that fits - that has become a standard joke 
between Ernst and myself as we are battling the censors.  When Ernst 
was still living in Toronto, he would take much of his printing to a 
Chinese-run print shop.  The owner, who was very fold of Ernst, would 
always greet Ernst with the widest grin and ask:  "More plopaganda 
for the Fuehrer?"

Look at the movie review below.  More "plopaganda" for the Holocaust?

[Start]

In the name of art

By Matthew Hays

Toronto Globe and Mail | March 6, 2003

Montreal - You'd think there would be some opportunities to see the
feature-length Prisoner of Paradise, Canada's contender for the
best-documentary Oscar. But unless you live in the Toronto suburb of North
York, you won't have a chance to catch its Canadian premiere.

That's because the film's distributor has opted to release the film in but
one Canadian cinema, the relatively obscure Empress Walk Theatre. For the
filmmakers, this is undoubtedly a bitter pill to swallow. Their film has
become the surprise nod in a field of candidates that includes Michael
Moore's Bowling for Columbine.

Montreal-based Malcolm Clarke, co-director of the film, has difficulty
concealing his disappointment about its limited release. "You'd have to ask
the distributor about that," he says evasively.

Jim Sherry, executive vice-president and general manager of Alliance
Atlantis, says the single-cinema opening is not a slight against the film,
but rather a measured approach to distribution. Sherry says he and the
Alliance Atlantis team were thrilled with the nominations of both Prisoner
of Paradise and Bowling for Columbine, which the corporation also produced.

"Prisoner of Paradise is a film which has gotten an extreme push from the
Academy Award nomination," he says. "In response to that, we've actually
rushed to get the film to market prematurely. If the film performs strongly
enough in Toronto, we obviously will look to take that momentum and push it
into Vancouver and Montreal."

Prisoner of Paradise recounts the story of Kurt Gerron, a popular German
Jewish actor who found himself making a Nazi propaganda film in order to
survive. The documentary was made for both PBS and BBC broadcast. Sherry
says that since the film was made for TV, there weren't any prints ready
for big-screen distribution. Thus the film will be projected from a DVD in
North York.

Clarke says he was as surprised as anyone by the Oscar nod. While Holocaust
documentaries appear to please the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences (Anne Frank Remembered, The Last Days and Into the Arms of
Strangers have all won Oscar nods), Clarke says that if anything, he feared
"Holocaust fatigue."

"I assume most people are so damn sick of hearing about it," says Clarke,
who has already received one Oscar nomination and an Oscar win (for
Soldiers in Hiding and You Don't Have to Die , respectively). "There's
often a degree of iridency about discussions surrounding it. No, I wouldn't
have thought a Holocaust-related documentary would necessarily have an edge."

What did grab Clarke and co-director Stuart Sender (an Emmy Award-winning
documentarian) was the moral ambiguity surrounding Kurt Gerron, something
that struck them when Montreal filmmaker Jamie Gilcig presented them with
Gerron's life story as a movie idea.

Gerron was a household name in Germany when the Nazis ascended to power, a
theatrical actor who had broken into films and made a number of memorable
appearances, most notably with Marlene Dietrich in her star-making turn,
The Blue Angel. Gerron had also taken to the director's chair, making a
series of entertaining films that were a hit with German audiences.
Gerron's story then takes on dimensions universal to Jews in Germany (and
throughout most of Europe) at that time: rights stripped away, employment
terminated, and ultimately, interned in a camp.

In Gerron's case, he was detained at Theresienstadt (or Terezin), a camp
near Prague where the Nazis sent Jewish intellectuals, artists, musicians
and religious leaders. What happened to Gerron then is far from universal
and forms the crux of Prisoner of Paradise. The artist was made an offer he
couldn't refuse: make a propaganda film that makes the concentration camps
look like beautiful oases, Gerron was told, and his life would be spared.

(The Nazis, of course, weren't so famous for keeping their promises,
particularly those made to Jews. It wouldn't be giving anything away to say
the film doesn't have a happy ending.)

The result was The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews , a horrifying, surreal
film in which the camps are made out to be luxurious bastions of promising,
happy family life. Everyone appears well fed and content - intended to
stand in stark contrast to the bad rap Hitler's regime was gaining
interna-tionally as word of the genocide slowly spread. In effect, Gerron,
himself a persecuted Jew, was forced to put a Nazi PR spin on the
Holocaust. Though much of the film was destroyed, parts were resurrected
and Sender and Clarke spent time piecing together as much of it as they
could. "I couldn't quite believe it when we watched it," Clarke says.

Though the story does involve the Holocaust, Clarke points out that the
film has a morally ambiguous figure at its centre, something that's not
part of most films on the subject. Like The Grey Zone , Tim Blake Nelson's
recent dramatic film about camp detainees at Auschwitz, Prisoner of
Paradise examines levels of complicity in the genocide, meditating on the
excruciating choices offered to Jews who negotiated with the Nazis in a
desperate effort to survive. "I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same
thing had I been Gerron," Clarke says. "The film makes us think about how
heroic we really would be as opposed to how we'd like to think we'd behave
under very difficult conditions."

And if Gerron's uncertain place in the moral universe made him all the more
attractive to Clarke and Sender, it didn't make funding come any easier.
Clarke says they scored a coup early on when they presented a treatment of
the film to Steven Spielberg, who promptly "flipped out," says Clarke,
writing them a cheque for $100,000 (U.S.) of seed money. "He was like, what
a brilliant idea." With that name behind them, you'd think the rest of the
funding would simply fall into place.

"But you'd be wrong," corrects Clarke. Instead, he says, "no one really
wanted to support a film about a sort of traitor. We thought it would have
been relatively easy. And with a saint it would have been. But Gerron was
not a hero. When he accepted the gig from the Nazis, he hadn't directed a
film in seven years and he was desperate to. Only this time, the National
Socialist Party was the studio. I think people hated him all the more
because he made such a good film. He pissed off a lot of people, who said
he should have taken a bullet instead - which is something many people did,
of course."

Clarke points out that the nature of Gerron's character and his actions
lend Prisoner of Paradise an openendedness that makes the film all the more
fascinating and open to interpretation. "It's great to see how the film has
been received. I think we've made a really solid documentary. I just want
as many people to see it as possible."

[END]

(Source: 
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030305.wpara0503/BNStory/En
tertainment )