Author Archives: basiltsiokos

Coming to HBO this Monday, April 8: 50 CHILDREN: THE RESCUE MISSION OF MR & MRS KRAUS

Steven Pressman’s film about a Jewish American couple’s heroic efforts has previously screened, under its earlier title, TO SAVE A LIFE, as part of the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival’s New Filmmaker Weekend. It makes its official debut via HBO Documentary Films, in commemoration of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus were an affluent, secular Jewish couple from Philadelphia who managed to navigate a series of bureaucratic hurdles to rescue fifty Jewish children from Austria in the Spring of 1939. Narration by Alan Alda and Eleanor’s enacted journal entries detail the particulars, aided by interviews with Kraus offspring and the surviving rescued children: In the early days of the European conflict, before America was at war, Jews were permitted to leave Nazi controlled areas – but rampant anti-Semitism meant that they typically had few options for asylum, with strict quotas preventing many from entering the US and other European nations. Hearing of the Kindertransport that saved many Jewish children’s lives, the Krauses wondered if they could help establish foster families for other Jewish youths. Learning that some visas issued to Austrians went unclaimed after the Anschluss, they hatched a plan to allot those visas to fifty children, provided they could secure foster families in Philadelphia and the permission of children’s parents in Vienna, who they visited in the heart of Nazi territory, at the risk of their own safety – in the end saving not only the children, but in many cases later enabling their parents to join them, avoiding the Holocaust. The story will be perhaps most revelatory for some audiences in its underlining of how many more lives could have been saved were it not for the discriminatory policies that literally left Jewish people with nowhere to go. Despite being largely conventional in approach and structure, and drowning in narration and journal recitals, Pressman’s film is often affecting, telling a little-known story of determination, samaritanship, and sacrifice in more than challenging circumstances.

Coming to EPIX today, Wednesday, April 3: LUNARCY!

Simon Ennis’ survey of moon-obsessives had its world premiere at Toronto last year. It’s gone on to screen at Calgary, Vancouver, Global Visions, and SXSW, among other fests.

As signaled by Ennis’ deliberately hyperbolic title (though awkward and redundant – LUNACY! would have been just as effective instead of the punny neologism), his film is meant to be fun. For the most part, it succeeds in this goal, taking a generally light approach in its profile of several men who have the moon on their minds – from Christopher, the key subject, who lobbies for lunar colonization, and Peter, who’s been publishing a speculative guide to life on the moon for over twenty years, to Dennis, the shady real estate entrepreneur who sells deeds to parcels of lunar property, and Alan, a former astronaut who uses moondust in his space-themed paintings. These characters, to varying degrees, inspire sympathy or incredulity, and are just quirky enough to engage the viewer’s attention and curiosity without delving too deeply. It’s an enjoyable film with a simple premise, and is, like its subjects, relatively harmless – even Dennis only makes about $20 per plot from his suspect business – but for these reasons, it’s also unlikely to rank as an indelible portrait of obsession for most audiences.