Events

Playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie and filmmaker Edith Goldenhar share their family histories in a virtual conversation about refugees and saviors in WW2 and today, featuring Edith’s documentary, Return to Calais, and Jean-Claude’s World War II memoir. Q&A will follow.

man and girl walking city street

A still from “Return to Calais”— Before the war, Paulette Szafran and her father Charles in Brussels. – Black Maria Film Festival Global Insights Award for Documentary 2020 – by filmmaker Edith Goldenhar, NY, NY. Photo courtesy of Edith Goldenhar.

These long-time friends join together for a 1-hour program, starting with Edith’s film Return to Calais and followed by Jean-Claude’s vivid reminiscences of his refugee flight as a young child. He and Edith will honor their saviors – a person in power and an ordinary citizen – and speak to the current refugee crisis, sharpened by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a time when the world is told to “shelter in place” and “stay at home,” what about refugees, who have no shelter or place to call home? The messages of Jean-Claude’s memoir and Edith’s film are as true now as in 1940. Empathy connects the dots of displacement, across generations and geography.

Presented by the Shantigar Foundation and the Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival in partnership with the Lewis Center for the Arts.

This virtual event hosted on Zoom is free and open to all. Please pre-register online at the Shantigar Foundation: www.shantigar.org/refugees-and-saviors

ABOUT the program

Jean-Claude van Itallie was born in Brussels in 1936. He was 3 years old on May 10, 1940, when Germany invaded Belgium. The van Itallie family immediately fled, eventually arriving in New York, thanks to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the courageous Portuguese consul whose visas saved many Jewish refugees. Jean-Claude grew up on suburban Long Island, graduated Harvard in 1958, and in the sixties was a seminal force in the explosive New York Off-Broadway theater. His acclaimed anti-Viet Nam war play, America Hurrah, Three Views of the USA was the watershed dramatic event of the era. An inspired teacher, van Itallie has taught playwriting and performance at Princeton, NYU, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Columbia, Middlebury, U of Colorado, Naropa, Esalen, Omega, NY Open Center, Shantigar, and more. 

Edith Goldenhar’s mother Paulette Szafran was 12 years old when she fled Brussels with thousands of other refugees. Stranded in Calais, she and her family were saved from the catastrophic bombings by a kind stranger, Madame Ducatel. In her short film, Return to Calais, Edith follows Paulette’s wartime diary to Calais and meets with today’s refugees and volunteers.

This program is hosted by Shantigar Foundation, founded by Jean-Claude van Itallie on his old farm in Western Massachusetts. Shantigar offers transformative workshops, performances, and retreats. Joining meditative and creative practices with the healing power of nature, Shantigar nourishes and fortifies individuals and groups dedicated to creating a more peaceful planet. For more information about Shantigar’s current online offerings, please visit www.shantigar.org

Return to Calais is screening online with the Thomas Edison Black Maria Virtual Film Festival 2020 as the proud recipient of the festival’s Global Insights Jury Citation Award. The Black Maria Film Festival is an international juried competition, celebrating the diversity, invention, and vitality of the short film, including those which shine a light on issues and struggles in contemporary society. The festival is screening online in collaboration with the Hoboken Historical Museum and is free to the public. For more information and to view this year’s diverse offerings: www.blackmariafilmfestival.org

'return to calais' trailer

ABOUT the artists

jean sitting on rock bench in forest

Playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie. Photo courtesy of Michael Schreiber.

JEAN-CLAUDE VAN ITALLIE is an American playwright acclaimed as a generative force in the explosive Off-Broadway theatre of the 1960’s. In addition to the anti-war trilogy America Hurrah, he is acclaimed for The Serpent with the Open Theater, Tibetan Book of the Dead or How Not to Do It Again, Bag Lady, The Traveler, Light, Struck Dumb with Joseph Chaikin, The Fat Lady Sings, and translations of Chekhov’s major plays and Genet’s The Balcony. He is author of The Playwright’s Workbook and founder of the Shantigar Foundation in western Massachusetts.

 

 

 


edith in white shirt and black vest

Filmmaker Edith Goldenhar. Photo courtesy of Jody Christopherson

EDITH GOLDENHAR is a writer and strategist whose work bridges social justice and the arts. She has published on many topics for books, journals, public radio, and foundations. She is the screenwriter and co-director of Return to Calais, a short documentary which first screened in London and Manchester during the UK’s Refugee Week in June 2019 and has toured the festival circuit in the US and abroad. She lives in the vibrant immigrant neighborhood of Jackson Heights, NY. Her gifted co-directors Noah Benezra and Joseph Tuzzolino are Brooklyn-based filmmakers and editors.

Presented By

  • Lewis Center for the Arts
  • Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium
  • Shantigar Foundation

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