Fighter
Directed by Amir Bar-Lev

Best Documentary, Newport International Film Festival
Best Documentary, Galway International Film Festival
Best Documentary, (Audience Prize), Hamptons International Film Festival
Special Jury Citation, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

"An intimate collection of postwar memories, 'Fighter' is a powerful, heartfelt and funny documentary. Director Amir Bar-Lev's feature debut gracefully… provides many uplifting moments that will touch even the most cynical viewer!"
-- Michael Speier Variety

A psychological adventure unfolds as two friends take a risky road trip into the past. Together they revisit scenes of romance and humor, of narrow escapes and life-or-death confrontations. But their journey home becomes a contentious clash of personalities that will ultimately take their friendship to the brink of collapse.

Two unconventional 70-year olds, Arnost Lustig and Jan Wiener, set out to revisit the Europe of their childhoods. But the two friends are only partially right: the trip will take take them on an original and unorthodox exploration of the Holocaust, revealing moments of joie de vivre, fighting spirit, romance and humor. It is, however, not nearly as pleasant a journey as they had expected.

Beginning as an historical biography, Fighter becomes a psychological drama as the trip becomes a contentious clash of ideologies, personalities, and life paths. By the time the two pack their bags and draw a premature end to their roadtrip, our filming, and their relationship, what has emerged is a portrait of the century's most dramatic events- recounted not through dry historical facts, but through an unlikely friendship brought to the brink of collapse.

By combining spontaneous action with reflective conversations and historical films, Fighter weaves a complex portrait linking the two compelling subjects with the breathtaking stories of their youths. Here are the untold stories of the era: playing soccer while waiting to be gassed in Auschwitz, losing one's virginity the night before a transport to the camps, running towards the front rather than away from it in the fervent desire to fight Hitler. In making Fighter, the filmmakers gained access to a trove of rare archival footage, never before seen by Western audiences, from eerily familiar footage of the 1942 bombing of Yugoslavia, with columns of refugees fleeing the violence, to kitsch Socialist musicals staged in technicolor power plants. Fighter is being distributed by First Run Features.

Amir Bar-Lev

Amir Bar-Lev graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1994, majoring in film and comparative mysticism. Amir also studied film production at FAMU, the Prague Film Academy. Fighter, Bar-Lev's feature-length debut, has garnered awards at The Newport International Film Festival, Galway International Film Fleadh, and Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Amir is currently directing and screenwriting in Los Angeles, CA.

Daybreak Berlin
Directed by Laura Bialis

Based on Ilse-Margret Vogel's harrowing World War II memoir Bad Times, Good Friends, Daybreak Berlin tells the true story of Ilse's physical and psychological survival on the day Berlin fell.

Part of a tight-knit circle of German intellectuals and pacifists who strongly opposed the Nazis, Ilse defiantly remained in Berlin throughout the war, quietly subverting Hitler's regime. On May 1, 1945, when Russians troops finally burst through Berlin's Brandenburg gate, Ilse comes face-to-face with the Brutality of the "liberators" for whom she has waited so long. Hopeless, suicidal and alone, Ilse must find the psychological strength to endure one last day - the last day of the century's greatest war.

Laura Bialis

After graduating from Stanford University, Laura Bialis entered the USC School of Cinema-Television's Master of Fine Arts Program in Film Production. Among the films she made her first year was Attitude, a short documentary about thirteen year-old musician and athlete Tyler Dumm, who is blind and disabled. Attitude captured, in a very honest way, Tyler's energy, creativity and personality - and serendipitously introduced Laura to the documentary genre. The film was honored later that year at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

TAK FOR ALT: Survival of a Human Spirit, grew directly from her experiences with Attitudes. Winner of numerous awards for documentary film, TAK FOR ALT recounts the true life story of holocaust survivor Judy Meisel. Poignant and heartbreaking, the film recounts Meisel's painful experience of being taken from her childhood home in a small Lithuanian village to a ghetto in Kaunas, a 12 hour-a-day stint as a laborer in a German boot factory, and ultimately to the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland which was the last time she would see her mother alive. After her liberation and recuperation in Denmark, she would move to the United States where she was an active player in the civil rights movement. Following an attack on an African-American family that had moved into her neighborhood, she resolutely defended the undeserving victims, and has continued to speak out against bigotry and racism ever since. There have been a handful of leaders who have championed either civil, equal or human rights, but few have fought for all three. TAK FOR ALT received awards from the National Educational Media Network, the Judah Magnes Museum Jewish Video Competition (first prize for Holocaust remembrance), and the Vermont International Film Festival (first place), and had a run at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills as part of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, which qualified it for Oscar consideration. American Public Television has acquired the film for syndication to public television stations nationwide, and it was shown on the Danish Television Network. Currently the company Laura founded to produce the film, Sirena Films, distributes the film to schools and educators across the country.

Laura plans to parlay her experiences in narrative and documentary production into a career as a director and producer. Above all, history still casts its spell over her and she continues to look to the past for lessons for the future. She has just finished production on her first narrative film, Daybreak Berlin, which is the first of many historically based stories Laura hopes to bring to life for a new generation of audiences.

The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies are co-sponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. This event is also cosponsored by the Anti-Defamation League and put on in partnership with the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation.