Yizkor
dir. Ruth Fertig
University of Texas at Austin, USA
Synopsis:
Director Ruth Fertig’s grandparents survived the Holocaust but never talked about it. Years after both of their deaths, she discovered a memoir her grandmother had written in the last years of her life and finally learned their story. Yizkor uses Fertig’s grandmother’s own words, along with animation, archival material, and present-day Super 8 footage, to tell that story, one of survival and resilience in the face of crushing loss.
Director:
Ruth Fertig is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on everyday people with extraordinary stories. Her most recent film, Yizkor, is about her grandmother’s experience during the Holocaust. It won the Student Academy Award for documentary as well as a CINE Golden Eagle Award and several film festival honors. Her previous film, Two Spirits, is a portrait of Joey Criddle as a Native American gay rights activist, community leader and father. The film is distributed by Frameline, the United States’ leading distributor of LGBT films, and aired on PBS stations and Free Speech TV. Her first film, The Cockroach Project, explores what makes one person’s phobia another person’s passion. It premiered on the Documentary Channel in 2010. Her work has screened internationally, including in the London International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Before directing her own films, Ruth was an associate producer and researcher of documentaries for film and television. She has worked with Cabin Creek Films, Actual Reality Pictures, Propeller Films and Braverman Productions, among others, on programs for ABC, NBC, the History Channel, A&E, Discovery, Animal Planet and the Disney Channel.
Ruth has an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Hutchison Endowed Fellow, and a B.A. in History from Columbia University.