Vishniac

Florida Premiere

Director Laura Bialis (Rock in the Red Zone, MJFF 2016) and producers Nancy Spielberg & Roberta Grossman (MJFF Audience Award winners Above and Beyond and Who Will Write Our History) take us on a journey through the various chapters in the life of Jewish artist Roman Vishniac, one of the world’s greatest photographers. From the cosmopolitan streets of pre-war Berlin to the shtetls in Poland and Lithuania to the Princeton offices of Albert Einstein, Vishniac takes viewers on a breathtaking journey, through the lens of one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century.

Best known for capturing images of pre-Holocaust Jewish life and culture in Central and Eastern Europe from 1935 through 1938 in an effort to raise funds for impoverished Jewish communities, his astonishing portfolio inadvertently became the last visual record of an entire vanished time, place, and people. An uncannily revealing portrait of a major artist, this captivating film seamlessly weaves together many of Vishniac’s 30,000 images, his writings, general archival footage, and rare interviews with historians and Vishniac's relatives. Beautifully realized dramatic reenactments filmed on location in Poland bring to life the world in which he worked and detail his dramatic story and bigger-than-life personality. Through his stunning images, Vishniac unveils a lost world that is quickly fading from our grasp.