Gold

Gertrude Pollitt: Her Holocaust Story

Deerfield

Documentary

Entry Description

A Holocaust survivor recounts her story and continues to help others in need as a practicing psychologist.

Judge 1

Positives: The mixture between the soundtrack, the photos and her story was down very well. The content was excellent.

Improvements: The movie could have been longer. Perhaps to hear about how she helped heal people's wounds would have been good.

Judge 2

Positives: This was very personal, and I felt it. What was really nice was how coherent the storyline was. It was very clear from the beginning when it showed the "shoah" holocaust and had information about it before the interview began. The Editing was really superb. This was very documentary style. The scenes nicely moved from actual holocaust footage, to scenes from the war (although I'm not sure it would have been color film in 1940s, I think that clip was from the 60s when someone went back), and back to the lady. What made it more personal was that it was conducted in her own residence. When she spoke, the video cut away to the camps and showed a letter when she spoke about a letter. Nice touch.

Improvements: It would have helped to find actual footage of Theringienstadt camp and used that in your footage. It's easy to find photographs of the shoah online, but what can make something powerful is combining the information the lady spoke about to actual places. I've been to Buchenwald, if someone showed me a documentary that spoke about it, I would expect to see it. Giving credit. Give credit to all of the resources you used. If you used photographs it would be nice to see where you got them. If I googled for it or went to yadvashem.org, I should be able to find the photographs.

Judge 3

Positives: Creative and compelling message. Good support.

Improvements: Nothing.