Screenings: Searching for the Peach Orchard

Friday 19.04.07 at 20:30

Searching for the Peach Orchard - a documentary-poetic film.
Screening with the filmmaker, the poet and translator Dorit Weisman.
In May 2005, 2 years after her mother’s death, Weisman went by herself, without knowing any Hungarian, to search for her roots in villages and towns in Hungary.

She visited the hometown of her mother and the hometown of her grandmother. These towns stretch in the northeast of Hungary, between Budapest and Tokai. She caught the atmosphere of these towns, which were frozen at that time; She followed the craziness in her family - visited a psychiatric wing in a hospital in which, she guessed, her grandmother’s mother was hospitalized. The movie follows her successes and her failures. The film reflects her dual attitude towards Holocaust: her affection for the Hungarian people, from whom originate her genes and her deepest memory, and the understanding that these same people helped to annihilate her family. This travel is a continuation of her relationship with her mother, that became more and more close toward her death.

During her travels she took pictures and wrote a long poem entitled “Hungarian Poema”. Verses from this long poem have been incorporated into the film, as well as two of her poems sang by Yasmin Even.

And what is actually this peach orchard that she was looking for? One can choose his, or her, own private peach orchard from this film.