In memory of the victims of the holocaust on January 27, 2020, we will be organizing a talk by Mrs. Jo Cohen on the Impact of Holocaust followed by the screening of the film – The Testament by Amichai Greenberg at Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (Main Auditorium) from 6 pm onwards.
Entry is free and open to all.
This program is bought to you by Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, Embassy of Israel in India & Culture Monks. — at Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute.
About Mrs. Jo Cohen
Mrs. A.M. Cohen is a senior member of the Kolkata Jewish community and has been closely involved with various community activities, including the schools, the care of the sick and elderly, and the maintenance of the cemetery, for more than 20 years.
She has lived in Kolkata since the early 1960’s, and has watched the city change and grow over the decades, while the Jewish population declined.
For several years she has been actively involved in efforts to bring about greater understanding between people of different faiths and communities, in order to promote communal harmony and restore the old spirit of the city, when people would come together to celebrate each others’ festivals with no hesitation on account of caste or creed.
Synopsis of the film- The Testament
Yoel, a senior Holocaust researcher, is in the midst of a widely covered legal battle with powerful forces in Austria, concerning a brutal massacre of Jews that took place toward the end of WWII in the village of Lensdorf. An influential family of industrialists on whose land the murder took place, is planning to build a real estate project on the very same land. Yoel suspects that their aim is to bury the affair for good, but has trouble finding the conclusive evidence that would stop the project.
While investigating the incident Yoel examines classified testimonies of Holocaust survivors, and to his shock and surprise he finds a testimony given by his mother, a testimony he didn’t know existed. In her testimony she confesses to a substantial secret from her past.
Yoel, who’s conducting a double-investigation, personal and scientific, is trapped between walls of silence – on one side, denial of the Holocaust on the part of the villagers, and on the other, his mother’s silence regarding her past. As a historian with an unshakeable commitment to the truth, he decides to continue his investigations even at the cost of ruining his personal and professional life.
It won the best film at Haifa International Film Festival, 2017
Amichai Greenberg – director & scriptwriter
Amichai has been writing, directing and producing for TV, film and new-media for 15 years.
His projects include local as well as international educational and commercial institutions such as TV channels 1, 2 & 10, video journal, ZDF, Mandel institute, Yad-Vashem and the Spielberg visual history foundation. The Testament is his first feature film.
Culture Monks 