The Maelstrom makes extraordinary artful use of considerable cache of home movies shot in the Netherlands before and during World War II and dealing with the extended Peereboom family. Information is conveyed through subtitles and instead of voice-over, the soundtrack consists of period sound, usually from radio broadcasts, and brooding, disturbing jazz score by Tibor Szemzõ. What wee see is a Jewish family first living unknowingly in the shadow of the Holocaust and then trying to cope with it still unaware of what it will finally mean. A shot of the film's photographer Max Peereboom, and his family we've come to know, cheerfully sewing and doing general preparation for a trip to a "work camp" when their destination was in reality the nightmare of Auschwitz adds a devastating dimension to our understanding of the Final Solution that nothing else, no Hollywood movie, no documentary, has been able to provide..

VIDEO INTRO from THE MAELSTROM

credits
1997 - 60 minutes - video

Director • Péter Forgács
Music • Tibor Szemzõ
Editor • Kati Juhász
Advisor • Albert Wulffers
Sound mix • Zsolt Hubay

producer / distributor
Cesar Messemaker © Lumen Film 2005
cesarmessemaker@lumenfilm.demon.nl

awards
2000 • “Out Of That Darkness” International Film Competition Grand Prize, London
1999 • Jerusalem International Film Festival "Jewish Experience Prize” for the
Best Documentary