By Paul Greenberg
SAN DIEGO –From the schmaltzy Ladies and Gentlemen…, Biddie Schitzerman, to Don’t Tell Santa You’re Jewish’s ironic ending, to David and Goliath‘s chilling story of a dog (a German Shepherd, no less) saving a Jew fleeing for his life from German soldiers in a Czechoslovakian forest during the Holocaust, to the animated (very) short (6 minutes), but labor intensive, Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest by Carlsbad elementary school student Perry Chen, the Joyce Forum’s Shorts in Winter screening of a total of 10 short films provided an entertaining afternoon for an overflow audience of filmophiles at the Clairemont Reading 14 on Monday, February 13.
A question-and-answer session that followed the screenings was moderated by animator Hanan Harchol and involved panelists Perry Chen; George Zaverdas, director of David and Goliath, and its executive producer, Brigette Bako, whose father’s story of his escape from Nazi soldiers was conveyed by the film.
Perry told the audience he began drawing at three years old. “I drew mostly simple drawings of animals and fish. Sometimes I drew a few other scenes, like people.”
He became involved with Ingrid Pitt through animator Bill Plympton. (Ingrid Pitt is narrated by the late British movie actress, Ingrid Pitt, and she describes the story of her escape during the Holocaust when she was quite young with her mother from a forest outside a concentration camp in Poland where Nazi guards had taken her to be shot. Russian warplanes flew over and strafed just as Pitt and others were about to be shot, and they played dead in a ditch, from which they were eventually saved by Polish Partisans, but not after almost being shot by the Polish Partisans, who eventually realized they, too, were Polish.)
“In 2009, at the San Diego Comic-Con, I went up to Bill Plympton’s booth, and he gave me a drawing of a hot dog, which is one of his characters from some of his short films, and I drew one next to it really quickly with his pen, and he and his friend, Kevin Sean Michaels, who is the director of my film, saw my drawing and thought it was really good. I didn’t think it was that good, but it was good enough to get me involved in this amazing film and now here I am. At first, I didn’t know much about the topic (the Holocaust), so I went on online and researched to know more about it and how to draw things better. It was really fun (working on the film) because Bill had a lot of great advice and support and he gave me lots of suggestions on how to improve. My first time doing animation was a bit tedious, but in the end it was very rewarding.”
Perry is also a film and restaurant critic. In response to an audience member’s question about how he, Perry, as a film critic, would review Ingrid Pitt, he responded: “Since I made this film two years ago, when I look at it, I feel there is quite some room for improvement. Actually, as Hanan said yesterday at brunch, he said you are always improving and that’s why you see films that way.”
“My next project is called Sticks, and it is about a stick figure that finds a magical pencil and when he draws things with the pencil, the things he draws come to life, and he goes on an adventure and discover the power of creativity. I am also planning on making an alphabet book for kids that has animals in the shape of letters and their names start with those letters. Like A for ape, B for bird, and C for cat, and so on. And, if I am at home, I am doing a comic series on Toon Boom. And I am also going to a few film festivals and awards, like the San Diego Asian Film Festival and AME (Advertising and Marketing Effectiveness) Awards.”
Director Zaverdas recounted how he became involved in making David and Goliath, whose high production values are certainly comparable to any recently released feature film. “It all started with my dear friend Brigette Bako. who, over 10 years ago over a cup of coffee, her dad was telling me his stories during the war and he told me this specific story, a dog saved my life. He hid in this doghouse and a German shepherd froze.
“If it wasn’t for Brigitte. I wouldn’t be making this film. Brigette was there in casting, and the footage in the end was given to me by the Shoah Foundation. Her dad did a two hour interview with the Shoah foundation and that is a portion of it.” (In the interview, Brigitte’s dad explained how he jogged the memory of the German farmer who helped save him from the German soldiers and who was being interrogated at the time by Allies. Dad eventually persuaded the interrogators to free the German farmer.)
What preceded your dad going to the doghouse at the farm? “Father was in the underground, he was one of the founders of the partisan movement in Czechoslovakia and he infiltrated the German side because he spoke perfect German and didn’t look Jewish. And on this particular mission he got found out. So I think he had been chased by the Gestapo for I think hours, miles, miles, when he came across this farmhouse. So, he was on some sort of underground mission.
“He was chased after first being spotted by the Germans in town. The dog just froze. He stayed in the doghouse for about two days. The farmer kept him there until it was safe to go, and he actually bought him clothes and he hid him in the hotel where he knew Germans would not be going. He not only got him out of the forest, but he helped him all the way through, he saved his life. His biggest regret is that he never asked the name of the dog because he said he prayed to the dog his entire life.”
Brigette: “My father watched war movies and war footage. And I thought, how could you watch that, it’s so depressing. And he said he was always looking for his brothers (who were killed during the Holocaust) and he said he was also looking to see if he could find the dog. Maybe one day the story will be told in book form.”
Commenting on his next project, Zaverdas said: “I am working on a screenplay of my own. The screenplay is about a Greek-American family, which is the background of my parents.
It is not like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It is about the dynamics of a family, its dysfunctions and joys. Hopefully, it will be a film everyone can relate to.”
Shorts I particularly liked : Flawed, by Andrea Dorfman, where she traces a budding romance with a plastic surgeon through sped-up drawings, providing a valuable lesson in self-acceptance: that it is sometimes better to be extraordinary than just ordinary.
A Reuben by Any Other Name, by Jeremy Dylan Lanni, where several deli customers’ passionate argument about the ingredients of a real Reuben sandwich becomes somewhat moot by the end.
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Greenberg is a freelance writer based in San Diego