nana documentary can be talking about today on the radical imagination it's a message for our times as well welcome once again to the radical imagination i'm  sociologist who saw the john jay college and yeshiva university here in new york one of the themes of the show has always been to present guests in viewpoints that would emphasize the need to allow suffering to speak and be heard that would be especially true for our show today is the belief that we need to listen to feel deeply and to try to understand the disrespect humiliation and shame that other individuals and groups have experienced in society it's through this deficit or a process of listening to the most downtrodden and hurt among us that we are want to glee come to know ourselves better and can begin to transform society toward one that is rooted in radical love a love of the other and the society where justice is what love looks like in public it's not about shutting people in cages solitary camps cells or building walls gated communities or get a wising people it's about allowing suffering to speak and trying to understand why we often have used and exploited them a scapegoat for our own economic political psychological and distorted moral gain that helps begin the healing and repairing process that can transform the world into one that is more loving caring and nurturing so we are so very happy to welcome serena dykeman again to the radical imagination she's a new york based filmmaker and graduate of n y u use tish's school of of the arts and her work ranging from comedy the drama to documentary has won numerous awards including at the kane's a film festival and that's screened in countless festivals around the world her documentary on her grandmother nana was a holocaust survivor is one of the most beautiful heartbreaking poignant and life affirming works of art and film you'll ever experience now as one of those life right it has yes it's at this point it's been almost four years that i've been working on it basically full time i started making this film when i was twenty two years old i was still in school at n y u in the film school  so i i knew that i was the granddaughter of a survivor i knew she was a very outspoken survivor i knew she was a public person because i saw her as a kid that you know book signings that on television et and then when i was eleven she passed away and for about a decade after that i really didn't think about her or i did not think about the fact that my grandmother was now fit survivor and that i was the granddaughter survivor i barely talked about her to my mother and suddenly mother mother didn't talk about we what she really didn't you know she would she would come up of course but she would come up more i familiar way like i started drinking coffee when i was a teenager and you couldn't speak to me before i had coffee in the morning and my mom would say oh you're just like your grandmother you can't be spoken to until you have coffee but it was more in those little ways than in you know what she had lived through and what she did with her survival and then i found myself in paris on the day of the charlie hebdo attacks and i found myself in brussels which is also  a city where i grew up on the day of the first terrorist attacks of the jewish museum and somehow being there witnessing those two events and seeing the aftermath of the events  really shocked me you know when it's when you read about things in the news it's always extremely shocking but you see them so quickly and if they don't happen in places you know or two people you know and you love it's less d paris and brussels right so i'm not you know i'm not practicing but it's very much part of my my culture and my heritage and my my other grandmother who still of this world is also a survivor she doesn't speak about it she was head injury in the war and she was she lives very close to the jewish museum in brussels and cane of realizing that you know she had survived all of that she only  exactly that happening again exactly and it shocked me enormously and somehow it made me so my grandmother wrote a book she wrote a memoir i really end of her life and i had been traveling with it for a couple of years  but i never had the courage to read it travelling so you just pass so every time i would go on a tripod i travel quite a bit and i just you know i never kind of sat down on a plane and was like i'm going to read about my grandmother's surviving auschwitz and about all the relatives i never knew because they were married it never sounded like a fun plane ride and right after those attacks i decided to open it and i read it and i became very angry because first of all i had so many questions suddenly for my grandmother and i realized it was too late to ask this but second of all i was angry because i realized that she was not just a survivor but that she was really an act livest and that she dedicated her entire focus for a life to publicly speaking of what she and so many people lived so that it would not be and more of the fact that those survivors are not here anymore i was angry at the time you know just just the idea that the events also in disgrace and the events and the aftermath of the events and it's it was almost like as the world not learns anything right so that led to a more deeper understanding or attempt to comprehend the larger exactly and jim it was it was really  call to action to do something because i was about to start my last semester of film school at n y u and and i realized that i was the granddaughter of this incredible woman and a  filmmaker who has the ability to reach a certain amount of people through through what i do and i was like ok i'm making a film that's it and i called my mom and i was like mom want to make a movie about men and about mostly calm down a little of that was what she was she was very funny so i used to make like a little light romantic comedies then i made a drama about immigration also fictional  and also i had to go well i didn't know you know if it was going to be a short documentary a future i really didn't know all i knew is that i needed to do it right there and then and let it take over and i knew that if i really thought about it too much that i would just chickened out and so would have my mother very because it's not an easy thing to undertake on a technical level on a practical level  especially on an emotional level and i really did not give myself the freedom to think it through because thinking it through probably would have stopped me and so three weeks later we were shooting the film and brussels which is when my grandmother emigrated after the war and in poland which is where she grew up and we you know we really physically retraced her steps in poland and in brussels entered with her mother with my mother who knew more of the history than you she knew a lot more and she was very close to to her mother however my mother is was in a very particular position being second generation where she grew up you know from day one hearing the most horrific stories that a child or that anyone can hear there's a lot of trauma in the second generation there's a lot of trauma in the following generations too but the one from the second generation is very specific and she really wanted to revisit this she didn't i think you know the way because we speak about it now frequently and she went to her mother was alive she had trouble hearing about all of this she still heard it she still listened but it was very very hard for her and as her mother got she refused to  became very present and her the last few years of of her work even more so than than she had already been and then my grandmother passed and you know my mom said that she always knew she had to do something with that heritage being the daughter of but she had she was gain of petrified and she didn't know how to and then i kind of showed up she didn't want to she didn't want to talk to me about it because she didn't want me to be traumatized like she had been but at the same time she knew it was her duty to fall for that on so she found herself again of in between those two generations stuck what what do i do what do i say to my daughter so i can honor my mother's wish and also the one of all of our ancestors who never got out to tell the tale here of twenty twenty one twenty two take place what what about what you wanted to present do you want to make this i mean there's so many dozens and dozens of documentaries what right how could you what we used thinking what you want to make it somewhat or to be reminded of what can happen in a world without tolerance that was the tolerance message was really my main message and to make people understand why the holocaust doesn't just belong to the jewish community why it's a universal story a universal message and how each and every single one of us whether we're descendants of survivors of any sort of trauma or whether we're lucky enough not to be can actually take a powerful lesson out of this for our present and our future as a society and as individuals who feel to understand because all of us have somewhere in our family narratives perhaps of the exact transgenerational trauma so really going from nana to my mother to myself and seeing you know there is less stories about this told from the third generations point of view and so that was important to me not to put myself forward in this but because i wanted people of my generation to relate and to see that it mattered and to see why it was relevant and i figured that the best way to do that was to showcase someone who is of that generation because often when when you have historical subjects or or anything that revolves around the world war two or the holocaust you know it's obviously a very serious topic it's something that is very serious and heavy to talk about and it still is but i think there is a misconception for people you know in their twenty's or even younger that you need to be someone who is incredibly serious and has studied their entire lives to be able to approach the subject whereas you know i don't have anything against but i think it's important for people to see hey i'm twenty i have you know a normal life of being a twenty something year old in new york but i also care about this and it's not incompatible and so that's why i'm here myself in the film to to show that and to show that it was not just something  in a few minutes here but then is is speaking to you in that sense right she was a guy to how this might be absolutely i mean it was you know i could have done this film a million different ways you know but the the real gift i got a personal gift and and a gift for just the filmmaking aspect is when we shot the film i didn't know that there was a lot of archival footage that existed of her i knew there were a couple interviews that she had shot here and there but what happened is that i ended up receiving about one hundred one hundred hours of archival footage of my grandmother giving her testimony really and i i just didn't know that existed and so the film took a completely different direction i spent months in a dark wind entire day with nana and so for me i really discovered my grandmother this way that's the magic of film and the magic of their i things that you see on screen that you can preserve any other way the paper that audio alone wouldn't give but also i got to you know use most of or a lot of that footage in the film and and that really makes it because she was absolutely extraordinary she was a very gifted speaker she also related to do youth a lot young people toward her they would stay up with her until three in the morning talking to her every night when she for about two years now i've very rarely if ever stayed during the movie but that's that's what most filmmakers would tell you of the you know staying in the room  you know when i just take a step back and i realize i'm sitting here in twenty scene in manhattan and i have my grandmother that passed away fifteen years ago on the screen and we're talking about  that's the most beautiful wonderful thing that i could hear because that's a step in the right direction and she you know since i started making this film the amount of people that have contacted me from all around the world like as far as new zealand and australia they're like you know i know you're a grandmother you just and this happens to me on a weekly basis of not on a i obviously always love showing the film to the jewish community and it's a it's a personal experience for them and it becomes a very personal experience for me because we relate to each other and to you know being second or third generation survivors in a very specific and meaningful way but that being said i think the effort just talking about the holocaust to people who know about it i'm i'm not doing my job correctly  so i've made it a point to make sure that the film would go to people who have never heard about this or that all they know is germans against jews or and how do they  fortunate enough that the reactions are always incredibly positive and touching that's really when i realize that my grandmother was still doing her work through a screen but she is still really happened to me or also perhaps some anti semites in the group oh come on here we go again the whining in the now like i am so i'm surprised and i you know i don't want to jinx said but i've never got any negative you know any anti semitic or or or or a commons that would you know dismiss the fact that this happened then again i'm aware that the people who find themselves in the audience of a film on the subject are probably not diluting the fact that it happened right or not you know what i mean this is also the reality of just storing with and i'm a little fellow you know very personal level grandmother  how it's the that is that's really the wonderful thing so we really have three main characters in the film my grandmother my mother and myself write and depending on the audience and the age range of the audience and you know origin people will relate or will take out very different aspects and themes of the phil so that's always fascinating to me one of the most beautiful experiences i've had was about a year ago now i screening what about two hundred at risk youth so those are kids that you know were in special school programs because of their personal lives because of disabilities people that  and those are all kids between like thirteen and seventeen if i'm not in they can and they could present us like give us projects whether it was a drawing of flow and more or whatever it was and i'm sitting there and there were seven other films they could choose from six other films and you know it's an hour and forty minute long film it talks a lot most of it is in french and subtitles and i'm thinking you know this is probably a little too complicated to understand this might be and i was in there to introduce the film or anything and about an hour and a half of the session was all questions and projects that were around anna and i came very difficult situation and come out of it with clean hands and come out of it as a you know whole loving as our whole lo sense exactly and it made so much sense because the skids were in terrible situations themselves and they saw this example of this woman who this woman who lived through the worst time in history and came out of it not denying what she suffered not ignoring it but who you know what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and not just stronger but also you know she was very charismatic she was very  funny and you know that's something that i've always noticed and that i've made a point to include in the film but it's not the first thing you think that people would take out of the holocaust movie right a and so and so that that was that was one of the most beautiful experiences that i have left with this film because my grandmother fifteen years after passing was able to inspire those kids to get out of whatever situation and to become you know better people or a stronger in a few of the catastrophe exactly she felt the cheeks periods and the lesser catastrophes that these kids were going through and all of us i was talking to you before the show here and you're invited and then you said you think you can make this but a little plug for the event i'm going to be doing helping them organiz reverend william barber of the poor people's campaign which again will be on october thirtieth the john jay college six forty five public is invited to this and again this incredibly charismatic intelligent funny eloquent articulate individual who speaking truth to power and is able to to bridge the barriers of us all by speaking about the suffering of the civil rights movement but making it this universal man message and connecting as he put it within the christian tradition who is to stand in the breach your grandmother nanny stood in the breach she spoke truth to power and is still doing it you're doing it and however the world responds to that we all can do that and should that do that now on way whether becomes a larger political movement and necessary political in my opinion is a sociologist i think it's absolutely necessary and so i applaud you so much on this and i look for you there at the at the event because i think you need to reach out to to all these to her i think the me too movement is powerful is necessary as well overdue i'm a young woman in the film industry so it's something that you know is unfortunately familiar to me i my real hope i you know i hope that things change for everyone in every industry where this happens which unfortunately is every industry but i really hope that it changes the way it's perceived for the kids that are you know about to enter the professional world today to me that's where the real difference can be made and maybe i'm you know maybe i'm wrong but i am from twenty six today of women where educated we're told that we can't have the powerful bleeding jobs and all of that but we were told be careful you might have to do some things to get there it's your choice not to it's going to be harder if you choose not to so you know me and a lot of women and my age and and these industries have heard the same things well the problem to me yeah is that it was still we were told you're going to get those terrible proposals you're entitled to say no but you're going to get them it's a given that at some point this will happen to you right and my hope is that the next generation so people who are ten years younger don't even assume that it will happen and that the guy is the voice of that generation don't think that in any world this would be ok that's ten years from now it's that anna says she didn't have a choice here right so within the you know sexist environment that you're still battling in the realms of patriarchy here and in economic exploitation so your generation is facing you understand about ten years ago so where does this all connect nana's message in terms of speaking out and organizing i think that's where it connects i think it's about it's about speaking out it's about realizing that you know i see the film to scale the reactions i get to the film whether i screen it in the south of france in a muslim majority is full or in midtown manhattan or in alaska or in poland are completely different because we you know even though we still live on planet earth we all you know women are very specific little world but it's about realizing that whoever you are you have some type of power beginning of the tour we toured with amnesty international in the south of france mostly in schools and middle schools high schools and universities and you know francis very different than new york were then then the u s and before i went on the tour i would stop people i was going and they said you know south of friends sipe of school just be careful just be aware that you're going to get some bad high so middle school high little universities of you know several screenings over the course of a week and i still went and very happy to do the torah but with that assumption that i had been given to me of something bad will happen because it's a group of people that belongs to that group of people and the comments and reactions i got voice so heartwarming and so positive and i had kids crying in my arms and kids wanting to read my grandmother's book and you know a lot of those kids i think are related to nana and related to the story because they're also part of a minority they're also part of people that are being discriminated against and oppressed his friends called and i felt like a complete idiot because i had walked and whether a film to fight intolerance and to fight prejudice and i had walked in a little prejudiced and sense that area day i was i have made a very big point of never walking into a screening room thinking you know having any kind of preconception of what the reaction might or will be and i think you know this speaks a lot to again to the power of of man and how at the end of the day and that's really the way we frame the film it's a human story yes she was a jew and yes this all happened to her because she was jewish and that is incredibly important to say but the fact is that she was a human being just like anyone who's watching the film cannot observe them and not and but again this is this is all relevant but on the bigger scale it's not and you know i think people need to connect and to relate to each other the best way to do it as despite all our differences is realizing that we're all human and when you get taken away and when your entire family gets taken away whether you're jewish or believe or whatever it is as it's shown in israel yes we're on t v in israel it's you know it's television so it's a it's right i'm not very to see people's reactions but we got good press so what about the audience that's something we i haven't been able to do yet i'm would you like a change of voice i mean there is there is no audience that i would not want to screen the film to because that would make me a complete fraud as to what you to to see it you know it's really it's really wonderful it's been again it's been two years of touring and seeing how people react but at some point i'm only one person and  possible and where you know we were fortunate enough to sign with a great distributor first run features are there based here in new york and they took on the film we did a theatrical release  how people could do this other people how you know that remains and remains unsolved i i don't have the answer when and i was asked that she said she didn't have the answer  either of how how could this have happened however to me what's what's one of the most shocking terrifying thought when i was making the film and still today is realizing that it's within all of us that hatred that terror is a part of all of us because the people who did this our you know where other people's neighbors people and you know and the region knew what was going on unlike a lot of you know jews from other countries that were just brought with the knowledge to the camps and then and then that was that  but it's also one of the thousands of things that helped her survive in the sense that because it was so close it's the ghetto she was in as the one to the last called liquidated so she was on one of the transports which means that she ultimately spent less time in the camps very which ultimately means that she you know had slater better chance of  surviving but yet she was from from this small town called benj and we actually did a screening there a few months ago we screened in the movie theater where she used to go to as a kid benjamin is a tiny industrial town there is about seven jews left there today it used to be thirty thousand just thirty thousand before the war and there is no jewish community left but we did a screen in there and again before i went people told me you're in poland be careful and you know especially in a very tiny town and we had a full house we had over one hundred people which is more than what we sometimes going to new york so just say something and we had people come up on stage and says oh and credit and follow us to a cafe until three in the morning and talk to us and share their stories and their grandparents who you know helped someone survive and this and that and it was a truly wonderful experience and again i think we need to get rid of the prejudice and fight them every and one of the goal with this is to kind of break down the misconceptions that we have or the media has around nail salons or head of salons or whatever kind of places like this because people are always shown as caricature is an either side of the table my goal is to show people as three dimensional cumin yes with all of the flaws and problems and  and now i'm realizing as as i'm writing it that it has a lot of points in common with managers in the sense that it is about making bridge building bridges and breaking down the barriers while not ignoring them the there and in the case of finance alone there's a physical table that separating the two worlds which i think is a very visual element but yet so right now it's just in the writing stages the