Late in the historical documentary ''Watermarks,'' Hanni Lux, an Austrian Jewish athlete who participated in a pre-Olympic ceremony in Vienna just before the 1936 Berlin games, recalls the frightening reception that her group -- members of a Jewish sports club, Hakoah Vienna -- received during the torch-bearing ritual. Following another delegation that was met with a rapturous ovation, punctuated by cries of ''Heil Hitler,'' her team, from the club's championship women's swimming division, was greeted with ''a silence filled with fear,'' she says.
"We felt mass hatred," she adds. "It really was one of my most horrible experiences." Terrified, the team ran back to the clubhouse, shut the door and hugged and kissed for a reassurance that was to be found nowhere else.
Ms. Lux is one of eight Austrian-born Jewish female athletes, now in their 80's and scattered around the world, whom the director Yaron Zilberman gathered for a pilgrimage back to Vienna. At the end of the movie, they slip into the waters of an Olympic-size pool for a final communal lap. More than 65 years earlier, the Nazis had closed their beloved club and driven them into exile.
The notion of a reunion staged for the camera may be a filmmaking stunt. But it provides the raison-d'être of a moving documentary that approaches the Holocaust from a fresh, intimate perspective. Personal stories trump epic, fact-filled overviews almost every time. And as "Watermarks" flashes continually back and forth between the women today and pictures of their youthful selves, it is hard not to put yourself in their 1930's shoes and imagine their ordeal.
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
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"We felt mass hatred," she adds. "It really was one of my most horrible experiences." Terrified, the team ran back to the clubhouse, shut the door and hugged and kissed for a reassurance that was to be found nowhere else.
Ms. Lux is one of eight Austrian-born Jewish female athletes, now in their 80's and scattered around the world, whom the director Yaron Zilberman gathered for a pilgrimage back to Vienna. At the end of the movie, they slip into the waters of an Olympic-size pool for a final communal lap. More than 65 years earlier, the Nazis had closed their beloved club and driven them into exile.
The notion of a reunion staged for the camera may be a filmmaking stunt. But it provides the raison-d'être of a moving documentary that approaches the Holocaust from a fresh, intimate perspective. Personal stories trump epic, fact-filled overviews almost every time. And as "Watermarks" flashes continually back and forth between the women today and pictures of their youthful selves, it is hard not to put yourself in their 1930's shoes and imagine their ordeal.
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
Late in the historical documentary ''Watermarks,'' Hanni Lux, an Austrian Jewish athlete who participated in a pre-Olympic ceremony in Vienna just before the 1936 Berlin games, recalls the frightening reception that her group -- members of a Jewish sports club, Hakoah Vienna -- received during the torch-bearing ritual. Following another delegation that was met with a rapturous ovation, punctuated by cries of ''Heil Hitler,'' her team, from the club's championship women's swimming division, was greeted with ''a silence filled with fear,'' she says.
"We felt mass hatred," she adds. "It really was one of my most horrible experiences." Terrified, the team ran back to the clubhouse, shut the door and hugged and kissed for a reassurance that was to be found nowhere else.
Ms. Lux is one of eight Austrian-born Jewish female athletes, now in their 80's and scattered around the world, whom the director Yaron Zilberman gathered for a pilgrimage back to Vienna. At the end of the movie, they slip into the waters of an Olympic-size pool for a final communal lap. More than 65 years earlier, the Nazis had closed their beloved club and driven them into exile.
The notion of a reunion staged for the camera may be a filmmaking stunt. But it provides the raison-d'être of a moving documentary that approaches the Holocaust from a fresh, intimate perspective. Personal stories trump epic, fact-filled overviews almost every time. And as "Watermarks" flashes continually back and forth between the women today and pictures of their youthful selves, it is hard not to put yourself in their 1930's shoes and imagine their ordeal.
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
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"We felt mass hatred," she adds. "It really was one of my most horrible experiences." Terrified, the team ran back to the clubhouse, shut the door and hugged and kissed for a reassurance that was to be found nowhere else.
Ms. Lux is one of eight Austrian-born Jewish female athletes, now in their 80's and scattered around the world, whom the director Yaron Zilberman gathered for a pilgrimage back to Vienna. At the end of the movie, they slip into the waters of an Olympic-size pool for a final communal lap. More than 65 years earlier, the Nazis had closed their beloved club and driven them into exile.
The notion of a reunion staged for the camera may be a filmmaking stunt. But it provides the raison-d'être of a moving documentary that approaches the Holocaust from a fresh, intimate perspective. Personal stories trump epic, fact-filled overviews almost every time. And as "Watermarks" flashes continually back and forth between the women today and pictures of their youthful selves, it is hard not to put yourself in their 1930's shoes and imagine their ordeal.
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
show less
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