And There Was Fire in the Center of the Earth
Realizador Bernhard Hetzenauer
Países Germany, Austria, Ecuador
Duração 78 min
Sinopse
German-Jewish psychologist Vera Kohn, born in Prague in 1912, fled from Czechoslovakia to Ecuador in 1939. Having made a career in acting in Quito, recurring mental episodes led her to seek help with German Gestalt therapist Karlfried Graf Dürckheim in Europe. Cured, she returned to Ecuador where she studied psychology. More than 40 years she spent working as a psychotherapist and Zen teacher. The documentary essay tells the story of various encounters between the filmmaker and the remarkable lady. A dialogue across generation intertwines Vera's biography and her professional development with questions of guilt and personal responsability, developed by the filmmaker in connection to his own family history. An important motif in the film is the question of how in a culture as steeped as Germany in humanistic values the emergence of a phenomenon like national socialism had at all been possible, which til the end remains incomprehensible for Vera.
German-Jewish psychologist Vera Kohn, born in Prague in 1912, fled from Czechoslovakia to Ecuador in 1939. Having made a career in acting in Quito, recurring mental episodes led her to seek help with German Gestalt therapist Karlfried Graf Dürckheim in Europe. Cured, she returned to Ecuador where she studied psychology. More than 40 years she spent working as a psychotherapist and Zen teacher. The documentary essay tells the story of various encounters between the filmmaker and the remarkable lady. A dialogue across generation intertwines Vera's biography and her professional development with questions of guilt and personal responsability, developed by the filmmaker in connection to his own family history. An important motif in the film is the question of how in a culture as steeped as Germany in humanistic values the emergence of a phenomenon like national socialism had at all been possible, which til the end remains incomprehensible for Vera.