Charlotte:
Life or Theatre
by Richard Dindo
First Run/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, New
York, 2004
Video, 62 minutes, col.
Rental: $75; Sale: $375
Distributors website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Andrea Dahlberg
dahlberg@bakernet.com
Charlotte Salomon was a young Jewish painter
in Berlin who fled to Nice during World
War II. She painted the story of her life
in a series of gouaches together with
accompanying text. Richard Dindo has used
769 of these paintings to turn her paintings
into a film. The soundtrack is provided
by a reading of some of the texts accompanying
the paintings. Dindo filmed the paintings
in close-up, so each appears complete,
as a world in itself. Charlotte's story
is that of a young, well educated girl
growing up in Berlin who was forced into
exile by the rise of Nazism. Her autobiographical
work can be seen as an attempt to find
some meaning in the overwhelming and terrible
events that threw her from the world in
which she belonged into exile and, eventually,
death. This is a film about memory, loss,
and the search for meaning.