During World War II, Lisbon was a passageway for refugees from the territories occupied by Hitler to America. This film tells of two parallel stories about exile and integration. Through a narrated memoir and photographs, the saga of a German Jewish family who decided to stay in Portugal is told. The larger and more sociological story about the others who used Lisbon as an escape route is also reported through period films and the written memoirs of some of the most important intellectuals of the day, including Heinrich Mann and Alfred Döblin. This film evokes a desperate and intensely romantic time, of exile, lack of hope and, ultimately, of freedom.

biografia

Daniel Blaufuks has been working on the relation between photography and literature, through works like My Tangier with the writer Paul Bowles. More recently, Collected Short Stories displays several photographic diptychs in a kind of “snapshot prose,” a speech based on visual fragments that give indication of private stories on their way to become public. The relation between public and private has been one of the constant interrogations in his work. He works mainly with photography and video, presenting his work through books, installations and films. His documentary Under Strange Skies was shown at the Lincoln Center in New York. Recent exhibitions include: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon), Palazzo delle Papesse (Siena), LisboaPhoto, Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon), Elga Wimmer Gallery (New York), Museu do Chiado (Lisboa), Photoespaña (Madrid), where his book Under Strange Skies received the award for Best Photography Book of the Year in the International Category in 2007, the year he received the BES Photo Award as well. He published Terezín at Steidl, Götingen in 2010 and in 2011 he had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and in 2014 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. In 2017 he was awarded the AICA-MC Award for the exhibitions Léxico and Attempting Exhaustion in the previous year. He has a PhD from the University of Wales. For more information see www.danielblaufuks.com

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