THE RED ORCHESTRA
What lesson can we learn from the Holocaust but resistance?
Omer Bartov
The Red Orchestra is a suspenseful feature film based on the legendary resistance group.
SHORT DESCRIPTION
A Noir story of a 20-year-old American soldier searching for an old friend in postwar Berlin. He is caught up in forces beyond his control just as the war against Nazism is morphing into the Cold War against the Soviets. A beautiful German artist becomes his guide into the seedy underbelly of postwar Germany and she, like everyone he meets, is hiding painful secrets and hidden agendas. Finding themselves in the line of fire they discover an unknown resistance network dating from the onset of the Holocaust. Then they draw a conclusion that sets them free.
ARTWORKS
To support our goal of financing this feature film, a series of digital artworks titled OF MICE AND MONUMENTS was created by Stefan Roloff. His documentary, The Red Orchestra, was nominated by the US Women Critics for Best Foreign Film in 2005. Roloff pioneered Moving Paintings, a revolutionary animation technique used by Peter Gabriel in his award-winning videos. In 1984, Roloff created the first high-res digital art video, Big Fire, at the New York Institute of Technology. He also wrote a book on the subject Die Rote Kapelle which was published by Ullstein in Germany in 2000.
The artworks can be purchased in two different forms:
1 – Archival INK JET PRINTS. The series exists in the form of limited editions, 21 light-proof 12-cartridge inkjetprints on archival Hahnemühle paper each, signed by the artist.
2 – NFT. Each image has a single digital original formatted as an NFT (non-fungible token).
Directly available through this website are the following: Signed, framed editions of the image-prints, archivally mounted with museum glass at 3.500 $$ and word-art prints at 2.000 $$ each, including international shipment, excluding VAT. An NFT can be bought here beforehand for 40.000 $$.
All other NFTs are posted every three days on Open Sea for auction, starting on 5. 5. 2024. If a prospective buyer bids on one of the NFTS on Open Sea and is surpassed by others they can receive signed prints from the limited series for the amount they’re willing to contribute to this endeavor.
We offer DISCOUNTS to each buyer who spreads the word bringing in further buyers and we accept donations towards our endeavor.
To purchase the artworks directly please contact us for a password to the following link:
Concept of artworks
The removal of MONUMENTS during political upheaval is timeless. It dates back to ancient Egypt. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lenin sculptures were toppled and then again, recently, those of Civil War generals. Such actions are a metaphor of resistance.
The images take place in a world of mice who build, admire and destroy MONUMENTS of themselves. A species rendering its own grandiose but finite likeness is an absurd symbol for the inevitable rise and fall of empires.
Previews of the 122 images can be seen in fast sequences in the following 5-sec videos:
OPEN SEA, TWITTER and INSTAGRAM- links with daily updates:
SCREENPLAY
Written by Carola Stabe and Stefan Roloff, the son of a surviving resister, with David Houts, Stephanie Smith and Ellen Meyers. The screenplay was funded by FFA, Germany. The story’s source interviews can be viewed here:
More info about Carola Stabe and Stefan Roloff:
Link to Wikipedia Stefan Roloff
Link to Wikipedia Carola Stabe
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Red Orchestra was the largest civil anti-Nazi resistance group but widely unheard of today because of its post-war history when efforts by former Gestapo members discredited it as a Communist spy network. In reality, members were a cross-section of society, politics, and religions. They ranged from unskilled workers, craftspersons, aristocrats, professors, students, artists, and lawyers to military officers and government employees. The oldest arrested was 86, the youngest 16. Perhaps most striking for that time, the group comprised 40% women. They were an underground network that helped people escape persecution and conducted a truth and information campaign. Hitler reinstated death by hanging specifically for members of the group. Their existence was to be kept top secret to avoid setting an example for the public. Named the “Red Orchestra” by the Gestapo to discredit them as communists, the survivors became targets of a second wave of persecution during the Cold War.
The roles in this film are based on real people and actual events. ANNA (Katja Meirowsky) was a Jewish member of the group. Despite participating in their activities and hiding persecuted people in her studio, she managed to survive. She was unknown to historians when Roloff discovered her in 2004. Today her story is part of the Berlin Resistance Memorial’s permanent exhibition. JACK (Donald Heath Jr.) was an American child living in Nazi-Berlin in the 1930s. His father worked for the US embassy with the clandestine job to develop contacts with the resistance and provide inside-information to President Roosevelt. Then, 12-year old Heath Jr. transported these secret materials in his book bag.
Mood: Brandenburg Gate in Post War Berlin
SYNOPSIS
In 1948, JACK (20) is on leave from the US-army and travels to post-war ravaged Berlin. He lived there as a child in the late 1930s when his father worked at the US Embassy. His plan is to visit his former tutor, MILDRED.
He finds lodging with PAUL, an American army officer and editor of The Observer, the paper of the American Forces. In his grand old villa JACK meets ANNA, a beautiful painter. She accompanies him to Mildred’s apartment and they see that she has moved. An old neighbor refuses to recognize him and turns aggressive. Jack’s mother is shocked when she finds out that he’s in Berlin and urges him to leave that city. Meanwhile, ANNA entangles herself in contradictions. JACK gets the impression she’s a former Nazi.
At the same time he finds out that Mildred had risked her life resisting Hitler. She was tortured by the Gestapo, guillotined, and is now defamed in post-war Germany as a traitor. He locates ROEDER, the former Nazi-prosecutor, and decides to write an article for the Observer. He has to depend on ANNA to cross 130 miles through the perilous Soviet zone from Berlin to West Germany, off limits to American civilians. There, ROEDER holds a Neo-Nazi rally inflaming the audience against the former resistance fighters, denouncing survivors as Soviet spies. When JACK confronts him, havoc breaks out in the hall. Unexpectedly, ANNA takes advantage of the confusion. She tries to shoot ROEDER but her gun jams. During JACK and ANNA’s narrow escape two of ROEDER’S bodyguards die.
Now ANNA shares her true story with JACK. She is Jewish and survived the war by hiding her identity from the Nazis. After her family was killed, she took part in daring resistance activities. She suggests that JACK join her artists’ cabaret – where he could express himself freely, exposing any truth he wants. However, JACK insists on his hopeless plan to publish an article about MILDRED. The American secret service arrests and interrogates him. Under a barrage of intimidation tactics they get JACK to agree to spy on ANNA. He tells her about this and they decide to feed them useless information. Against all obstacles JACK manages to publish his article and joins ANNA’s troupe where, through powerful performances, they confront the post-war audience with the recent past and the survival of art.
