Conductor/Concert Innovator/Educator
Founder and President of The Defiant Requiem Foundation
Creator of Illuminations Concerts
The Documentary Film: Defiant Requiem: Voices of Resistance
(A Partisan Pictures Film) Creative Producer/Music Director: Murry Sidlin
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Upcoming Film Screenings:
- Tuesday, August 22, 2017, 7:30pm - Southampton Arts Center, New York
- Sunday, January 28, 2018, 2:00pm - Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, Skokie, Illinois
For more information on Film Screenings, please go to:
Murry Sidlin
Awards:
- Nominated by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for two News and Documentary Emmy Awards: Outstanding Historical Documentary Long Form
- Outstanding Writing.
- Winner Best Documentary Big Apple Film Festival, New York, 2012
- Winner David Ponce Award, Best of the Festival, Chagrin Documentary Film Festival 2013
- Audience Award runner-up Palm Springs International Film Festival, 2013
"Defiant Requiem: Voices of Resistance" is a feature-length documentary film which illuminates the extraordinary, untold story of the brave acts of resistance by the Jewish prisoners of the concentration camp Terezin.
It is the story of how the Jewish inmates of Terezin fought back against the oppression of their Nazi captors. Remarkably, in spite of the harsh treatment, hunger, disease and forced labor, the inmates fought back and still retained their humanity and hope.
The Nazis showed them the worst of mankind and they responded with the best of mankind: creative expression from the heart though art and music.
The leader of this creative defiance was conductor, Rafael Schächter, who taught a choir of 150 prisoners the great Verdi Requiem by rote. Why did Schächter defy the ruling council by choosing a Catholic Mass? Because the translation of the requiem, sung by prisoners, became a condemnation of the Nazis. The prisoners confronted the Nazis face to face... and sang to them what they could not say. For over ten years, conductor Murry Sidlin, who is the Creative Producer/Music Director of the film, dreamed of bringing the Requiem back to Terezin. The Defiant Requiem Film shows the culmination of his dream, and brings this unknown story of the artistic uprising to life through a beautiful and moving concert performance, two actors, powerful survivor recollections, cinematic dramatizations and evocative animation.
To see the trailer for Defiant Requiem Film please visit www.defiantrequiemfilm.com
You can now order the DVD from Amazon, PBS and you can stream Defiant Requiem via Netflix!
The Defiant Requiem Foundation is ever grateful to the following supporters of this film:
- A grant from Allan and Shelley Holt and the Hillside Foundation in loving honor of Allan's parents, Jenny and Irving Holt
- The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Fund, Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego
- The dedication and passionate commitment of Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat and the late Fran Eizenstat
- The Commission for Art Recovery, under chairman Ronald S. Lauder, works tirelessly to return art stolen by the Nazis to the families and institutions that rightfully own them. We are grateful for their sponsorship of this film
- To Murry Sidlin for his commitment to bringing the story of Raphael Schächter and the remarkable prisoners to the world.
Dedicated to all the prisoners of Terezin, 1941-1945.
Defiant Requiem: Voices of Resistance principal credits:
- Narrated by BEBE NEUWIRTH
- Produced by PETER SCHNALL and DOUG SHULTZ
- Written & Directed by DOUG SHULTZ
- Creative Producer/Music Director MURRY SIDLIN
- Editor MARK FASON
- Executive Producers WHITNEY JOHNSON and PETER SCHNALL
For more information on the documentary film please go to: