Visiting Ben Shemen at Doc Edge Festival
An animated documentary created by Associate Professor Miriam Harris, with help from three AUT graduate students, has been selected for the Doc Edge Festival.
'Visiting Ben Shemen' tells the story of Associate Professor Harris’ mother, and two other women in their late eighties, who survived or escaped the Holocaust as children, and met in 1946 at Ben Shemen, a special boarding school in Palestine.
“The school was particularly innovative,” Associate Professor Harris says.
“It privileged creativity, socialism, working the land, and humanist ethics. It offered a healing transition for these three women, who became good friends.”
She describes the 16-minute documentary, which contains both animation and mixed media, as being “experimental in its approach to media, sound, and narrative.”
Associate Professor Harris, who teaches in the School of Art and Design’s animation, visual effects, and game design department, had help with animation from former graduate students Monique Hyobin Park, Doyeon Kim, and Lily Martin-Babin.
She also worked closely on the film with Juliet Palmer, an internationally respected composer and musician, originally from New Zealand, and based in Toronto.
Visiting Ben Shemen has screened at 25 international film and animation festivals and won 'Best Documentary' at both the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles, and the NCCP Film and Animation Festival in Niagara, New York.
Visiting Ben Shemen screens at the festival’s ‘NZ Shorts 1’ sessions:
- 26 May, 4pm, Capitol Cinema, Auckland
- 9 June, 4pm, Roxy Cinema, Wellington
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