Warsaw 2014 Interview: Documentarian Adam Bardach Talks The Chutzpah Needed To Fool Nazis
The film is a portrait of his father, Gene Gutowski, who survived the Holocaust in Poland and went on to have a successful career in Hollywood, most notably as Roman Polanski's producer.
Bardach has made a very personal monument to his father capturing the difficult times under the Nazi occupation in Poland when many of his family members perished in death camps. Gutowski recounts the struggle to survive and the complicated path to the liberty.
Bardach revisits painful memories and places in Poland following his father while he provides eye-witness testimony of horrors from the wartime era.
Bardach's documentary is less a memoir (Gutowski has already written his own memoir From Holocaust to Hollywood or under the English title "With Balls and Chutzpah: A Story of Survival") and more a son paying a tribute to the father who with strong will, chutzpah and against all odds, and with many exceptional twists of fate, cheated death and withstood a dark period in his family´s life and in modern history. Gutowski himself attended a screening, and celebrated his 90th birthday during the festival.
ScreenAnarchy: How did you get involved in filmmaking?
Adam Bardach: I was born in London, raised in London. My godfather is Roman Polanski and obviously being in a film production environment, I was visiting the sets and my mother was also married to a producer in Los Angeles, but I did not decide to pursue this career until I was twenty years old when I got up on a plane and left London, moved to Los Angeles. Ever since I've been working in different aspects of the film business. I started out working for a talent agency. I spent three years working for Joel Silver, then I produced around fifty documentaries myself. I did a lot of various things, acquired a lot of different skills along the way. Actually I shot a TV show, Inside Homicide, that is airing in United States right now. I am also working for the producer Brett Ratner now.
Why the title DANCING BEFORE THE ENEMY?
I forgot the fact, or I became removed from the fact that my father was a teenager through all this. I needed to make a point of it in the film. This not a grown man making these decisions, it is a 13,14,15 year old boy who is experiencing these events. There was this band playing in Janowska Street, there was something about him flirting with danger, dancing, doing the tango. He was not running during these times, he was taking chances. So, that´s why I like the idea of Dancing Before the Enemy. He is there, but they can´t get him.
What was the collaboration with your father like on the documentary?
We have a great relationship. I love my father, we are very close and we have always been very close. It's a natural extension for me to make the film, to sit with him, having him telling me these stories.
He is a great storyteller and if nothing would have come out of this documentary, it was still a great opportunity to spend time together, father and son. He is also a natural storyteller. If you go to a dinner with him, he will tell you great stories. He is an incredible raconteur as you saw in the film. It was really very easy in this respect. However it was very difficult for him to discuss his mother and his brother who died in the death camps. These are very emotional subjects to revisit for him. He dealt with it, and asking him to come to Bełżec with me is not on his to-do-list. So I am very grateful to him that he allowed me to ask him a lot of painful questions and giving me honest answers. It was not easy at times, but definitely worthwhile.
He is a great storyteller and if nothing would have come out of this documentary, it was still a great opportunity to spend time together, father and son. He is also a natural storyteller. If you go to a dinner with him, he will tell you great stories. He is an incredible raconteur as you saw in the film. It was really very easy in this respect. However it was very difficult for him to discuss his mother and his brother who died in the death camps. These are very emotional subjects to revisit for him. He dealt with it, and asking him to come to Bełżec with me is not on his to-do-list. So I am very grateful to him that he allowed me to ask him a lot of painful questions and giving me honest answers. It was not easy at times, but definitely worthwhile.
You have even kept the painful memory of your father helping somebody die after an unsuccessful attempt at hanging. Why?
I wanted to include the darkest moments of the story, and that was an important thing to be honest about. Any work of film would be artificial at some level because of editing and my point of view, so it´s hard to be honest, but I really want to include every aspect of the story. And there were a lot of things that I did not include, horrifying things that I did not feel I needed to repeat... more and more stories of horrific things he witnessed. But that particular story... I felt those 24 hours at Janowska Street... It is really unbelievable what he had to do to survive: hang on some guys legs to help him die then they almost shot him...it´s unspeakable...so I needed that story to be in it.
Has your father seen previous cuts of the film?
I sat on the footage I made with my father for 7 or 8 years. I was not ready to deal with it, emotionally, financially. I made another film about my friend who is suffering Lou Gehrig´s disease, so it was too much to deal with at that time. I visited him last year and it was like I needed to do it right now. I spent four, five months editing it. And then I just sent him my film. He never saw any other cuts, I just sent him the whole thing.
What was his reaction?
He was very moved by it. I think he was very emotional while watching it, obviously.
I was not there but I know he was. It was difficult for him to watch it, seeing it all put together: the photographs of family, the music... so it was very moving. He is very proud, very happy with the film, proud of me for making it. And he was a big supporter, he did not give me any notes or did not ask any changes. For that, I am happy because he as a filmmaker was not like "you should do this or that". He just loved it and was grateful.
I was not there but I know he was. It was difficult for him to watch it, seeing it all put together: the photographs of family, the music... so it was very moving. He is very proud, very happy with the film, proud of me for making it. And he was a big supporter, he did not give me any notes or did not ask any changes. For that, I am happy because he as a filmmaker was not like "you should do this or that". He just loved it and was grateful.
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