Educational Media Reviews Online

Stunning graphics and a melancholy original score by Ken Whitely accompany this documentary on the life and works of painter Samuel Bak. A child prodigy, whose talents were recognized when he was three, Bak and his mother were among the few who survived the extermination of the 70,000 Jews of Lithuania. Interspersed with dramatic shots of Bak’s works, displayed very effectively against a black screen, are commentaries on his work by the painter himself, by Holocaust scholar Lawrence Lange, and by Bernard Pucker, Director of the Pucker Gallery in Boston, speaking to a class of students from the Boston Arts Academy.

The film documents Bak’s return to his birthplace, Vilna, for a major retrospective for the first time since the Holocaust. His work is discussed in the film in terms of the personal experiences that fueled the kind of creative symbolism exemplified by the “cracked” theme. There is no discussion of technique other than to mention that he is a painter in the renaissance style. The painter himself is lucid and entertaining when discussing his work and its relevance to society. The remarks by Lange and Pucker are somewhat more pedantic.

Bak’s position is that he is not a Holocaust painter, but rather uses his own experience to reflect the human condition. He paints to remind us that the atrocities that man has committed in the past inevitably affect present-day reality and that our duty as human beings is to attempt to put the world back together again. Recommended for college collections.