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*Note: This product is for home video use -- for any public showing, please contact us!.
"Yaron Zilberman's wonderful, heartwarming Watermarks" (Kevin Thomas, L.A. Times) narrates the story of the champion women swimmers of the
legendary Vienna sports club Hakoah. Founded in 1909 in response to the
notorious Aryan Paragraph, which forbade most Austrian sports clubs from
accepting Jewish athletes, Hakoah rapidly grew into one of Europe's biggest
athletic organizations -- and its women's swim team virtually dominated
national competitions in the 1930s.
An uplifting tale of survival and friendship, Watermarks focuses on the
stories of the club's surviving members, while also faithfully recounting a
historical period where prejudice and violence forced these brave women into
exile. Now, sixty-five years after their escape, seven of Hakoah's female
swim team athletes leave their respective homes across the globe and
re-unite for the first time at their old Vienna swimming pool. The result is
so incredibly touching that Boston Globe critic Wesley Morris wrote, "The
images of them swimming together after all those years are beautiful and a
little holy: They look like angels in the water."
Alternating between painstakingly researched historical footage and
contemporary interviews with the women swimmers, Yaron Zilberman daringly
re-connects the lives and memories of those who challenged the status quo
and, for the occasion of his movie, bravely share their complex legacy of
tolerance and integrity with future generations. "As these women tell their
stories in a tone of wonderment," says New York Times film critic Stephen
Holden, "Watermarks becomes more than a pointed footnote to the Holocaust. It emerges as a surprisingly encouraging reflection on the distance between youth and advanced age."
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"A fascinating look back in time...I love this movie." - Jeffrey Lyons, NBC
"A moving documentary that approaches the holocaust from a fresh, intimate perspective." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"Warm, deeply felt and frequently witty...an inherently fascinating story." - George Robinson, Jewish Week
"[four-and-a-half stars] A celebration of age and resilience." - John Anderson, Newsday
A moving, poignant tale about triumph in the face of the unthinkable." - Debra Birnbaum, The New York Post
"Superb. A fascinating and little-known story of European Jewish life in the years before the Holocaust." - Saul Austerlitz, The Forward
"A fascinating account of strength and solidarity" - Lisa Nesselson, Variety
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