Wixom filmmaker Keith Famie is producing a documentary that tells the story of the Holocaust through the personal expressions of two metro Detroit artists who work in music and sculpture, respectively.
The film features singer- songwriter Curtis Bates from Life Leaders Inc., and Hailey Callahan, a graduate of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. On Monday, filming took place at the CEO Recording Studio in Southfield, where Curtis performed one of his songs.
The documentary crew also covered a sit-down interview with Hailey, and filmed her working on creative art elements in the ceramics department studio in the Kresge-Ford building at the College for Creative Studies main campus.
In the past few weeks, Curtis and Hailey, who had very little knowledge of the Holocaust, were given a tour of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills by Howard Lupovitch, an associate professor of history and director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit.
A week later, Curtis and Hailey interviewed five Michigan Holocaust survivors: Rene Lichtman, Irene Miller, Edith Maniker, Mania Salinger, and Fred Lessing.
The idea of the film, called “Shoah Ambassadors,” came from Famie. “I wanted to come up with a way to tell the story of the Holocaust so the younger generation of today would take an interest in learning about those atrocities,” says Famie, principal of Visionalist Entertainment Productions.
“What better way than to have peers of their age be the storytellers from an understanding journey they go on personally. I felt that two young people that are non-Jewish with very little knowledge of the Holocaust would be the most unique way to tell the story utilizing their own creative talents.”
The film has been picked up by Detroit Public Television, and Famie hopes it will be launched nationally. The one-hour documentary could be released by the end of the year.
He also wants the film to catch the attention of Steven Spielberg, the creator of the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List,” and the founder of the Shoah Foundation in Israel.
To learn more about the production, visit here or the Facebook page for the film here.
For information about documentary donation opportunities, email producer Keith Famie at famie@famie.com
