In theaters from January 25, Hometown is a beautiful documentary about the friendship between Roman Polanski and Ryszard Horowitz, who became friends as children in the Krakow ghetto. While the former is a famous director, the latter is less known, and therefore deserves some space.
In the multitude of titles that arrive in theaters every week, one runs the risk of losing little jewels that on paper seem less attractive than action films, comedies or the various performances by stars made in the USA who from time to time wear the costume of a superhero, narrowly prevent the destruction of the world, fly planes in canyons.
If we talk about Roman Polanski, the first thing we want to say is that it’s not exactly an unknown director. Apart from The Officer and the Spy, which is his last film released at the cinema, everyone has seen The pianistwhich won ad Adrien Brody the Oscar for best leading actor. And who does not know Rosemary’s Baby, The tenant of the third floor e Please don’t bite me on the neck? Maybe the younger ones, and it’s a real shame.
Polanski had a daring existence, which has already been told by the documentary Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir. Also, the aforementioned The pianist brought us to the Warsaw ghetto, forcing us to face the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust to which a very young Roman miraculously escaped (in Krakow), but the image of the director who gives us back Hometown – Memory Lane is unique and precious, because in addition to being a film on the value of memory (and its strange mechanisms), the documentary by the Poles Mateusz Kudla e Anna Kokoszka-Romer is the portrait of a man with an extraordinary intellectual vivacity and a sense of humor now irreverent, now almost tender. It is also a hymn to friendship, or rather to those friendships that are formed as children and which remain intact despite the passage of time and storms and long separations. The protagonists of the film, however, are two. On one side is the talented director, on the other the important photographer Richard Horowitz, also a Jew. 89 years the first and 83 the second, Polanski e Horowitz they look like two boys. Aware of having avoided, by a gift of fate, the gas chambers, throughout the documentary they maintain that humility which is typical only of the greats.
Chi è Richard Horowitz
In Hometown – The road of memoriesthe conversations and walks of Roman Polanski e Richard Horowitz they are sometimes accompanied by the voice-over of the second, who comments on the statements of his friend or guides the viewer into the folds of the great story, or shares his reflections and belated realizations. Who is Richard Horowitz?
Richard Horowitz was born in Krakow on May 5, 1939. In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz, where he miraculously survived before being saved by Oskar Schindler. At the end of the war, when he was 5 years old, the future photographer was found by his mother in an orphanage and reunited with his family, who remained to live in Krakow.
Horowitz he began taking photographs at the age of 14 and had the good fortune to grow up in a city which had become one of the privileged places for avant-garde jazz, painting, theater and cinema. Great admirer of American photographers, Richard Horowitz he soon began documenting the very birth of Polish jazz, while immortalizing legends of the caliber of Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington e Sonny Rollins.
Horowitz moved to the United States in 1959, made New York his home and worked with his mentors Richard Avedon e Alexey Brodovitch. In particular, he was assistant to the second during the shooting of the portraits of Salvador Dali. Once out of Pratt Institute, where he graduated, Richard he devoted himself to cinema, television and advertising campaigns. In 1967 he opened his photography studio in New York and became famous for his unique style, so much so that his and his “compositions” were combined with the surrealism of Magritte and of the same From there.
Appeared among the characters of Schindler’s List Of Steven Spielberg, Richard Horowitz he met Roman Polanski in the Krakow ghetto. As already mentioned, the two little friends were dramatically separated by Nazi persecution. After so many years, thinking about that terrible period of his life and that of his friend, Horowitz he has declared:
I can understand how Roman managed to survive in the countryside, in starvation, but how a creature like me made it through five concentration camps and without parents is something beyond my comprehension.
Hometown – Memories Road: the word to the directors
Hometown – Memory Lane is a respectful tribute to Polanski e Horovitz. It’s not a biopic or a thesis film, and that’s why Mateusz Kudla e Anna Kokoszka – Romer they resisted the temptation to celebrate the director Polanski and his work of immense value to focus on the little boy who left Krakow and lived in the countryside, and who then returned to Krakow. Here is their mission statement:
By taking our heroes to the places that have shaped them, we wanted to stimulate them to talk about fundamental topics that touch every human being, such as the passage of time, memory, the search for meaning and the attempt to define one’s identity.
Roman Polanski and Ryszard Horowitz not only survived the Holocaust, they also found their place in the world, achieved incredible successes and worldwide recognition that the kids from the Krakow ghetto could never have dreamed of.
Read also Hometown: Polanski and Horowitz, the review of the documentary with two extraordinary protagonists
Presented at the Rome Film Fest 2022, Hometown – Memory Lane has just arrived in theaters and is a Krk Film production with Èliseo entertainment. Produced by Anna Kokoszka – Romer, Mateusz Kudla e Luke Barbareschiis distributed by Vision Distribution in collaboration with Europictures.
