Barbara Meter – Nachtlicht + Bis an den Himmel und noch viel mehr

Programme

• Nightlight (2022, 38')

  Memories of a first love, set against the backdrop of the idyllic coasts and forests of southern England, are inextricably linked to the history of a special children’s home that provided shelter for hundreds of Jewish refugees during World War II.
  
  Barbara Meter’s new film is an ode to the founder and director of the home Bunce Court, as well as to Jewish educationalist Anna Essinger, her work and ideals. But also to the German cook Gretel Heidt. Meter has a special connection to Bunce Court. In Germany, Gretel Heidt also worked for Barbara’s grandparents, the parents of her Jewish mother. After the war, Gretel invited Barbara’s mother and her child to England, where Meter found the comfort and security she had long lacked. First love also blossomed between Barbara and a son of the home, Joseph.

• Up to the Sky, and Much Much More(2015, 36')

  Barbara Meter tells the life story of her father Leo Meter, assisted by a series of impressive slides, photographs and letters her father wrote to her after being arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Eastern Front. A superbly designed and above all poignant portrait in documents of a unique man, told by his daughter.
  
  Barbara Meter: "There are not many testimonies from Germans who resisted fascism – my father was one of them, and I could tell it. So I dug up what I found of him – photos, letters, drawings, stories – and recorded it. During the making of the film, I felt that step by step I came closer to who he had been, and also closer to the love and protection I experienced from him – even if I was too little to remember his presence clearly.
  
  In Poland, I was very close to where he had died. There were only empty fields of grain and old broken houses... such an estranged feeling that there were no signs left of the cruel fighting that had happened there. For myself, this gap has been filled, and I hope for some others too."