Director's Statement:
"I
was drawn to make a film about Leopold Kozlowski after I had seen how well
he looked on screen in my first film AT THE CROSSROADS: JEWISH LIFE IN
EASTERN EUROPE TODAY. I had known Leopold since my first meeting with him
in 1984. Being that he was such a natural story teller, his on screen
interviews hardly needed directing. Leopold represents the last "klezmer"
who grew up in the Yiddish world of Przemyslanj, Poland before the
Holocaust. He came from an illustrious klezmer family that was known
throughout Galicia, and when I met him I knew he was the "real" thing. He
was not a revivalist like the rest of us. Klezmer music kept him alive
during the Holocaust playing for the SS in the labor camp where he was a
prisoner, and then keeping his spirits and the rest of his fellow
partisans up playing music in the forests. What really makes the film for
me is the fact we met one of Leopold's fellow partisans and good
friend Shimon. When they met it was the first time in forty-one years, and
it was very emotional. Shimon, who was living at the time in L'viv (Lemberg),
acted as the emotional tree that Leopold leaned on many times throughout
our journey. After the film came out, Leopold became much more known
throughout Europe and began giving concerts and workshops throughout the
continent. The Last Klezmer is an homage to all those Jewish musicians who
perished during the Holocaust."--
Yale Strom |