A new WWII documentary co-directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns will soon be given a preview screening on the UAB campus.
“Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War,” a film by Burns and Artemis Joukowsky, will be shown at the Alys Stephens Center on Sunday, Sept. 11, at 6:30 p.m.
“Defying the Nazis” tells the story of two courageous Americans – a minister and his wife, Waitstill and Martha Sharp – who staged a daring mission to rescue Jews, refugees, and dissidents from Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1940s.
Joukowsky, co-director and the grandson of the Sharps, will speak after the screening in a video conference.
The 90-minute film is told using the couples’ letters and journals, with Tom Hanks doing the voice of Waitstill and Marina Goldman that of Martha. It features interviews with the now-adult children the Sharps saved, as well as authors and scholars.
“Beyond the cloak-and-dagger suspense of my grandparents’ experience, it is a story of what America meant to refugees fleeing war-torn countries to build new lives,” Joukowsky says.
Even three years before America entered WWII, Waitstill and Martha Sharp “gave up everything they knew and loved and risked their lives to become involved in a war 4,000 miles away because they knew there were people in grave danger who needed help,” says Burns, whose other documentaries include The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The War, and Prohibition.
The event is presented by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham along with Alabama Public Television, the Levite Jewish Community Center, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center and the Birmingham Jewish Federation.
The film will premiere on PBS on September 20, at 8:00 p.m. Central time.
Joukowsky, also a film producer, has written a companion book for the film, available from Beacon Press on September 6.
The Alys Stephens Center is located at 1200 10th Ave. South
The event is free, but seating is limited. To reserve tickets, call 205-975-2787, go to http://aptv.org/Events or visit the Alys Stephens Center box office during regular hours.
