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By the end of World War II, the Nazis had killed six million Jews. Of these, 1.5 million were children1. Thousands of children escaped Nazi attempts to exterminate them because they were hidden from the outside world and given false identities. Separated from their families, they lived in constant danger of discovery and of being killed, whilst those who hid them risked execution.
London-based Jungian psychotherapist Marika Henriques, now 88, was one such child. She was nine years old when the Nazis marched into Budapest in March 1944. To save her life, she was taken from the ghetto, separated from her parents and sister, and hidden in a basement with a janitor and his family. Overnight she was given a new name and had to learn her new identity as the child of strangers. She did not know if she would ever see her family again.
Iridescent Films, a small independent film company2, has turned her story into Chaos Dragon and the Light, an extraordinary hour-long documentary that arose out of an intensely creative working relationship between director Sal Anderson and editor Natasha Westlake, together with executive producer Tracey Gardiner. The film's first screening was part of a service at Westminster Synagogue, London, on April 17, 2023, the Day of the Shoah, when Jews commemorate the Holocaust.
Chaos Dragon and the Light employs cinematic technique to wonderful effect. Jump-cuts replicate traumatic experience as the camera switches from one frame to the next in rapid succession, with wide and narrow angle shots, using silence and music to penetrate our senses and emotions, rather than engaging cognition. Natasha Westlake's editorial eye carefully selects details which subliminally influence. The cumulative impact is assaultive, inspiring, intriguing and moving by turns.