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“I knew before I could speak,” Vivienne says in her South African lilt, standing before her collage, VIVE MAMAN. “I knew that from the very beginning, I knew that before I could speak and that's the truth. In what form I knew it I cannot say, those are the mysteries of childhood, but I knew it always.”
What did Vivienne know? That her mother, Talmy, had been unspeakably traumatized as a young girl hiding from the Nazis? That this act of disappearing caused Talmy to forget her parents' faces and voices, to forget her native tongue? That Talmy required Vivienne's mothering so she could come closer to being a mommy? That this unremembered past would both bind and hinder mother and daughter until it had a clearer narrative? These are some of the questions considered in Ofra Bloch's film, Vivienne's Songbook.
The film, with a panel discussion led by Eric Mendelsohn that included Margaret Black, Sue Grand and Irwin Hirsch, was hosted by the NIP Professional Association in March 2007. Ofra Bloch, who had never made a film previously, created this astonishing double psychological profile—of Vivienne and Talmy—in 2000. It was conceived as a final project for the NYU International Trauma Studies Program, prior to her psychoanalytic training at NIP. Ofra says, “I met Vivienne in 1995. I remember getting a phone call from my husband. He'd been to a gallery in Soho and had seen an exhibition. He asked me to come immediately and I did. It was the first time I'd heard of Vivienne or seen her work, we were both very curious about this woman. She depicted the Holocaust with such sensitivity. We heard she was a young woman, a South African. I shared my husband's