The Maelstrom

“In the heart of the UCLA evening, and in many ways the most complex and evocative use of home movies in the program, is an hour-long work called “The Maelstrom”, by Hungarian filmmaker Peter Forgacs. “The Maelstrom” makes extraordinary artful use of a considerable cache of home movies shot in the Netherlands before and during World War II and dealing with the extended Peereboom family. Information is conveyed through subtitles and instead of voice-over, the soundtrack consists of period sound, usually from radio broadcasts, and brooding, disturbing jazz score by Tibor Szemzo. What we see is a Jewish family first living unknowingly in the shadow of the Holocaust and then trying to cope with it, still unaware of what it will finally mean. A shot of the film´s photographer, Max Peereboom, and his family cheerfully sewing and preparing for a trip to a “work camp”, when their destination was the nightmare of Auschwitz adds a devastating dimension to our understanding of the Final Solution that nothing else, no Holly wood movie, no documentary, has been able to provide.” (Kenneth Turan, “The Most Personal Filmmakers”, L.A. Times, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998)