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“100 Voices: A Journey Home”

"100 Voices: A Journey Home" is a musical documentary featuring a group of cantors from the Cantors Assembly, the largest professional organization of cantor/clergy in the world, who return to Poland, the original home of cantorial music, from their own homes around the world. The title refers to the 72 cantors who are joined by local choruses as they perform in a series of sold out concerts in places such as the Warsaw Opera House and the Krakow Philharmonic Hall. They even conduct the very first Jewish service at Auschwitz and the death camp Birkenau. But this is about much more than music and its Jewish heritage. It’s about the coming together of different faiths and the overwhelming welcome the visitors receive from Polish citizens. The film focuses on the personal reflections of six of the cantors, from the United States, Britain, South Africa and Greece, but all with a Polish heritage. Each one of them has a personal reason for being in Poland. They are there to honor their parents or grandparents and to visit their ancestral homes and villages. They are also there to show that the cantorial tradition is alive and well sixty years after it had been all but obliterated in the Nazi holocaust that had engulfed Poland and much of Europe. Accompanying the singers was Oscar nominated and Emmy and Grammy winning composer Charles Fox ("Killing Me Softly") who wrote the film's underscore and a special piece with the words of Pope John Paul II, which he conducted. He made an emotional trip to the village where his father had grown up. His father made it out, but most of the 8,000 Jews who had lived there did not. Blended into the documentary is historical footage from the golden age of cantors in the early twentieth century, as well as segments from Yiddish theater. Before World War II the Jewish and Polish cultures were completely interwoven, Jews playing an integral part in Polish life. Then came the Nazis followed by the Communist regime. Today Poland is one of Israel’s staunchest allies and the cantors were enthusiastically received wherever they appeared. All the singers have been trained in opera. The main concert was performed with the National Opera Chorus and Orchestra. With the 100 strong chorus, a 100 piece orchestra, a 40 voice children’s choir and a group of eight young singers from the Steven S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles there were more than 300 performers on stage. The film shows poignancy and humor, the darkest of days and the resilience of the Jewish people who survived and inherited the cantorial mantle. Production Notes

“100 Voices: A Journey Home” didn’t start out to be a documentary. Cantor Nate Lam, of the Steven S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles, one of the largest congregations in the world, was planning on taking 72 fellow cantors from around the world to Poland, where the cantorial tradition began. The title refers to these cantors who are joined by local choruses. It occurred to him that it should be documented on video. The project grew from there. Documentaries, unlike carefully scripted and story-boarded feature films, do take on a life of their own. Through his son, Michael Lam, he asked experienced documentary makers Matthew Asner and Danny Gold if they would like to produce and direct the film. In a highly unusual world premiere the film will be shown simultaneously before an estimated audience of 150,000 assembled in 500 theaters across the United States on September 21, 2010. This event is organized by NCM Fathom, Mod 3 Productions and The Machine. The latter company, headed by producers’ representative Jon Sheinberg, is handling marketing for the film. The Machine is a one-stop full-service literary management organization and motion picture production company. The following day “100 Voices” will open an Oscar ® qualifying run at the Empire 25 Theater in New York and AMC Century 15 in Los Angeles. The film has been accepted into the Haifa International Film Festival in September and the Hollywood Film Festival in October.

Thirty years in show business Cantor Lam has been involved in show business for 30 years and has been producing major events for the last 20. In 1991 he brought the Cantors’ Assembly to Los Angeles and organized a concert at the Shrine Auditorium with talent from around the world, a full orchestra and a 600-voice choir. He organized subsequent concerts in Florida, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. “I’ve tried to exhibit what the cantor does in a larger picture than just standing at the pulpit representing the congregation in prayer.” He explains that cantors are full clergy people who take a four-year undergraduate course plus a five-year graduate program. “I try to make what the cantor does relevant. It’s about having a connection to the past through music, a medium that many people understand, not just Jews. We are the heart and soul. Some people are intellectual. That’s for others, for rabbis maybe.” Michael Lam had been to Poland many times and it was he who suggested taking the cantors there. Nate started work on the project three or four years ago, meeting with representatives of the Polish government and Israeli government because it was to be a combined trip to the two countries. He decided to honor Poland’s favorite son, Pope John Paul II who had been the first pope to go to Israel, putting a prayer into the western wall asking forgiveness for all the things done to the Jews. Next he asked Oscar® and Emmy® nominated composer Charles Fox to put the pope’s words to music, For Fox, who’s had his share of accolades, this became one of the greatest moments of his career—conducting that music and those words with a great orchestra and choir in his ancestral home. As plans for the trip grew and evolved it became clear that money needed to be raised and Cantor Lam turned to Metuka Benjamin, one of the most influential members of the Jewish community. She became executive producer of the film.

The logistics of moving 400 Matthew Asner and Danny Gold assembled their top end crew for the production. In view of the subject matter and the musical nature of the production, they paid particular attention to the sound and look of the production. Up to six cameras would be used at some locations. With the 72 cantors, the young singers from Los Angeles and members of various congregations accompanying them, the group became 400, a massive logistical undertaking, moving to different cities every day. Although Nate’s initial idea had been to make a travelogue out of this experience, When Danny, Matthew and Michael signed on to the project the resulting intention was transformed into a feature documentary and as cameras rolled “magical moments” ensued. “You start talking to people. There were the two brothers from South Africa, Joel and Ivor Lichterman, whose father was the last cantor of the Noygck Synagogue, the only synagogue in Poland that was not destroyed, because the Nazis used it as a stable. And then there was Cantor Alberto Mizrahi whose Greek father had to take bodies out of the gas chambers and put them in the crematorium. The whole thing started snowballing. It took us over.” The most emotional moment of the tour was the Jewish service conducted in the heart of Auschwitz concentration camp, in the area where inmates had been assembled for role call almost seventy years earlier. Nothing like this had ever happened before. “The Torah was wrapped around everybody and people were balling, crying. Here you are standing in Auschwitz, symbol of the worst crime ever perpetrated on the Jewish people. Nate Lam says that this is a film for people of all religions. It isn’t a Jewish film, but a film with Jews in it. “It is a film about humanity. It is a film about the best in people who decided to have a dialogue. Listening to the other person’s narrative is important. If I’m not willing to listen to that person’s pain they’re never going to understand my pain.”

Putting a puzzle together Directors and producers Matthew Asner, son of actor Ed Asner, and Danny Gold, whose mother is Metuka Benjamin, have been friends for 40 years and partners for 10, producing numerous documentaries over the years. They explain how the writing of a documentary happens as it shoots. “It’s like putting a puzzle together,” says Asner. Although there are well-known teams in feature film directing—the Coen Brothers for example—it’s rare that two directors will tackle a documentary. Danny Gold explains that through years of working together, he and Matt have cultivated their own creative and work style. . Danny continues, “we’ve actually worked out a great shorthand. We’ve developed a way to communicate with each other artistically. I think it’s unique because a lot of studios and networks we’ve worked for had a real positive experience with our process and style.” The directors say that what started out as a travelogue evolved into a history show and then became an emotional story about characters and re-connection. They are used to making documentaries for the History Channel and other networks where they’re involved in stories that happened in the distant past. With “100 Voices” they were dealing with people who are experts and have a direct connection. “This movie allowed us as documentarians to feel the subjects’ stories as they were experiencing it themselves. One of their most emotional moments was when they filmed at the Noygck Synagogue. The Lichterman brothers, praying at the very spot their father had prayed, “open up not just their story, but their hearts to let us in. to really feel the emotion,” says Danny Gold.

A significant assignment for Charles Fox “It’s an intense tale of personal reconnection,” added Asner. For composer Charles Fox this was one of the most significant assignments of his long and illustrious career. He visited the village his father had left at an early age. All his relatives were killed in the Treblinka death camp. His father had never spoken about it and Charles always had a great curiosity about his roots. Although this visit was a private moment he allowed the crew to follow him. His emotions are evident on camera. Like the Lichterman brothers in their father’s synagogue, this was a story of connections, of finding one’s roots. And it was the moment when the film came together, says Danny Gold. And then there’s Cantor Alberto Mizrahi, an opera singer who understudied Pavarotti, but who also had a strong spiritual side that wanted to be a cantor. In the movie he explains that he wanted to show his parents that he had meaning to his life. Many of the cantors have worked on the secular side, some performing at the Met, Carnegie Hall and on Broadway. Cantor Simon Spiro’s father was a well-known member of the Yiddish theater and in the movie Simon he does an hilarious mime bit in that tradition. One of the key figures in the movie is Janusz Makuch, a non-Jew and founder of the Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow 20 years ago. He grew up under the Communist regime, not even knowing what a Jew was. He decided to launch this festival when he learned how interconnected the Polish and Jewish cultures were. Every year 25,000 people, the vast majority non-Jewish, come to the city to watch and listen to Jewish music, which had existed in Poland for a thousand years before being destroyed. Says Danny, “That’s what these cantors did. They came to Poland and gave a sort of love letter to the past, saying, ‘hey, what you guys did here is honored. And we’re still here.’ So you have to look to the past with an eye towards the future. That’s one of the over-riding themes of the movie.”

Filming in Poland took two weeks, but there was another year of work editing and refining down the movie from 120 hours to one and a half hours. Historical footage was blended in, including rare early color footage from Poland. Much of this material came from the US Memorial Holocaust Museum and The National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University.

What’s next for Cantor Lam? He plans to do it all over again in 2012, this time taking the cantors to Germany.