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Film chronicles
students’ Holocaust memorial
Miramax Films is known for releasing blockbuster films,
but each year it also releases several documentaries.
This year the movie company has chosen three documentaries,
including Jerry Seinfeld’s highly anticipated “Comedian”
and “My Voyage to Italy” by Martin Scorsese.
The third is from a relatively unheard of film company
right here in Virginia, The Johnson Group of McLean.
The
80-minute film, “Paper Clips,” follows a group
of middle school students learning about the Holocaust
and their subsequent effort to honor the 6 million Jews
killed during World War II. The students — from
Whitwell Middle School in Whitwell, Tenn., a mostly
white community with no Jewish residents — met
on their own time after school. The school’s vice
principal challenged the students to create a memorial
piece, and their research uncovered a silent Norwegian
protest against the Holocaust that inspired their own
memorial: During the war, citizens wore a paper clip
on their lapel to represent a Jewish life. The Whitwell
students set out to collect one paper clip for each
of the Jewish lives lost during the war.
The
group collected more than six million paper clips, and
its efforts spawned an outpouring of international support.
On the other side of the Atlantic, two German journalists
who learned of the memorial helped raise funds to ship
an authentic German rail car to the school. In a twist
of poetic irony, the boxcar, which is documented to
have taken victims to their deaths in concentration
camps, serves as a permanent site for the millions of
paper clips.
The
$300,000 piece took 20 days to film, and is currently
being edited. It’s expected to be released in early
2003 on movie screens nationwide. The company may also
enter the film in the upcoming Sundance Film Festival,
an annual contest for independent films.
Other projects in the works for The Johnson Group include
a behind-the-scenes NBA documentary that it is producing
with Penny Marshall and Magic Johnson, and “Recipes
with Joan Lunden,” a biography and cooking show
featuring the former Good Morning America co-host. The
company is also planning an animated film as well as
projects for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.
—
Holly M. Rodriguez
Return
to Virginia Business - November 2002
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