Next generation filmmakers studying at the University are being taught by Rob Cohen, an award-winning writer, director, and producer who uses his lens to slip through time.

From his studio in New York and his travels around the world, Mr. Cohen is well known for creating scores of future-focused programs like CBS’ NextWorld and FutureCar; producing the film The Longest River, which was part of the PBS series, Quest; and even directing an opening film for the Super Bowl.

But three years ago he was asked to take a step back in time and far away.

An independent producer invited him to create a new documentary about the Holocaust — specifically, a film about the children’s block, block 66, at the Buchenwald concentration camp. In commemoration of 65th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, April 11, 2010, all of the survivors of Buchenwald, including the producer’s father, were invited to return.

Though I knew about the Holocaust from a cultural perspective and from the history books, I didn’t intimately know people who had been affected. Now I’ve really heard and have lived through it with them.

When asked by some people if he thought another documentary about the Holocaust was needed, Mr. Cohen said that every piece of work about the Holocaust is invaluable and the library needs to continue to grow. Having said that, in the same breath he said to them: “I won’t do just another Holocaust film, but will approach and tell the story in an entirely different way.”

The difference was to bring the intimate past into the present by working with four men who had walked in the same spaces decades earlier. The approach Mr. Cohen took with these survivors created an environment in which they could speak not to him and the camera, but to themselves and to one another. And Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald was created. URI Hillel will screen the documentary tonight, April 11, for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Mr. Cohen will be available for discussion.

“The four lead ‘characters’ in this film are not characters at all. They’re not superstars or super figures. They are people who were able to go on and embrace life as it came to them. They achieved this because they were able to survive and speak out,” said Mr. Cohen. “Now they wanted to talk about and thank those people — like the little-known Czech communist Antonin Kalina — who were responsible for saving them. On that day in 1945, there were 904 boys still alive who were rescued.”

And based in part on this documentary, on July 11, 2012, Kalina was declared “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel’s world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust. This was a well-deserved posthumous honor to an individual who defied the Nazis to save nearly 1,000 youths.

Mr. Cohen said that in retrospect, doing something that was in the past, yet in the present, really anchored him.

“Though I knew about the Holocaust from a cultural perspective and from the history books, I didn’t intimately know people who had been affected. Now I’ve really heard and have lived through it with them.”

So firmly anchored in 2013, with his students and all the tech tools available in Swan Hall, Mr. Cohen has shifted his lens again and works today with the filmmakers and projects of tomorrow.

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