Join filmmaker & animator David Rendall and author Eric Beck Rubin for a special evening of reading, screening and discussion as they share their latest work. Both the film Today Is A Gift and the novel Ten Clear Days come from the stories their grandmothers told them, of their survival of the war in Europe. The discussion will revolve around the artistic interpretation and perpetuation of these stories and the hybrid forms they take.
Tickets -$15 + fees online, or CASH at the door.
$15 + fees. Prepurchase or pay CASH at the door
Presented by Every Grain screening series.
7 Doors
7:30 Event begins + Reading
7:50 Screening
8:15 Discussion
Please note: Eric's book Ten Clear days will be available to purchase April 24th through Books & Co. and online.
Today Is A Gift - a film by David Rendall
A harrowing and poignant portrait of 96 year-old Sally Rendall as she recounts her fortuitous survival through the Holocaust in Romania and her modest new beginnings as a Montréal immigrant. Elegantly captured through the eyes of her grandson, Today Is A Gift blends traditional documentary with imaginative hand-drawn charcoal animations.
Sally Rendall is born in Czernowitz, Romania in 1921, by the time she is a teenager, every Saturday night, bricks and stones violently crash through her family's windows, and this is the most benign part of what's to come. As the second world war consumes Europe, Sally and her husband's odyssey begins, they descend further and further into a darkness she will forever struggle to return from as she faithfully recounts each unexpected miracle.
David's own journey to document and bring together his baba's account spans 15 years. Today Is A Gift is not just a first person witnessing of the past, but an exploration of how stories are passed through generations, the role of our imagination, and the blessings of a tenacious heart.
Ten Clear Days - a novel by Eric Beck Rubin
When a Holocaust survivor, requests medical assistance in dying, it divides her family. Over ten increasingly tense days, we come to know her story and its final outcome.
On a Tuesday night in August 2018, eighty-three-year-old Mary Beck is rushed by ambulance to the hospital. She wakes up to the news that her surgery was a success and her recovery is underway–but she doesn’t want to hear it. She had been preparing for her end. And with newly enacted legislation, she can demand it.
Before a decision can be made on whether to grant her request, a member of the non-medical hospital staff, “Au.,” is brought in to record the unfolding events. But what begins as an arm’s-length report during ten mandated days that Mary awaits her fate, soon turns into a sweeping examination of a life.
From her upbringing in pre-war Hungary and survival of the war, to the start of her new life in North America, Mary, along with her family and friends, tells the story of this complicated, forceful, fiercely loved person at every stage of her extraordinary life. A life she now fights to end on her own terms.