“Doc Talk: Pilgrims of several sorts, Hindu nationalism, life in Lodz then and now” | The Boston Globe

The title of Slawomir Grünberg’s “Still Life in Lodz” has more than one meaning. The still life mentioned refers specifically to a beloved painting of a table with fruit and flowers that hung above a sofa in the apartment where Lilka Elbaum grew up in the Polish city of Lodz after World War II. But it also refers to the fact that despite the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism of the subsequent Communist regime the Jewish community and culture still live in Lodz — both in the city itself and in the minds and memories of those with connections there. Read More.

“Still Life in Lodz” | DVD Talk

Still Life in Lodz, a haunting and hopeful documentary in equal measure, follows the journey of three Polish jews, ex-pats whose families immigrated to the USA and Israel, coming back to the Polish city of Lodz in order to reconnect with the ghosts of the past. Lodz once supported the biggest Jewish population in Poland, until Hitler Germany’s invasion of the country in 1939 tore it apart and burned it into ashes for good measure. Read More.

“‘Still Life in Lodz’ Review: A Painting Becomes a Window” | The New York Times

The loosely observed conceit of “Still Life in Lodz” is that certain objects bear passive witness to history. In this documentary, directed by Slawomir Grunberg, Lilka Elbaum, a historical researcher born in Lodz, Poland, starts with a painting from the apartment in Lodz where she grew up. The painting had hung on a wall there since 1893, she says. It was the first thing she saw in the morning, and its absence left a “gaping wound” on the wall when her family left Poland in 1968, emigrating to North America to escape anti-Semitism. Read More.

“Still Life in Lodz” | J.B. Spins

To most collectors, a still life by Tolpin, a virtually unknown Russian painter is a far cry from Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (the painting in Woman in Gold), but to Lilka Elbaum (born Rozenbaum), it holds similar significance. Her family reluctantly left it behind when they were forced to immigrate by the Communist regime’s anti-Semitic purges, but its history in Lodz’s traditional Jewish neighborhood extended back before them, to the 1920s. Documentarian Slawomir Grunberg uses the painting as a device to examine the history of Lodz’s Jewish community in Still Life in Lodz, which opens virtually this Friday. Read More.

“Returning to Poland, chasing ghosts and a lost painting” | The Forward

“Still Life in Lodz,” a new documentary by Polish-Jewish director Slawomir Grunberg, centers on a Jewish woman’s return to her childhood home in Lodz, Poland, She, Lilka Elbaum, and her family were forced to flee no, not during the Holocaust, but in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War and a spike in Polish antisemitism. Jews were fired from their jobs, abused, and marginalized. 20,000-30,000 were exiled thanks to a campaign of government-sponsored harassment. Read More.

“New movies to stream this week: ‘The Inheritance,’ ‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ and more” | Washington Post

“Still Life in Lodz” takes a documentary look at four generations of Jewish life in the Polish city of Lodz by examining the destiny of a painting that once hung in the apartment of a Polish Jew from 1945 to 1968. Read More.

“Movie Reviews: New Releases for March 12” | Salt Lake City Weekly

By no means is it true that there are no new stories to tell about the Holocaust and its ripple effects over the decades; Slawomir Grünberg’s documentary just feels like it’s not sure which story it wants to tell. The focus here is not on those who directly survived the Holocaust, but on a subsequent generation—children of survivors, like Lilka Elbaum, Paul Celler and Roni Ben Ari—returning to Poland to explore the places their parents and grandparents were forced to flee. Read More.

“Virtual Discussion About the New Documentary “Still Life in Lodz”” | Patch

The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) joins the virtual launch of Still Life in Lodz, a new documentary film about what happened to the Jewish residents of this Polish city in the period before, during and after WWII. Watch the film, which opens on March 12, by streaming it on the Cinema Arts Center of Huntington’s website (use the code LODZ2021 to receive a discount), then join HMTC for our discussion on March 17 with the film’s director, Slawomir Grunberg, one of the film’s writers, Lilka Elbaum, and one of the family members who traces his history in the story, Paul Cellar. Read More.

“Review: The documentary ‘Still Life in Lodz’ reveals the power of mementos and memories” | Los Angeles Times

If a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also worth a documentary inspired by one. That would be director Slawomir Grünberg’s moving and evocative “Still Life in Lodz,” which centers around a painting that hung in the same tenement apartment in Lodz, Poland, for 75 years. It also became a kind of touchstone for young Lilka Elbaum, who beheld the staid portrait of fruit, flowers, wine and more, every day for her first 19 years, from 1949 to 1968. That was when she and her family lived in said apartment, a roomy, then-desirable place that overlooked a busy thoroughfare in front and a quieter courtyard in back. Read More.

“Movie with Abe: Still Life in Lodz” | Movies with Abe

People usually feel a connection to their homelands, but the experiences they had both there and in the places they later traveled and lived inform what that relationship is. Being forced to leave somewhere may create resentment towards the place itself for not being a safe and welcoming environment, but it surely also comes with feelings of loss and yearning for what used to be or could have been. Returning to the place where a person grew up later in their life can provide tremendous perspective, opening up old wounds and presenting new questions and answers about formative elements and moments. Read More.

“‘The Father’ explores dementia, and ‘Still Life in Lodz’ describes a return to Poland” | MV Times

The MV Film Society hosts two new films starting on Friday, March 12. “The Father” plays at the M.V. Film Center, and “Still Life in Lodz” screens virtually. Directed by Florian Zeller, “The Father” stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Anthony, and narrates his heartbreaking decline into dementia. The documentary “Still Life in Lodz,” directed by Slawomir Grünberg, describes Lilka Elbaum’s return to Poland and the still life painting that has been the source of her memories growing up in Lodz. Read More.

“Review: The documentary ‘Still Life in Lodz’ reveals the power of mementos and memories” | Yahoo News

If a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also worth a documentary inspired by one. That would be director Slawomir Grünberg’s moving and evocative “Still Life in Lodz,” which centers around a painting that hung in the same tenement apartment in Lodz, Poland, for 75 years. It also became a kind of touchstone for young Lilka Elbaum, who beheld the staid portrait of fruit, flowers, wine and more, every day for her first 19 years, from 1949 to 1968. That was when she and her family lived in said apartment, a roomy, then-desirable place that overlooked a busy thoroughfare in front and a quieter courtyard in back. Read More.

“Still Life in Lodz Review: Captivating Holocaust Documentary Contextualizes Trauma Through Art” | The Film Stage

As a young girl growing up in Lodz, Poland after World War II, the framed still life painting that hung above Lilka Elbaum’s family couch became synonymous with home. That’s what she saw when she awoke and that’s what she remembers most when looking back at the nineteen years she spent in that apartment building before immigrating to North America—and it wasn’t even theirs. This truth shouldn’t be surprising when you consider that city and that era. All the furniture in that room was claimed by her parents when they moved in after the German who resided there during the occupation was forced to leave. But it wasn’t his painting either. That piece of art survived three changes of ownership spanning owners with three very different fates Read More.

“Virtual discussion about the new documentary ‘Still Life in Lodz’” | The Island Now

The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County joins the virtual launch of “Still Life in Lodz,” a new documentary film about what happened to the Jewish residents of this Polish city in the period before, during and after, WWII. Read More.

“At the Movies: New film brings Rob Gardner’s music to big screen” | Daily Republic

“Still Life in Lodz” is described as an “emotionally riveting documentary” that journeys to the historically tumultuous city of Lodz, Poland. There, a surprise reunion with a painting that hung in the same apartment for 75 years becomes a probing investigation into the power of memory, art, time and resilience. It’s not rated. Read More.

“Still Life in Lodz (2021)” | Unseen Films

The picture at the center of Still Life in Lodz is not so much the focus of the film, but rather the thing that gets the story moving. The film begins when Lilka Elbaum returns to Poland after four decades to see the painting of the title. The painting had hung in the apartment where she grew up in from the 1890s until the contents of the apartment were sold. It went to the home of a woman that Elbaum knew. Accompanied by two friends with ties to the city, she makes the journey to Poland to see the painting and to come to terms with the city and the country of her birth as well. Read More.

“The Story of a Painting that Survived the Holocaust: STILL LIFE IN LODZ” | Sky Cowley, Medium

In 1968, an anti-Semitic movement swept across Poland. Thousands of Jews lost their jobs, and ultimately, their homes, as they faced government sanctioned harassment. Lilka Elbaum belonged to one of these families. Before she was pressured out of Lodz, Lilka lived in a pre-war apartment that had been home to a still life painting before her parents moved in. The titular painting, which inspired the creation of Still Life in Lodz, hung in the same spot from 1893 until the late 1960s, when Lilka was pressured out of Poland. Read More.

“Still Life in Lodz” Asks If Jewish Life in Lodz Is Still Possible or Does It Lie Only in Memory” | The Jewish Voice and Opinion

Those looking to reconnect with their past know that almost anything can serve as a trigger, that jolt of energy that says contact has been made. In the documentary, “Still Life in Lodz,” filmmaker Slawomir Grünberg presents three Jews with very different stories as they explore the possibility of finding the past through their families’ connection with the Polish city of Lodz, which, before World War Two, boasted a Jewish population of more than a quarter of a million.

The narrator and guide in this film, which opens in virtual cinemas nationwide beginning March 12, is Lilka Elbaum, a Lodz native, born after the war when her survivor parents, looking for a place to live, were guided to Lodz, which was still home to about 50,000 Jews.

When we meet Ms. Elbaum, she is returning to Lodz 48 years after post-Six-Day-War antisemitism in 1968 forced her family, like virtually all of Poland’s remaining Jews, to flee. Her family left for the United States. Read More.

“Documentary portrays four generations of Jewish life in Lodz” | Forward

A new documentary film, “Still Life in Lodz,” will be screened on Monday, January 6th at the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, New Jersey.

The documentary, by Polish-Jewish film director Slawomir Grunberg, portrays four generations of Jewish life in Lodz through the perspective of a still-life painting that belonged to a Jewish family and hung in their apartment from the end of the Czarist empire to the mass expulsion of Polish Jews in 1968. Read more.

“Still Life In Lodz: Portrait of a Polish City” | The Times of Israel

The central Polish city of Lodz was a thriving hub of Poland’s Jewish community before the Holocaust. Its story is told, at least in part, through one of its former residents, Lilka Elbaum, who lived in postwar Lodz until 1968.

What most reminds her of her birthplace is an unremarkable still life painting that adorned her parents’ apartment from 1945 until their departure from Poland. To Elbaum, it’s an “object of memory” that conveys a sense of place and security. Read More.

“NJ developer featured in new documentary” | New Jersey Jewish News

Still Life in Lodz” is a new documentary about the Polish city’s once-thriving Jewish-owned textile business and the interconnectedness of three families framed around a painting, titled “Still Life,” which hung in a Lodz apartment for 80 years.

One of the families featured in the 75-minute film, directed by Slawomir Grunberg and released by his company, LOGTV, is that of Paul Celler, owner of the development firm Pam Associates based in Manchester. He is a former member of Congregation Etz Chaim in Livingston and lives in Manhattan. Read More.