Still Life in Lodz

A documentary. A large still-life painting hung on the wall above Lilka Elbaum’s childhood bed in Lodz, Poland. It was the first thing she saw when she woke up, and the last thing she saw before she fell asleep. In the film, the metaphor of the painting is used to tell the story of Lilka Elbaum, now living in Boston, who returns to Lodz in search of objects from her memory. In her journey Lilka is accompanied by Paul Celler, a New Yorker and Roni Ben Ari, an Israeli with shared histories, which bind them to Lodz and the quest to find traces of family memories.