Exclusive video: A life to tell

Experience the Holocaust through the life of a sixteen-year-old deaf girl with a spirit that couldn't be crushed.

film (photo credit: Leadel.net)
film
(photo credit: Leadel.net)
A professional TV commercial producer gone amateur filmmaker, Frank Stiefel had his heart set on making a movie for his children to have a record of who their grandmother was by creating a documentary film about his mother, Ingelore.  The film, entitled Ingelore, is about survival, strength, and freedom.
Experience the Holocaust through the life of a sixteen-year-old deaf girl (Mr. Stiefel's mother), growing up in Germany in the early 1900s. Stiefel's film enraptures its audience with the story of a special soul whose light is so strong that despite all life's atrocities, life didn't just go on, it prospered.
"No matter what was thrown at her, her spirit couldn't be crushed. Her spirit was bigger than the Nazis, it was bigger than an illegal abortion in the 1940s, it was bigger than anything that could be thrown at her, " Frank Stiefel says about his mother.
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"The deaf rarely get to see themselves in movies.  When you think about how many films there are that have deaf characters…there are very few films about deaf people."
The author says turning from TV commercials to a documentary was a rewarding experience. "I was one of the people that ran Radical Media, the largest commercial production company in the world. When you make an expensive TV commercial, no matter how much you're paying people, they always complain.  When you're making something out of your heart, nobody complains. No matter how many hours you're at it, everybody just wants to do it."