Nelly And Nadine

NELLY & NADINE
Directed by Magnus Gertten
2022 / Sweden / Belgium / Norway / 92 min
Original language with italian subtitles

> 9.NOV h 20.30 FILMCLUB
In partnership with FAS - Film Association Southtyrol

Il regista svedese Magnus Gertten ha lavorato a lungo su un prezioso materiale d’archivio del 1945 che documenta l’arrivo a Malmö dei sopravvissuti ai campi di concentramento nazisti, in prevalenza donne e bambini. Nei suoi documentari precedenti, Magnus Gertten ha cercato di rintracciare e ricostruire le storie di alcune donne che vengono riprese nel filmato. Ed è grazie alla proiezione di uno dei suoi documentari che è entrato in contatto con Sylvie Bianchi, che ha riconosciuto in un fotogramma il volto familiare di una donna che ha sempre vissuto con sua nonna Nelly, Nadine.
Grazie a questo primo contatto, e grazie all’esplorazione di un archivio privato rimasto abbandonato nella soffitta della famiglia di Sylvie, il regista riesce a ricostruire la storia di una straordinaria coppia, rimasta segreta e nascosta, quasi rimossa.

Nelly e Nadine è un documentario in cui gli archivi privati in super8, e le lettere e i diari delle protagoniste, ci permettono di affacciarci alla finestra di un mondo -non tanto lontano- in cui non tutti gli amori potevano essere dichiarati o potevano esistere. Il film ci aiuta a ritrovare l’eco di queste storie, così profonde e potenti da essere arrivate fino ai giorni nostri.

Proiezione in lingua originale - francese e inglese- con sottotitoli in italiano

Der schwedische Regisseur Magnus Gertten arbeitet schon lange mit wertvollem Archivmaterial aus dem Jahr 1945, das die Ankunft in Malmö von Überlebenden der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager – meist Frauen und Kinder – dokumentiert. In seinen früheren Dokumentarfilmen hat er versucht, die Geschichten einiger der gefilmten Frauen nachzuvollziehen und zu rekonstruieren. Durch die Vorführung eines seiner Dokumentarfilme kam er in Kontakt mit Sylvie Bianchi, die in einem Bild das vertraute Gesicht einer Frau Namens Nadine wiedererkannte, die stets bei ihrer Großmutter Nelly gelebt hatte.
Dank dieses ersten Kontakts und der Erkundung eines privaten Archivs, das auf dem Dachboden von Sylvies Familie zurückgelassen wurde, gelingt es dem Filmemacher, die fast verschwundene Geschichte eines außergewöhnlichen Paares zu rekonstruieren, das im Verborgenen lebte.

Nelly und Nadine ist ein Dokumentarfilm, in dem die privaten Super8-Archive und die Briefe und Tagebücher der Protagonistinnen einen Einblick in eine gar nicht so ferne Welt erlauben, in der nicht jede Liebe erklärt werden durfte oder existieren konnte. Der Film hilft uns, das Echo dieser Geschichten wieder zu entdecken, die so tiefgreifend und kraftvoll sind, dass sie bis in die heutige Zeit nachklingen.

Vorführung in der Originalsprache - Französisch und Englisch - mit englischen Untertiteln

Nelly & Nadine is the unlikely love story between two women falling in love on Christmas Eve, 1944, in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

In the middle of the horrors of the war camps the two women begin their life-long love journey. On Christmas Eve the Belgian prisoner and opera singer Nelly Mousset-Vos had been asked to sing Christmas carols in one of the French populated Ravensbrück barracks. After a couple of songs, a voice calls out from the dark: ”Sing something from Madame Butterfly!”. Nelly hesitates, but then she sings ”Un bel di vedremo”, an aria about the waiting for a loved one. Afterwards the woman who requested the song from Madame Butterfly emerges from the darkness. She kisses Nelly and says: ”The Good Lord has been kind to us”. Her name is Nadine Hwang and in this moment Nelly and Nadine become a couple, spending as much time together as possible.
But after two moths they are separated when Nelly is transferred to a different camp. After being liberated towards the end of the war, they manage to reunite and decide to start building a life together. For many years Nelly and Nadine’s lifelong relationship was kept a secret, even to some of their closest family.

Now Nelly’s grandchild, Sylvie, has decided to open Nelly and Nadine’s unseen personal archives and uncover their remarkable story. Among the photos, love letters and film reels in the archive, there is also a diary written by Nelly. In these previously unpublished personal notes, she tells her life story including details about being in love in the middle of the camp horrors, the complicated reunification with Nadine after the war, deciding to move to Venezuela so they could live freely and coming back to Europe in the early 70’s to spend their last years in Brussels.

Nelly & Nadine is a remarkable story about war sufferings, mysteries, love against all odds, the healing power of music, well kept secrets, and the complicated family stories of concentration camp survivors, still trying to deal with the ghosts of the past.

THE ARCHIVE FILMS

From the harbour of Malmö: Vittnesbördet, Sweden, 1945.
A Swedish news reel about the The White Buses rescue mission and the arrival of
concentration camp survivors in Malmö on the 28th of April, 1945. It premiered at the cinema Röda Kvarn in Stockholm the 7th of May, 1945, the same day as the ending of WWII was celebrated in the streets of Stockholm. This was the first time Swedes were able to watch footage of the victims of the Holocaust and the Nazi atrocities.
The news reel is 22 minutes long and directed by Nils Jerring. The cinematographer is Gustaf Boge, who worked with the news reel SF-journalen between 1920 and 1956. Vittnesbördet - meaning The Testimony - was produced by Svensk Filmindustri, SF. These days the original film is kept in the archive of SVT, Swedish National Television, together with a reel of outtakes from the shootings.
Very few films like this exist, showing survivors just coming out of the camps. Copies of the
film are a part of the collections at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, and United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, in Washington D.C.

The Nelly Mousset-Vos Archive
The 8mm film footage from Caracas, Venezuela, belongs to the family, represented by Sylvie Bianchi in the film. It’s mainly shot in the 60’s with Nadine Hwang behind the camera.