History and You - by Director/Writer MarieAnna Dvorak

1. History and You
MarieAnna Dvorak
"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from
immigrants and revolutionists.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt.
FDR's powerful words of wisdom and his brave leadership through the great depression and
then through the bloodiest war in human history are beyond admiration and praise.
This great man taught his nation to remember history, for the value of history is that it teaches
us what man has done and thus what man is. There are some who don't want to look into the
past. They want to look into the future, they say. But living without the past is impossible, as
we all are born into the facts of history and we all are part of it whether we want to be or not.
"Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past," said another great man, Sigmund
Freud.
Film has an important role to play in history. It allows us to experience not only historical
events but also the lives and feelings of other human beings. More importantly, a good film
can unite all society at least in sharing the same memories. Motion pictures with historical
events educate us about what has really happened and raise our awareness of what could
happen in the future to any of us. For history really likes to repeat itself, but its journey and
time are unpredictable.
These are the thoughts of a film director, who just like the audience, wants to see stories that
are factual and untwisted as they reveal the lives of fellow human beings. Such stories are
rare, as most of today's scripts are written by a third person and thus lack not only accuracy
but also correct feelings and proper expression. One such memoir, that could indeed be
considered stranger than fiction, has been written by its central character and will be released
in the near future. It is a story from east and west that tells the truth about the divided world
we live in and that draws us into the political ideologies which actually do divide the world.
But in spite of everything, the power of love dominates this story. No matter if it be the
immense love that people hold for each other or the irrefutable love we feel for our country
and home. "The hardest part on writing the script," says the writer, "was reliving my youth
when my heart was torn between my love for east and west during the postwar era - the era
of world-wide wounds”.