These news reports have been slow in coming, partly because we’ve been in lengthy negotiations to show our four-episode series on a world-famous streaming service that we can’t name until all contracts are signed.
In the process we have received some excellent input from them about what works best about our series — and it’s challenged us to take another long, hard look at all we’ve done so far and to ask ourselves, “How can it be even better?”
Part of the feedback has been about the kinds of images we’d included and how that relates to our commitment to education and to reporting the truth. (The New York Times recently published an in-depth article about this very thing.)
We’ve decided that any image of questionable authenticity is not something we want to include.
We’re standing up for the truth.
So with the goal of emphasizing the on-camera accounts of real people, we’ve gone back out into the world to record new interviews with eyewitnesses and experts!
And what a gold mine these new interviews have turned out to be! We already have excellent new conversations with train survivors Peter Lantos, Micha Tomkiewicz, and Elizabeth Seaman, as well with Dutch historian Ron Chaulet, and Imperial War Museum Head of Public History James Bulgin.
And there will be more to come!
The very act of stepping back to re-appraise our work has led us to another conclusion: this film needs to be in theatres.
So our job right now is to adapt the four episodes of the series into a feature-length documentary to be shown in theatres.
Our goal is to first release it in 100 American cities — after which we can go back to that world-renowned global television streaming platform — and to other markets as well.
We hope — and believe — that this approach will bring everyone the best of both worlds: a cinema event coast-to-coast followed by that film being streamed where people can see it anywhere on Earth…!
