First the sad news. At the time I write this, we’ve just received word of the passing of Amnon Weinstein, restorer extraordinaire of legacy violins and violas. He was the heart and soul of Violins of Hope, the international project dedicated to locating and restoring stringed instruments that were among the treasures stolen by the Nazis from Jews who innocently brought them along when they arrived at concentration camps.
I was honored to meet Amnon when the documentary team visited Israel in April 2023. He and his amazing wife Assi welcomed our team into his workshop, the place where the magic happens. Filled to the rafters with violins, whole and in pieces, every one a rare and magnificent artifact as well as a splendid instrument.
Today it seems natural to me that I am thinking about one of the last things he said when we interviewed him. Someone asked if he plans to retire some day, despite the number of instruments still awaiting his attention. He smiled. “I have to go on living and working,” he said. “I have all these violins to restore.”
Fortunately for the violins and for the world, his son Avshalom has taken up the mantle. The remaining instruments recovered from the Shoah will one day sing again.
Meanwhile … the good news. Mike Edwards and Chris Martin journeyed to Los Angeles to show the latest cut of Episode 1 to Rob Kaplan, head of sales for ITV. It is he who will take our finished product and present it to the secondary markets (the streaming services whose names you know) and offer it to the highest bidder. He is a man who knows his business, cares deeply about this project, and his approval means absolutely everything to us. We all knew that if Rob wasn’t “wowed” we were in big trouble.
He loved it.
He sung the praises of its content, the presentation style, and ..
…then he told us where it falls short. And not much short: he spoke of it as being “95%.”
The gist of his comments was this: it’s very, very good but the potential is there for it to be something even better, something that transcends the medium.
And, bless him, he gave us very specific directions about what he knows needs to change before we deliver the final cut, the “locked” version.
All of which means we have a lot of work to do on a more-or-less emergency basis. A new version needs to be completed in the next few weeks (!) and that means a new script, new visual elements, new narration, substantial changes to the music … in short, a lot of work.
But we can do it and we will. We must. We will not rest until we have made the best possible presentation of this important story. We know that we owe it to the survivors, to the liberators, to the families of both. We owe it to Matthew Rozell.
We owe it to history.