Award-winning The Nazi Drawings Documentary documentary to air on Iowa Public Television

Iowa Public Television will air Iowa City independent filmmaker Lane Wyrick's award-winning film The Nazi Drawings Documentary on Sunday, April 18 at 5:30 p.m. The video, completed in 1999, explores Mauricio Lasansky's powerful graphic series depicting the horrors of Nazi atrocities.

The Nazi Drawings Documentary Project began in the fall of 1997, with grants from the University of Iowa Foundation, Richard & Jeanne S. Levitt of Minneapolis, Marvin & Rose Lee Pomerantz of Des Moines, and Webster & Gloria Gelman of Iowa City. Shooting commenced in January of 1998. Wyrick, Mauricio and Phillip Lasansky flew to Providence Rhode Island to tape an interview with Edwin Honig, author of the text to the original Nazi Drawings "Catalog".

The documentary was released to critical acclaim in 1999, awarded "Best Documentary" and "Best Director" at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. The Nazi Drawings Documentary was also named a "Documentary Winner" and received a Certificate of Excellence at the Telluride IndieFest 2K; was awarded "First Place" in the first ever Des Moines Art Center Film & Video Competition; received four first place "Award of Excellence" trophies at the Iowa Motion Picture Awards Ceremony in 2000; and won five top awards at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival at presented at Mount Mercy College in 2002. In addition it was screen at the prestigious Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas (selected as one of 90 documentaries—out of over 800 submissions), the 6th Annual Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, the 21st Annual Telly Awards, the 2001 Texas Film Festival, and the Real to Reel Film & Video Festival. Additional information about the documentary and its creation can be found at the Nazi Drawings Documentary web site.

The IPTV airing of the documentary coincides with "Holocaust Remembrance Day" and the opening of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art's exhibit of the drawings themselves. This exhibit will be the first time since 1997 that the drawings have been on view, and the first time they have ever been displayed in Cedar Rapids. The complete series of drawings can be viewed online at the LasanskyArt.com web site:

      http://www.lasanskyart.com/art/collections/nazidrawings.shtml

Additional information about the CRMA exhibit can be found here.

For additional information about the IPTV showing of The Nazi Drawings,
visit the IPTV web site.