A Letter Without Words - The filmmakers

Lisa Lewenz
(Director/Writer/Producer/Editor/ Cinematographer--contemporary footage)

A Letter Without Words is Lisa Lewenz's first film. Her multimedia art projects have been exhibited widely throughout the U.S. and she has been recognized with three consecutive Fulbright Research Fellowships to Germany; two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships; a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to Berlin; the 1989 Ferguson Award; the Baltimore Mayor's Commission Fellowship; numerous state arts fellowships; and residency fellowships to LaNapoule, France and Amherst College. Lewenz received broad critical acclaim for her photographic documentaries, "1984: A View from Three Mile Island," "Towards a More Perfect Union," and "Idol Worship/Idle Warship." She taught at New York University, the University of Illinois, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and was primary researcher in Germany for CBS News and the Discovery Channel documentaries. She has worked as a project director with the artist Christo and as programming assistant for filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow. Lewenz holds a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago (where she studied with avant-garde filmmaker, Stan Brakhage) and an MFA from CalArts. Lewenz was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

Ella Arnhold Lewenz
(July 12, 1883-July 5, 1954) Cinematographer (historical footage)

Born in Dresden, Germany, Ella Lewenz began experimenting with photography during the early 1900s. She married Hans Leo Lewenz in Berlin, in 1909, and moved to that city, which remained her home until December of 1938, when she emigrated to the United States. Her Berlin residence is now the Standesamt Charlottenburg von Berlin, Alt-Lietzow 28, a favorite site for weddings. Her family's vacation home was in Kladow, on the outskirts of Berlin. After learning how to process her own film, Ella started making 16mm films sometime during the mid-1920s. Eventually, she and her camera became inseparable, and although she was unknown as a filmmaker during her lifetime, her work constitutes one of the more important personal archives of her time. Ella Lewenz was one of the few women known to document the first half of this century in movies, diaries and photographs. A mother of six, she also edited, titled and dated her films. Her archive which includes about twenty hours of previously hidden footage, recorded family and friends, as well as many important figures in science, the arts, religion, and politics. Ella's work was packed away in the Lewenz family attic for almost thirty years following her death until it was discovered in 1981 by her granddaughter, Lisa Lewenz.