Editing from Life

My documentary film Intervals of Silence: Being Jewish in Germany grew out of innumerable conversations in which I found myself poised between my American Jewish background and the German Catholic background of the man I married. In these conversations, I was often expected to answer questions such as "How much anti-Semitism is there in Germany today?" or "Are young Germans interested in knowing about Jewish life?" My film, which contains more than 200 statements from sixty different German speakers, is the answer I would like to give. In this essay I focus on one scene in my film and discuss the editing process by which I translated the experiences of real life into film form. (D.L.)