A beautiful, touching and thought provoking film by Sal Anderson, about the extraordinary life trajectory of Marika Henriques, from a little girl in her native Budapest hiding, alone and terrified, from the nazis, to 1956, when the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets unleashed more horrors on Marika, her family and millions of others, to finding refuge in London and slowly recovering her identity, even her name. A fortuitous gift of paper and crayons while in hospital got her started on drawing her dreams in bold colours, a kind of exorcism that, together with Jungian therapy and becoming a therapist herself, have led her to re-owning herself, her Jewish identity and belonging. She later translated her drawings into small tapestries. While her drawings were instinctive and ‘raw’ (she would never describe herself as an artist), her tapestries convey a sense of calm, of building something slowly, ‘stitch by stitch until the picture emerges’, an image she uses in her therapeutic work.
I felt the whole experience uplifting.
The Library was packed and the audience was totally enraptured. Sal took a lot of interesting questions at the end. Marika is now 90 years old and unfortunately too frail to travel across London, but Sal asked us, as she does at every screening, to be videoed waving at her.
In spite of all the traumas, Marika is a luminous person, beautiful and positive in her articulate expression of her story, and an incredible example of the healing power of creativity.
Marika has written a book, The Hidden Girl, the journey of a Soul, published by SHEPHEARD-WALWYN PUBLISHERS with her story, poems, drawings and tapestries.
With HUGE thanks as always to the wonderful staff at West Greenwich Library, especially to Kim and Emma; a sad goodbye (or au revoir, perhaps…) to Kim who has been moved to a different library, and to Debra, who helped me set up my events from the start in 2017, and supported me throughout even while working part-time, and who also has been moved to a different library.
If you are interested in staging a screening, please contact producer Tracey Gardiner at tracey@gardiner.com