UND IN DER MITTE DER ERDE WAR FEUER
Bernhard Hetzenauer | Ecuador, Germany, Austria 2013 | 78 Min. | OmeU
The German-speaking Jewish Vera Kohn, born 1912 in Prague, fled after the occupation of Czechoslavakiain 1939 to South America, where she started a new life in Ecuador. After a long career as an actress in Quito, her mental crisis became unsustainable. In search for heeling she returns to Europe and starts psychotherapy treatments in a therapy centre of the German “Gestalt-therapist” and Zen Buddhist Karlfried Graf Dürckheim in the Black Forest. There she learns his “Initiatic therapy” and returns healed to Ecuador after three years. Afterwards she studied psychology in Quito, where she graduated with 57 years. More than 40 years Vera worked as a psychotherapist and gave classes in Zen-Meditation. She performed pioneering work in the field of clinical psychology in Ecuador.
In a style of an essay the filmmaker tells us about numerous meetings with the almost 100-year-old psychologist, where she reports about here exciting life and is accompanied by her work. Veras biography, her professional development is set into relation with the personal questions of the filmmaker – whose Austrian Grandfather was a SS-man – for collective guilt and individual responsibility. The film was made in a period of time of four years in Hamburg, Quito, Mexico City, Prague and Vienna.
