Anne Frank, the author of the famous newspaper , wanted to be a writer, but the house museum that keeps her memory in the Netherlands has imagined what would have happened if she had used a camera to capture her experiences. If instead of writing down things like this: “Dear Kitty, I feel oppressed, unspeakably oppressed, because I can never go out. I am afraid that we will be discovered and shot ”, he would have filmed his confinement in the annex of a house in Amsterdam where he was hiding from the Nazis. The result is a series on YouTube of fifteen chapters (which at the moment can not be seen in Spain) entitled Videodiario de Anne Frank , in which she recounts her experiences during the final phase of her ill-fated hideout, between 1942 and 1944.
The lead role is played by 13-year-old Dutch actress Luna Cruz Pérez, who has also starred in a popular local series titled Flikken Maastricht ( Maastricht Police) . Ana Frank is usually recreated by somewhat older artists, both in the film versions of the newspaper and in the theater, but now the age coincides with that of the real protagonist. And, above all, with the generation of social networks, used to documenting their lives on Instagram and vlogs. This time, Kitty is no longer a silent notebook lined with red squares, but the spectator himself. Looking directly at the camera and dreaming out loud about “going out, feeling the wind, going to the cinema… traveling to Paris or London”, Ana talks to us. Given that production was released on March 30, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, with a large part of the world population confined to their homes, empathy for confinement is much more natural if possible.
The Video Diary coincides in turn with the 75th anniversary of World War II, and although experts from the Anne Frank Foundation, on which the museum house depends, have read the script to avoid mistakes, the Diary is still the original source. Ronald Leopold, its director, hopes the images "will encourage thinking about anti-Semitism and discrimination." "The important thing is to create interest for generations that do not already have parents or grandparents to tell them what happened," he said.
The written Diary begins on June 14, 1942, two days after Ana's 13th birthday. Although she received many gifts that day, the notebook she will call Kitty was the one she liked the most. "I greet you, Diario, I find you wonderful!" He writes. In the new version, the girl films her house, her parents, Otto and Edith, and her older sister, Margot, at that very moment, when everyone is happy. On July 9, when Margot received a notice ordering her to report to the authorities to be deported to a labor camp, they decided to hide. The writer Ana notes: "We set out under a persistent rain (...) my parents gradually revealed to me the story of our hiding place (...) in the building where my father's offices were." In the Video Diary , the actress who plays her admits to the camera: "This is my life right now, weird, eh, sometimes I don't believe it, but that's the way it is." "It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Jews, what will happen if they find us," he adds in the room he shares with another of the refugees, the dentist Fritz Pfeffer. "The last one came and here we are," he says, making a face of circumstances and focusing on Pfeffer's extra bed.
With the Frank family the marriage of Hermann and Auguste Van Pels and their son, Peter, was also concealed. Anne Frank changed her last names in her writings, and thus, Mr. Pfeffer is renamed Albert Dussel, and the couple will be the Van Daan. The annex had a dining room, several shared rooms, and a loft, and the camera shows them in detail. For a moment, Ana even runs the shelf that covered the entrance to the hiding place to avoid suspicion, and the access staircase can be seen. He also sometimes leaves the camera on the dining room table and films what they eat during the confinement: potatoes, cabbage, soups, and canned goods obtained by his father's friends on the black market. Otto Frank ran a company of pectin, a vegetable substance used to make jams, and several of his employees helped support them during seclusion. He alone survived the Holocaust concentration camps.
There is also room to reflect the adolescent relationship between Peter van Pels, 15 years old when he hid, and Ana. With the ups and downs of the first illusion, and the added tension and misunderstandings in such a situation, the girl is filmed haggard and upset when one day he comes down to greet him. “It is what is done, isn't it? Say hi. Well, he has ignored me. ” At another point, she asks Peter what he doesn't like about her, and the boy replies that sometimes she is "too agitated". Ana then returns to her room and confides in the camera that she is a "stupid boy", and then buries her face in the pillow.
On March 30 the first two installments were broadcast and in four days the first episode has more than 150,000 views. The series, which reflects the last stage of confinement, beginning on March 29, 1944 (the Nazis broke in that August), adds earlier moments of life in freedom. There Ana goes on a bike and the sun shines, but she wears the yellow star imposed by the Nazis to point out the Jews. The idea for the Video Diary was from the advertising firm Every Media, and the dialogues, in Dutch, are subtitled in Spanish, French, English and Portuguese. Despite the translation, it will not be able to be seen in Spain, the United States or Mexico, because the copyrights of the Journal , in possession of the Anne Frank Fund, in Basel (Switzerland), have not expired, according to sources from the museum house.
The episodes, between 10 and 15 minutes long, air on Mondays and Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. Central European Time (CET), and May 4 is the scheduled date for the last one. They will be accompanied by audiovisual educational material in search of answers to the questions raised by the newspaper . Among them, why it has become so famous, or where the exclusion of the other begins.
* You can also follow us on Instagram and Flipboard. Don't miss the best of Verne!