A new home movie-style documentary about the experience of a film-maker's family during the holocaust, Three Days in Auschwitz (Cinematic Notes for My Grandchildren), features a score by musician Eric Clapton.
Film-maker Philippe Mora and Eric Clapton became friends in 1967, when both men were residents at The Pheasantry, an artists colony in Swinging London.
Mora won acclaim for his documentary Brother Can You Spare a Dime. Clapton co-produced Mora’s 1969 film Trouble in Molopolis and wrote the score for his 1989 alien-contact film Communion. The blues guitarist is co-producer of Three Days in Auschwitz. Clapton performed two years ago at Poland’s Life Festival Oswiecim, which took place close to Auschwitz’s infamous Arbeit Macht Frei gate.
He contributes four instrumental tracks to the film, and is seen playing guitar on-screen for a few moments during its closing credits. The Hollywood Reporter recently played tribute to Clapton's `haunting' score.
Born four years after the end of the Second World War, film-maker Mora learned years later that eight members of his family had been killed at Auschwitz. In 2010 he traveled to Poland’s Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for the first time and returned on several occasions.
“I thought, if I tell a story about myself and my family, it might help other people deal with it,” Mora says to the camera at one point in the film. “When I say ‘deal with it,’ there’s no real way of dealing with it — it’s just horrible. But you can understand more about it if you go (to Auschwitz) and study it.”
