"The Man On The Bus" FREE Film And Q&A With Australian Director: Eve Ash. Can The Secret Of A Holocaust Survivor Parent Change Who You Are?

7:00pm Friday June 7th
“Man On The Bus”
Can a secret change who you are?
6:00pm Meet n’ Greet With Aussie Director: Eve Ash
7:00pm film and Q&A With Director
TICKETS FREE: RSVP

Mysterious events unfold and reveal how Martha, a Polish holocaust survivor, managed to lead a double life in Australia. The vivacious Jewish artist and doting mother, died without ever revealing her secret.
The film follows Martha’s daughter Eve, over a decade, as she unlocks the mystery behind the streets named Eve and Martha. Clues are found in old recordings and Martha’s home movies revealing a mystery man gazing into the lens.

Eve’s investigation leads her to the Sobieski castle in the Ukraine, the site of a massacre where her grandmother died, and the Eichmann trial as she explores her parents’ holocaust survival and her father’s heroic escape from a concentration camp.
When a ‘doppelgänger’ contacts Eve, her life is forever altered, as she uncovers lies, tracks down her mother’s young lover and reveals the family secret that led her to rewrite her entire life.

Eve Ash is a psychologist, author and public speaker who has produced hundreds of short films, documentaries and TV episodes, winning over 150 awards for creativity and excellence and an Australian Businesswoman of the Year award.

Eve is passionate about justice, learning and human rights, producing the multi award winning animated series Finding My Magic, featuring Olympian Cathy Freeman, to teach children of all backgrounds about their rights. She founded Seven Dimensions and created the popular US business comedy series Cutting Edge Communication and her own interview series, Insights & Strategies.

For the last ten years Eve has worked on the wrongful conviction case of Sue Neill-Fraser, producing the award winning feature documentary, Shadow of Doubt (2013) and co-producing and starring in the 6-part TV series Undercurrent: True Crime Murder Investigation (2019) screened on Channel 7, Australia. Her latest feature documentary, Man on the Bus, about her own family secret, was self-financed and produced over ten years, and completed March 2019.

Director Statement: My parents survived the holocaust and made a new life in Australia. I was obsessed with the idea that our family had secrets, and had a theory that I had a different father to my sister. I asked independent researchers to interview my mother then filed them away.

After my parents died, I began delving into my mother's home movies, audio recordings and documents. I found clues to a romance in my mother’s footage. In 2008, after discovering a new half-sister I filmed myself going to find her (and my) father, an 83-year-old man she didn’t like. It took me over an hour to confront him after I met him and a further ten years to work out how to put the documentary together. I filmed that with an HDV small camera, as I did on other occasions where the emotions and true life experiences overshadowed my producer’s mind. When I had the chance to plan ahead – it was always with a cinematographer and crew. Strangely this combination of ‘rough’ footage with my small camera, together with cinematic and well shot scenes has become a look I have enjoyed on my other ten-year project. Many times I wished I had shot something differently, but then I realize these are the real moments I have captured – the sadness, the anxiety and the fun.

Man on the Bus was a labor of love, I had no outside finance, so was investing my resources and time squeezed in and around work on a wrongful conviction also for a decade. This film blends real time grabs with a camera at hand with quality cinematography. That is the nature of a real story unfolding around me.

The hardest thing with a film like this is gathering archival footage, finding the old photos and relevant material and spending weeks and months trawling. My father was interviewed for another film, I got access to that. My sister and I visited Poland and the Ukraine to see where mum and dad had lost their loved ones. I got approval from the Spielberg Archive Collection for use of relevant footage. But along the way I met elderly Jews, family and friends, in Europe and Australia, who knew my parents and preferred me not to go public with the story.

I was obsessed by the idea of one major recreation, but using it as a documentary element – a scene on a 1949 bus where my mother met ‘the man’ and doing it with that man and filming that process. I directed two crews on the bus – the documentary crew and the cinematic recreation crew. I was excited to have the authentic advisor, my new father – the man who met my mother on an identical bus 60 years earlier. I started by cutting a 3-part TV series, that evolved into a feature film.

Love, loss and lies are the main themes and I was struck by how my relationship with my new father developed over the filming. Both me and my new dad, Dixie, were obsessed with the progress of a wrongful conviction case (about which I made films) hence the scene of us at a rally together. Dixie is 94, working full time and to this day our bond remains strong, as does my bond to my wonderful parents, Martha and Feliks – all inspirational to my filmmaking.

I have made many short films, documentaries and TV episodes; but none as challenging as this one – because it is my story. On other projects I have a professional crew to work with on clearly planned shoot days. This was different – I was living and breathing the story and almost paralyzed by the thought of filming it. It took over a decade to pull the film together because I had to dig deep into my family secrets, and examine all the family media covering 60 years.

I had to confront the fact that my mother kept this secret – a lie of omission that was all about my origins. I knew she told some lies, and although I somehow guessed what turned out to be true, it was the biggest shock I have ever had.

It was an emotional upheaval to go through the holocaust footage, and tell my parents’ stories, especially my father’s escape story, And it became a delicate balance of all the elements and moods to ensure the film was ultimately uplifting. And as a psychologist I think that making the film has been my way of true acceptance of what happened.

Anecdote during filming

When the DNA tests came back confirming Helen and I were only half-sisters, my long time suspicion founded on instinct was correct. We had two different fathers! And a look-alike stranger, Micheline, was also my half-sister and OUR father (whom she disliked) was 83 and living across town. My daughter was a week overdue with her first baby wishing the birth would happen. I suggested that next day we go to find this man, my biological father, her grandfather as the "excitement" of the surprise meeting might bring on her labor. The plan was thwarted when she went into labor overnight, and it lasted 56 hours, during which time I filmed the birth and stayed with her. I got home, hadn't slept for two days, and asked my niece Melina, to come with me to find my father, because I was anxious. I took my little home video camera and we filmed ourselves driving to meet Dixie. I have never been so anxious with anticipation in all my life. I was too scared to knock on his door so I made Melina call him and invent a pretext without giving anything away. I was almost sick with anxiety and he wanted to meet in a shopping mall - which was the worst place of all, noisy, busy and too many onlookers. I am amazed we both managed to film anything usable, but we did capture the moment, despite me unable to confront Dixie for over an hour. In that one week I got a new father and my first grandson.