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IN THE SHADOW OF MEMORY

Film by Alan Teller and Jerri Zbiral

This 52 min. documentary film focuses on Jerri Zbiral, the daughter of a survivor of the Nazi destruction of the Czech village of Lidice. Although she was born after the war, and left the country as an infant, her mother's stories have had a profound effect on her life. It is a compelling story that addresses emotional issues that span generations. This award-winning film combines historic footage and contemporary interviews with survivors. The 50th anniversary of the massacre is a starting point for an ongoing personal exploration of the legacy of tragedy, relevant far beyond a World War II setting.

* VASA thanks theAlan Teller and Jerri Zbiral for permission to screen this film .


time: 52 min. .
Videos may go full screen.

ALAN TELLER (b. 1946) received post-graduate training in anthropology and photography at Indiana University, which led him to create the Inner-City Photo Workshop, a Chicago center for high-school dropouts. He has received many grants for community photography projects and arts and social issues programs. Alan has published numerous articles as well as the guidebook ‘Photography in the Classroom.’ He was photographic researcher for the Field Museum of Natural History, where he also taught classes on photography and anthropology. Alan founded Teller Madsen, a museum exhibit design company that has developed over 100 exhibits nationwide, including the permanent exhibits for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, ‘Vivian Maier’s Chicago’ and many others. He was the founding Executive Director of the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy. Alan has taught at Columbia College, Purdue University, the School of the Art Institute and Lake Forest College, where he taught classes on Photography and Anthropology and Public History. He has exhibited his own photography since the 1970s. Alan has received many grants including a 2013 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar Award for ‘Following the Box,’ co-produced with Jerri as well as a 2022 award from the Spencer Foundation for ’50 Years Later’ an exploration of the effectiveness of his community photography program.


JERRI ZBIRAL (b. 1948) was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. Jerri founded and directed community photography programs for the Public Art Workshop and the Community Arts Center of the Uptown Hull House in Chicago. There, she worked as arts administrator, teacher, and director of a special photography program for the hearing impaired. With Alan Teller, she is a partner in The Collected Image, exhibiting vintage and contemporary photography and appraising photographic collections.  Jerri has received numerous grants for her own photography and to fund community programs. She has directed and produced the award winning and internationally screened documentary films ‘Never Turning Back, The World of Peggy Lipschutz’ and with Alan Teller, ‘In the Shadow of Memory: The Legacy of Lidice.’ She is co-Director of the Fulbright-Nehru funded project ‘Following the Box’.  She and Alan are based in Evanston, Illinois.


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