HOW DARE THE ANGEL SING – She dies at the stake but inspires a composer (70% production) blends the haunting story of an unjustly executed woman with that of a Jewish composer murdered by the Nazis—culminating in the emotional premiere of his opera in Magdeburg nearly 90 years later. It’s a deeply moving convergence of Holocaust history, women’s narratives, and the transformative power of art.
MUSIC LOVER, COMPOSER, MERCHANT, HUSBAND, FATHER IN 1920'S BERLIN, PROTAGONIST.
Eugen Engel was born on September 19, 1875 in Widminnen (East Prussia, today Wydminy in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland) to the Jewish merchant and landowner Samuel Engel (1830-1928) and his Jewish wife Berta, née Salinger (1835-1911 )
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Eugen Engel was born on September 19, 1875 in Widminnen (East Prussia, today Wydminy in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland) to the Jewish merchant and landowner Samuel Engel (1830-1928) and his Jewish wife Berta, née Salinger (1835-1911 ) . Although Eugen Engel worked as a businessman all his life, his passion was music: as a listener, composer and musician friend. He would visit music stores with his daughter to listen to recordings with her there. It is not known when the young businessman began turning to music and composing. Even though Engel said in a letter in 1938: "I'm not a pianist," he must have had an impressive musical personality. After 1914 Engels' compositional activities concentrated entirely on his opera Grete Minde. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, public performances by the Jew Engel were unthinkable.
The last years before he emigrated to the Netherlands in 1939 he spent using his good contacts in Berlin's musical life to get Grete Minde performed abroad. In addition to the exchange with Bruno Walter, correspondence with the conductor Leo Blech and the pianist Edwin Fischer has been preserved.
On March 23, 1943, he was transported in a mass transport along with 1,250 prisoners to the Sobibor extermination camp, where he was murdered three days later, on March 26, 1943, at the age of 67, most likely in the gas chamber.
FREE SPIRIT, LOWER CLASS WOMAN IN THE 1600S, PROTAGONIST.
Grete Minde (1593 to 1619) came from a patrician family in Tangermünde. Her father was Peter von Minden, who was banished from the city for manslaughter. Nothing is known about her mother a Catholic Spaniard, which is why she was later considered
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Grete Minde (1593 to 1619) came from a patrician family in Tangermünde. Her father was Peter von Minden, who was banished from the city for manslaughter. Nothing is known about her mother a Catholic Spaniard, which is why she was later considered an illegitimate child. After her father's death, she could not prove her family lineage and felt cheated out of her inheritance. Her attempts to claim her inheritance failed. In 1616, she married Antonius "Tönnies" Meilahn in Stendal, a vagrant with no income who had been repeatedly convicted of theft. Grete earned a meager living as a herbalist and fortune teller.
Following the devastating fire in Tangermünde on September 13, 1617, Grete was among those suspected of arson, her motive allegedly being revenge for being denied her inheritance. She was sentenced to death by burning at the stake on March 13, 1619, and executed on March 22. However, her guilt is disputed by historians. There is a statue of her in Tangermünde where a yearly festival is held in her memory.
Fiona McDougall
Video Producer OneWorld Communications San Francisco
B.A. with Honors in TV and Radio, San Francisco State University, 2011 summa cum laude.
Experience includes handling budgets up to $600,000 and crews of over 40 people....
Fiona McDougall
Video Producer OneWorld Communications San Francisco
B.A. with Honors in TV and Radio, San Francisco State University, 2011 summa cum laude.
Experience includes handling budgets up to $600,000 and crews of over 40 people. Throughout this time, I've cultivated relationships with freelance crews, vendors and agencies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Additional Skills: Film & Digital Production; Branded Content, Broadcast, & Documentary; Client, Vendor & Agency Relationships; • Project Bidding and Actualizing • Budgets • Union Guidelines (SAG, DGA, IATSE) • Casting, Permits, Securing Locations • Creating call sheets, timelines and schedules • Travel Coordinating • Post Production
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Fiona is an experienced video producer, and creative professional. She supervises or directly creates a range of media including video for broadcast, social media, photography, radio content She also has developed multimedia campaigns in Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin among other languages. She is responsible for the successful completion of projects to align with the creative brief, to be on time and within budget. Many of her video productions have won Addy, Telly and other awards.
She has also worked as photojournalist and communications consultant in Bangladesh, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nepal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, for UNICEF, ILO, UNDP, FAO, WFP, Ford Foundation and Kellogg Foundation addressing development themes. She has been published widely in the New York Times as their contributor. Fiona produced communications content/stories as a photojournalist on AIDS, woman’s empowerment, famine, tuberculosis, child health among other topics for UN agencies, NGOs and media outlets. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, New York, San Francisco, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.
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Jonathan Villet, OneWorld Communications
Scripwriter, Editor, Interviewer
Education: MBA, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.
Jonathan provides scriptwriting, editing and communications strategy at OneWorld Communications. He also leads teams as the architect for public information and public relations campaigns. He has produced a wide range of communications media (video, social media, radio/TV, print/digital, web) and managed multiple communications projects for both commercial and government including the USDA, the US Forest Service, USAID, the California Secretary of State, Public Utilities Commission, Employment Development Dept., Dept. of Recycling, Dept of Public Health, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, University of California, California State University, the Wright Institute, and BioBag USA. He also has extensive international communications experience. Before starting OneWorld Communications he worked extensively for the United Nations as a creative producer/writer, trainer, and project manager in multiple countries of Africa and also Bangladesh, with work produced in multiple languages. He wrote the scripts for the documentaries: But I love the Zine and Finding Snow White. He is currently at work on several documentary scripts.
Fiona McDougall
Video Producer OneWorld Communications San Francisco
B.A. with Honors in TV and Radio, San Francisco State University, 2011 summa cum laude.
Experience includes handling budgets up to $600,000 and crews of over 40 people....
Fiona McDougall
Video Producer OneWorld Communications San Francisco
B.A. with Honors in TV and Radio, San Francisco State University, 2011 summa cum laude.
Experience includes handling budgets up to $600,000 and crews of over 40 people. Throughout this time, I've cultivated relationships with freelance crews, vendors and agencies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Additional Skills: Film & Digital Production; Branded Content, Broadcast, & Documentary; Client, Vendor & Agency Relationships; • Project Bidding and Actualizing • Budgets • Union Guidelines (SAG, DGA, IATSE) • Casting, Permits, Securing Locations • Creating call sheets, timelines and schedules • Travel Coordinating • Post Production
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Fiona is an experienced video producer, and creative professional. She supervises or directly creates a range of media including video for broadcast, social media, photography, radio content She also has developed multimedia campaigns in Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin among other languages. She is responsible for the successful completion of projects to align with the creative brief, to be on time and within budget. Many of her video productions have won Addy, Telly and other awards.
She has also worked as photojournalist and communications consultant in Bangladesh, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nepal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, for UNICEF, ILO, UNDP, FAO, WFP, Ford Foundation and Kellogg Foundation addressing development themes. She has been published widely in the New York Times as their contributor. Fiona produced communications content/stories as a photojournalist on AIDS, woman’s empowerment, famine, tuberculosis, child health among other topics for UN agencies, NGOs and media outlets. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, New York, San Francisco, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.
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Jonathan Villet, OneWorld Communications
Scripwriter, Editor, Interviewer
Education: MBA, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.
Jonathan provides scriptwriting, editing and communications strategy at OneWorld Communications. He also leads teams as the architect for public information and public relations campaigns. He has produced a wide range of communications media (video, social media, radio/TV, print/digital, web) and managed multiple communications projects for both commercial and government including the USDA, the US Forest Service, USAID, the California Secretary of State, Public Utilities Commission, Employment Development Dept., Dept. of Recycling, Dept of Public Health, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, University of California, California State University, the Wright Institute, and BioBag USA. He also has extensive international communications experience. Before starting OneWorld Communications he worked extensively for the United Nations as a creative producer/writer, trainer, and project manager in multiple countries of Africa and also Bangladesh, with work produced in multiple languages. He wrote the scripts for the documentaries: But I love the Zine and Finding Snow White. He is currently at work on several documentary scripts.
My family (the Malkin's and Lichtenstein's) are Russian Jews who originally came from Poland and what is now Belarus. They fled persecution during the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1906, scattering to England, South America, Australia, with my direct
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My family (the Malkin's and Lichtenstein's) are Russian Jews who originally came from Poland and what is now Belarus. They fled persecution during the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1906, scattering to England, South America, Australia, with my direct family landing in the United States. Some fled to Germany and western Europe, but fled after WWI. My ancestors were all artisans, potters and painters, with Roy Lichtenstein being a distant cousin.
I resonate with the struggles of the protagonists in this story.
I am a two-time Emmy Award winning producer who has shepherded film and television productions in Los Angeles for the last 20 years, including the award winnning Netflix documentary film THE LION’S SHARE, RIGHT TO OFFEND: THE BLACK COMEDY REVOLUTION, MAFIA SPIES, and LOLLA: THE STORY OF LOLLAPALOOZA for Paramount+ which screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1956219/
I’ve found that unearthing the hidden story of another person’s life gives me crucial context to understand that person more fully. Without that context I feel adrift, dependent on intuition and could be drawn to faulty conclusions, even about
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I’ve found that unearthing the hidden story of another person’s life gives me crucial context to understand that person more fully. Without that context I feel adrift, dependent on intuition and could be drawn to faulty conclusions, even about family members whom I love… My grandmother, a Polish-British Jew immigrated to the USA as a young woman in the 1920s, renamed herself, married successively two non-Jews, and avoided sharing her origins. I knew her as imperious and judgmental, though occasionally hilarious and generous. But I never knew about the pain she felt necessary to leave behind.
I am a seeker of context... The personal context and records available about Eugen Engel after the war and Holocaust are scant. But I found important clues: he was a Jew proud of Germany before it destroyed him, he desired to share his musical imagination widely, sought artistic acceptance, and he chose an outcast non-Jewish woman as the subject for his life’s main work. To imagine some of his story and the story of Grete who was so central to his efforts, I believe, gives crucial context for his artistic life which was creative, tragic but posthumously triumphant. I am honored to add this project to my career as a writer and editor of documentary and “poetic documentary” films WRESTLING THE ANGEL, FINDING SNOW WHITE, and I LOVE THE ZINE, and creating media and communications for the United Nations mainly in Africa with local people.
I came across a story in our local newspaper about the discovery of opera score in a suit case in San Francisco . I reflected on the idea of art triumphing over bigotry, mass fear and hatred. The power of humanity to endure although confronted by
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I came across a story in our local newspaper about the discovery of opera score in a suit case in San Francisco . I reflected on the idea of art triumphing over bigotry, mass fear and hatred. The power of humanity to endure although confronted by overwhelming forces, is something I have endeavored to communicate in my prior practice of photojournalism: an extreme example was my coverage of individuals caught in the civil war and famine in Somalia in the 1990s, for the New York Times who nominated for for a Pulitzer.
The more research and interviews we did, the more we became increasingly convinced that this story is both compelling for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences like myself.
As an experienced film and video producer, and photojournalist, I am immersed in the genre of storytelling from concept through to finished media. Documentaries include WRESTLING THE ANGEL, FINDING SNOW WHITE, I LOVE THE ZINE, and various TV spots and PSAs.
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Budget
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Impact journey narrative impact camera narrative project doc.
Camera camera journey camera editing team visual screenplay film production independent.
Rights
This section includes information about this project.
Team screenplay camera independent journey screenplay film camera narrative screenplay impact festival.
Journey story production production visual award screenplay film award festival project doc editing team doc visual.
