NIUSIA was a Holocaust survivor. Her granddaughter, Beth, only remembers an angry, dying woman. She’s ready to learn her stories, but what she discovers is all the questions she didn’t know existed, and wasn’t allowed to ask.
Through NIUSIA, Beth weaves memories, handed-down stories, and interviews in an attempt to reconcile her own mixed cultural inheritance and comprehend her Grandmother’s complex legacy. It examines the precarity of identity, and the haphazard cultural legacy second, third, and fourth generation immigrants are handed. Throughout the work, Beth asks: “what does remembrance look like when all I remember is the space where questions should go?” By applying the same intrinsic instinct as her Jewish ancestors, Beth looks back at her family’s history to begin to understand her role in its future.
Her forebears fled war and devastation to seek belonging and safety, and NIUSIA interrogates what happens when aspiration becomes assimilation and asks what our roles are in keeping these stories alive.
Written by Beth Paterson, Directed by Kat Yates.
