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Tracking Edith (PG) + ScreenTalk with Peter Stephan Jungk and Lillian Birnbaum

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Filmmaker Peter Stephan Jungk delves into the motivations of his great aunt, Edith Tudor-Hart, an Austro-British photographer who lived a double life as a spy for the KGB.

While living a double life as a spy for the KGB, Edith Tudor-Hart recruited Kim Philby and helped create the Cambridge Five, the Soviet Union’s most successful spy ring in the UK, which infiltrated the very top of British intelligence (the inspiration for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). The film recounts her remarkable life, told through her photographs and animated re-enactments.

As Peter Stephan Jungk learns more about his aunt and her work, his film demands the question: why is she not recognised alongside Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five as one of the spies that changed the world?

Following a screening of their riveting 2016 documentary, Jungk will be joined by producer Lillian Birnbaum in a conversation hosted by Dr Julia Wagner to discuss the titular historical figure.

Tagged with: Cinema Talks & events ScreenTalks

Austria/Germany/Russia/UK Dir Peter Stephan Jungk 91 min

Dr Julia Wagner is a film critic and lecturer. She holds a PhD in Film Studies, specialising in documentary, and writes about film for the Jewish Quarterly journal. Julia is currently curating Jewish Britain on Film, a BFI-funded archive collection.

Peter Stephan Jungk is a prolific novelist, essayist, documentary film maker and screenwriter born in the United States and raised in Austria and Germany. He studied screenwriting at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Several of Jungk’s books have been published in the US and in Great Britain – his novel The Perfect American, a dramatic portrayal of Walt Disney’s last months, was turned into an opera by Philip Glass and premiered in 2013. Tracking Edith is based on Jungk's biography of his great aunt, Die Dunkelkammern der Edith Tudor-Hart, published by S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt in 2015.

Lillian Birnbaum was born in New York City, and raised in Vienna, Austria. In 2010 she founded the production company Peartree Entertainment in Vienna with an office in Paris. Peartree’s goal is to create film and TV projects that are stimulating and entertaining for mind and soul. Lillian develops and packages the projects and seeks global financing to bring them to the screen. Several international projects are in development. Between 1997 and 2009, Lillian was the closest collaborator of film producer and multiple Oscar winner Arthur Cohn.

Lillian executive produced award winning films, including Central Station by Walter Salles in 1998, which won the Golden Bear in Berlin, One Day in September by Kevin MacDonald which won the Oscar in 2000 for Best Documentary, The Children of Huang Shi directed by Roger Spottiswoode, and The Yellow Hankerchief, 2008, directed by Udayan Prasad, starring William Hurt, Eddie Redmayne and Kristen Stewart.

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