Drawn From Memory DVD

The Animated Autobiography of Paul Fierlinger. Featured on PBS' American Playhouse. Fierlinger concentrates his considerable talents as an animator to recount through fragmented memories, vivid recollections, and the occasional evocative photograph his life as the rebellious son of Jan Fierlinger, Czechoslovakian career politician. At the outbreak of World-War II, Fierlinger and his family became war refugees in the United States, where the young Paul, bouncing between foster homes so that he did not disturb his politically involved parents, grew up an American boy. After the war, his father was installed as a senior official in Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia, and Paul was plucked from the world he knew and dumped in the chilly reality of postwar Prague. As he grew older, his political sensibilities began to differ radically from his father. Using traditional cel-animation with watercolor backgrounds and charcoal and pencil sketches to recreate a historical era, Fierlinger evokes wha