‘The Lady in Number 6: How Music Saved My Life‘ was the Academy Award winner Sunday night in Hollywood for best short documentary.
The Canadian-produced story of pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, who survived the Holocaust, playing music in a Czech concentration camp, and carried on to live a happy, optimistic life, is moving and inspiring.
In his acceptance speech, Montreal-based Malcolm Clarke descrived Alice: “She was 110. She died quietly and so this … is for Alice. She was a woman who taught everyone on my crew to be a little bit more optimistic and a little bit more happy about all the things that were happening in our lives. See the film, she’ll help you live, I think, a much happier life.”
In a CBC radio interview early this morning, Montreal executive producer Frederic Bohbot, described the victory as shocking. He said the team took on the project as a labor of love, and they couldn’t be happier. He too credits Alice with the win:
“Alice’s view of the world and the way that she carried herself and the way that the film represented her was able to just break through everybodies cynicism on some level, you know it’s hard to believe that Alice was the way she was but she was so real that it just overpowered I think all the viewers. And I think that’s why it was able to win because it was so real, she was so real, it’s really her who won this Oscar for us.”
Alice Herz-Sommer died in London, England, a week before the Academy Award ceremony.
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