Balancing Acts (2005)

Directed by

Donna Schatz

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary follows a Chinese acrobat and his Jewish wife who were both top performers in Europe before World War II. It shows how they met and how the war and its aftermath tested their marriage.

intimatenostalgicbittersweetresilientpersonalreflectivehistoricalhumanizing

What happens

Balancing Acts is a 2005 documentary film by Donna Schatz that chronicles the lives of Chinese acrobat Man-Fong Tong and his wife Magda Schweitzer, a Jewish acrobat from Budapest, Hungary. The two met in Europe on the eve of World War II. They were both at the peak of their careers, performing at the Moulin Rouge and Cirque Medrano, and alongside acts such as Maurice Chevalier and Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. While their careers were full of success, the spread of Nazism brought them great hardships. Their marriage saw the trials of wartime Europe, post-war poverty, the birth of two sons, and a difficult ten-year separation from one another. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• About Face: The Story of the Jewish Refugee Soldiers of World War II (2005)
• Faith and Fate (2005)
• Everything Is Illuminated (2005)
• 51 Birch Street (2005)
• Image Before My Eyes (1981)
• Sugihara Survivors: Jewish and Japanese, Past and Future (2017)
• Fighter (2000)
• Surviving Hitler: A Love Story (2010)