We met Frank Grunwald in 2013 and was fascinated with Frank’s experiences as a concentration camp survivor, a musician and sculptor. Frank told us that his keen love for the arts helped him keep his will to survive as his family was being murdered around him.

A film, Misa’s Fuge, was made by college students to commemorate Frank’s survival story in Auschwitz. This film is on Netflix, and our loved one arranged to have it shown at their retirement community. Two weeks before the planned screening, our loved one passed away, and Frank contacted us to introduce him at the screening. This was a great honor for us and we became friends as a result of this introduction.

Fast forward to 2017 after not hearing from Frank for a while, he contacted us to film a video of him performing accordion music as a memento for his three grandchildren. We agreed to do this under the condition that I could interview him about his life experiences and his love for music and sculpture.

We immediately knew that we wanted long-time collaborator director/dp Brad Knull of international commercial video fame to dp this production. In January of 2018, the crew at Scofield Digital Storytelling and Brad hired the theater at Park Tudor School in Indianapolis to be the setting for Frank’s seven song accordion performance along with the interview.

After an additional shoot at Frank’s Indianapolis home, there was enough footage to edit this 22 minute short film, Life’s Nightmare Art’s Dream.