Director Ruth Beckermann discusses her documentary "Waldheim Waltz" (10/12/18)
“With Austria currently the only West European nation since World War II governed by the far right, it’s time (heck, it’s long past time) that someone of Ruth Beckermann’s intelligence made a film investigating the country’s odious collective whitewashing of its Nazi-era past. In her incisive documentary ‘The Waldheim Waltz,’ the director treats former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim as a poster boy of the phenomenon. Using only footage from the 1970s and ’80s, some of which she shot herself while protesting Waldheim’s successful bid for the Austrian presidency, Beckermann methodically reveals the timeline of revelations detailing her subject’s Nazi affiliations, and how notwithstanding the evidence, a majority of the electorate in 1986 still voted him into office.” - Jay Weissberg, Variety. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large,” “Waldheim Waltz” director Ruth Beckermann discusses this important documentary.