Film Screening & Discussion｜The Diary of Diana B.: A true story about the best of people in the worst of times

2025-05-16 - 2025-05-16

Room 106A, HA Building II, Hsinchu Guangfu Campus, NYCU

活動相片｜連結

活動側記｜連結

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Film Screening & Discussion

The Ethics of Human and Artistic Resistance I

  

 

THE DIARY OF DIANA B. 

 

A true story about the best of people in the worst of times

Genre: Drama, Docu-Fiction, 88 min, 2019

 

 

Director and producer: Dana Budisavljević, Hulahop Production Company (Online Participation)

 

Discussant: Yuan Horng Chu, Professor Emeritus, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

 

Moderator: Dr Merima Omeragić, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Center for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University  

 

Time: 2025/05/16   17:00 – 19:15

Venue: 106A, HA Building II, Hsinchu Guangfu Campus, NYCU

Format: In person

 

An untold story of Austrian born Diana Budisavljević who led one of the largest children’s rescue campaigns of World War II. 

Deeply troubled by the persecution of innocent mothers and children in Nazi-occupied Croatia, Diana, a distinguished Austrian, undertakes what is to become one of the largest rescue campaigns of World War II - one that saved 10,000 children from certain death. In the fall of 1941 she learns that Jewish and Orthodox women and their children are being taken to Ustasha camps where they are left to die of starvation and disease. Taking advantage of her Austrian descent, Diana appeals to the authorities, the Catholic Church and the Red Cross to at least try and save the children, but no one wishes to take that responsibility. At her own apartment and with the help of a few friends, Diana begins collecting provisions and organizes a campaign. Eighty years after World War II, survivors return to the sites of former Ustasha camps only to find that they owe their lives to the selflessness and determination of one woman. Among those children are Zivko, Milorad, Zorka and Nada. Aware that the war will eventually come to an end, Diana kept meticulous records of all the children and the fate that befell them. Once the war was over, however, Diana’s Germanic descent and bourgeois background became undesirable leading to the records being confiscated by the Communist authorities in 1945.

The chance discovery of Diana’s diary by her granddaughter has shone a light on the heroic role of a woman who firmly believed the lives of the persecuted innocents to be as precious as her own. Through its fragmentary structure, an amalgam of archival footage, survivors’ accounts, and scenes depicted by Diana in her diary entries, the film attempts to create a cinematic encounter between those the history has unjustly torn asunder: a selfless woman and the children she had saved (https://www.diaryofdianab.com/). 

 

Organizers:

陽明交通大學文化研究國際中心-子計畫6：藝術介入與社會行動

International Center for Cultural Studies, NYCU—Sub-project 6: Social Intervention and Artistic Production

National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University International Master's Degree Program in Asian Cultural Studies IACS, NYCU