- This is the documented story of Peter Paul Weinschenk, who fled Berlin in 1933 to become Pablo in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and Tabernero in the Argentina of Perón and Evita.
- Pablo Tabernero (1910-1996) was a distinguished director of photography for Montes-Bradley, an opportunity to revisit the political transformations that shaped the 20th Century. Shortly before he died in 1996, Tabernero wrote the first pages of an unfinished biography. These memories were preceded by a revealing title: "Scenes in the life of a wandering Jew", a title that inspired the filmmaker to retrace his three exiles, a road through Berlin in times of the Weimar Republic, Barcelona during the Spanish civil war, and the Argentina of Eva Duarte and Juan Perón. The obsessive search for the director concludes in New York, where Tabernero arrives in 1966 after another military coup in Argentina. Produced with the support of the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts.—Montes-Bradley, Eduardo
- Filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley meets Henry Weinschenk, Pablo Tabernero's eldest son, together they embark on a voyage of discovery that takes them first to Berlin and Mainz, then to Barcelona and Madrid, and finally to Buenos Aires and Woodstock. In Zehlendorf, a neighborhood that had once been in the suburbs of Berlin, the filmmaker and his companion find the house that was the birthplace of Tabernero, the house in which he probably lived until the end World War I. By then his father had moved to Arosa with his newborn sister Dory. Shortly thereafter, Pablo joins them in the Swiss Alps in what seems to have been an attempt to preserve the young Tabernero from the devastating effects of the Spanish Flu. The collapse of the financial markets forced Tabernero, his father, and sister to seek the protection of the paternal grandfather, a prosperous wine merchant from Mainz. In Mainza Tabernero assisted as a regular student to Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium. In the Spring of 1927 Tabernero enrolls as a student at the Lette-Verein School of design in Berlin and after graduation, he joins Werner Graeff as an assistant professor at the Reimann School. "Searching 4-Tabernero" pays particular attention to the artistic relationship between the Tabernero and Graeff, at the time a highly influential precursor of modern photography, and pioneer of the avant-garde movement emerging from the Bauhaus during the Weimar Republic. It is at this point that we realized the Eduardo Montes-Bradley is more interested in the formative years of Tabernero than in the actual accomplishments in his career as director of photography in South America. Parallel to his role as an assistant professor at the Reimann School, Tabernero falls under the wing of veteran filmmaker Curt Oertel joining the crew in several productions such as Das grüne Monokel, Rudolf Meinert,1929, Das Donkosakenlied and Revolte im Erziehungshaus, Georg Asagaroff, 1930; Jagd auf Dich, Ernst Angel, 1930 and The Sino-Swedish Expedition to the North-western Provinces of China by (Paul Liberanz, 1931) the latter under the directorship of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin. In January of 1933, the Reinmann School of Berlin canceled Tabernero's contract due to new regulations preventing Jews from joining academic life and particularly from working in the German film industry. The sequence is eloquently presented in "Searching 4-Tabernero" with the use of archival footage and interviews with Pablo Tabernero (Peter Paul Weinschenk), and his sister Dori (Dorothea Weinscyhenk). These interviews were recorded in New York and in Tel Aviv around 1986. Of particular interest to the story is Dori's testimonial Dori as she narrates the raid to their flat in Berlin and of how her brother Peter (Pablo Tabernero)was a force to flee by train, first to Paris, then to Barcelona where he arrived in May of 1933. According to witnesses interviewed for the documentary film, Tabernero joined Ibérica Films, a mega-effort by producer David Oliver to produced films in Spanish for the local audience and the Latin American markets resorting to the know-how of Jewish-German refugees. Some of the titles mentioned during the first years of Tabernero in Barcelona and Madrid, and before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 are "Doña Francisquita", by the Berliner Hans Behrendt; "Una semana de Felicidad, by Max Nosseck; "Vidas rotas", by Eusebio Fernández Ardavín; "Hombres contra hombres", by Antonio Momplet; "El Malvado Carabel, by Edgar Neville; "60 horas en el cielo", direted by Raymond Chevalier; "La farándula", by Antonio Momplet; "Poderoso caballero, by Max Nosseck, and a series of propaganda documentaries produced between 1936-1937 for CNT-FAI, the Anarchist trade unions with a strong grip in the political affairs of Catalonia. Embedded with the Columna Durruti, Tabernero managed to capture several combats scenes in the Aragon Front which would later be edited and released as a three-part documentary episode called "Aguiluchos de las FAI por tierras de Aragón". "Fury Over Spain" is another relevant title of the period that would eventually be released in New York and reviewed by The New York Times where Tabernero appeared for the first and last time with his real name. "Fury Over Spain" was produced with the help of Emma Goldman, a Russian-American activist of Anarchist persuasion who served as a liaison between the Anarchist regime in Barcelona and the international war effort to assist the Republican efforts during the Spanish Civil War. The name association in the initial credits of "Fury Over Spain", prevented Tabernero from getting an immigrant visa to the United States as it was the case of many other German-Jewish cinematographers who found refuge in Hollywood. Tabernero's last film as director of photography at the end of his exile in Catalonia was "El último minuto", a film which Montes-Bradley reproduces entirely in the last few minutes of '''''Searching 4 Tabernero'''', before the final credits and the first color images of Buenos Aires filmed by Tabernero shortly after his arrival to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, Peter Paul Weinschenk from then on known as Pablo Tabernero would enjoy domestic and international recognition for his contribution to more than forty feature films including "Nace un amor" by Luis Saslavsky and "Prisioneros de la tierra" by Mario Soffici.
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