“Vishniac,” a feature-length documentary film about the photographer Roman Vishniac — acclaimed for his indelible images of Jewish life in Eastern Europe from 1935 through 1938 — will have a screening at 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 19, at Vashon Theatre.

Laura Bialis, the award-winning director and producer of the film, will speak and answer questions after the screening.

For Bialis, the film screening is a return trip to Vashon — she first appeared in 2019 on Vashon as a speaker for Vashon Center for the Arts’ series, “Talks on the Rock.” At that time, “Vishniac” was a work-in-progress, and in her talk, she spoke about the photographer’s remarkable life and work, and her chance meeting with Vishniac’s daughter, which had inspired her to make the film.

The film was released in 2023, and has since been lauded on the international film festival circuit as a nuanced and deeply moving biography of the photographer.

A synopsis of “Vishniac,” found at vishniacfilm.com, describes it as both a retrospective and family saga, narrated by Vishniac’s daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn.

“He was difficult and flamboyant, a shameless self-promoter, bender of the truth and master of reinvention,” the synopsis reads. “He was also one of the groundbreaking photographers of the 20th century — a brilliant artist whose body of work spans decades, continents, and the catastrophic fallout from two world wars.”

The film was made with full access for Bialis to Vishniac’s archives. Its executive producers include Nancy Spielberg.

In a personal narrative written by Bialis and shared by islanders Mike and Gerry Feinstein, who are presenting the film on Vashon, Bialis discussed her emotional response to seeing Vishniac’s archives for the first time, in his daughter’s home.

“It was like peering into a time capsule, a visceral portal into pre-World War II Jewish life in Poland and Europe,” she said.

Convincing his daughter to allow her to make the film about her father’s life was not easy, Bialis said.

“She told me that his story and family relationships were complicated and she was reluctant to talk about all of that,” Bialis said. “After several meetings, I convinced her that I thought it would be possible and historically valuable to tell the story and document the life of an artist who was at the same time brilliant and deeply flawed — as many artists are. As a result of working on the film, she finally came to terms with her father’s shortcomings in order to preserve and share his legacy.”

The juxtaposition of intensely personal memories and the searing historical photographs captured by Vishniac, wrote critic Justine Walford, for the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, suffuse the film’s narrative.

“…Bialis uses an exquisite cocktail of Mara Vishniac Kohn’s voice, softly mesmerizing reenactments, and Vishniac’s photos to create an intoxicating lull around the devastation of World War II,” Walford wrote.

Born in Moscow in 1897 to an affluent Jewish family, Vishniac emigrated with his family to Berlin after Bolsheviks came to power in Russia. In Berlin, he became an accomplished and ambitious street photographer, married, and was the father of two children.

Starting in 1933, Vishniac used his camera to document the Nazi rise to power and the Jewish community organizations that continued to operate at that time. Then, with a commission by the American Joint Distribution Committee, he traveled throughout Eastern Europe to photograph his most renowned work — portraits of Jewish communities across a 5,000 mile swath of Lithuania, Belarus, Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

His indelible images captured a vibrant world that would be erased within only a few years’ time by the violence and horror of the Holocaust.

And the lives of Vishniac and his family members, too, were forever changed by the war. The film documents this too — the family’s 11th-hour escape from Germany in 1940, and Vishniac’s immediate but failed efforts, in the United States, to use his photographs to bring attention to the plight of Eastern European Jews.

Still, his work as a photographer continued — progressing into lesser-known but still groundbreaking work in photomicrography, cinematography and biological photography. This fascinating chapter of his life, too, is fully recounted by Bialis in the film.

Find out more about the film and get tickets at vashontheatre.com.

Filmmaker Laura Bialis (Courtesy photo)