Filmmaker Sauvage to visit Apr. 8

Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Sauvage will speak tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union (check Today in the Union for room location).

Sauvage currently is at work on a new documentary about Americans involved in rescuing Jews in France after that country fell to the Nazis. “And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee” will air on Public Broadcasting Corporation stations next year.

An earlier Sauvage film, “Yiddish: the Mame-Loshn,” earned him an Emmy. His 1989 feature “Weapons of the Spirit” tells the story of a French mountain community that defied the Nazis and saved 5,000 Jews, including Sauvage and his parents. Aired on PBS, the film won a DuPont-Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism.

Sauvage is president of the nonprofit Chambon Foundation, which he founded in 1982. Its educational mission supports documentary exploration of the Holocaust.