''Witness 11'' is a 2012 short
drama film directed by
Sean Mitchell and starring
Oleg Liptsin, Paul Guadarrama and Matt Shelton.
It is based on the testimony of renowned German poet and playwright,
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
, during the height of the 1940s
Red Scare
A Red Scare is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism, anarchism or other leftist ideologies by a society or state. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which ar ...
.
The film was shot in 2012 at the
Berkeley City Club
The Berkeley City Club was commissioned as the club house of the Berkeley Women's City Club, organized in Berkeley, California in 1927 to contribute to social, civic, and cultural progress. This private club is no longer restricted to women, and th ...
in
Berkeley, California.
Premise
Called before the
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
.
[ Brecht HUAC hearing] (HUAC) during their notorious
Hollywood Ten[Ceplair, Larry (2011). Anti-Communism in Twentieth Century America: A Critical History. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. p. 77.] investigation, famed German playwright
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
must choose between betraying himself and his friends, and imprisonment. In the end, Brecht testified that he had never been a member of the
Communist Party.
[
]
Cast
* Oleg Liptsin as Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
*Paul Guadarrama as Robert E. Stripling Robert E. Stripling (circa 1910–1991) was a 20th-century civil servant, best known as chief investigator of the United States House of Representatives, House Dies Committee and its successor the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), parti ...
*Matt Shelton as Dalton Trumbo
*Tatjana Dzambazova as Helene Brecht
*Dean Enciroli as J. Parnell Thomas
*Philip Estrin as Green
*John Scacco as Rep. Vail
*Steven Mann as Herbert Biberman
*Fritz Zimmerman as Baumgardt
*David Rosenthal as John Howard Lawson
*Bret Grantham as Bartley Crum
*Juliet Hilton as Barbara Brecht
References
External links
*
Kickstarter-funded films
2012 films
American drama short films
Films set in Washington, D.C.
Films about McCarthyism
Films about writers
Films shot in California
Cinema of the San Francisco Bay Area
American historical drama films
2010s historical drama films
Films set in 1947
2012 short films
2012 drama films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
{{short-drama-film-stub