By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Oregon filmmaker Michael Turner has found success by making the deeply personal broadly relatable. He brings that gift for universalization to bear on his Jewish heritage in his latest project, “Monument,” which premiers today at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival and will be shows Oct. 18 at Cinema21 in Portland through a partnership with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. 
“Monument,” made possible in part by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland’s Women’s Giving Circle, tells the story of Turner’s grandmother, Lici, a survivor of Auschwitz who went on to construct a memorial to the Holocaust in her hometown of Sarvar, Hungary. An interview with Lici about the memorial is a foundational memory for Turner and his decision to pursue filmmaking.
“The Shoah Foundation came to her house when I was a kid and filmed an interview with her,” he said. “I was not allowed to stay in the room while she told her story, but just seeing them set up the camera and the lights, I knew that she was about to start talking about things that she never talked with us about.”
Turner was inspired to begin making “Monument” in the aftermath of the Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting in 2016, around the time his daughter was born. He wrote the first draft of the opening scene of the film the morning after the attack.
“That really made me feel like my grandma’s story wasn’t yet complete, even though she had died several years earlier,” Turner said. “It centered me in what I hoped to pass on to my daughter, that there were lessons there about how to navigate the world that I was seeing unfolding in the news. That morning was kind of when the film started.”
While Turner describes the Holocaust as a “black hole in the middle of the movie that the story revolves around,” his relationship with his grandmother is the focal point of this work, which he hopes is a touchpoint that everyone can connect to.
“There’s this part of her that I’ll never really be able to touch, like all of us have this part inside us that other people can’t really touch,” Turner said. “I never really found a way to ask her these questions while she was alive and after she died, it suddenly seemed OK to ask her.”
Women’s Philanthropy entered the process earlier this year, providing a $4,000 grant through the Women’s Giving Circle to fund the film. This is a departure from their usual process, where the Women’s Giving Circle starts working with a project near the beginning of their process. 
“We understand that we do not have the capacity to fund an entire project like Michael’s but we do have the capacity to help him complete his vision and are honored that he chose us, the Women’s Giving Circle, to help get his grandmother’s voice out into the public,” explained Federation’s Chief Development Officer Wendy Kahn, “[to] share his love and admiration for her courage and the strength of everyone during the Holocaust and empower others to stand up now and have conversations within their families about the atrocities of the Holocaust and how to face today’s struggles with courage and love.”
“They provided us a grant to do a sound mix on the film, which is a really exciting part of the process where it’s almost finished and we worked with a sound designer to really add emotion to the soundscape to really help my grandma’s hometown come to life,” Turner said.
Turner was part of a recent Art/Lab cohort at Co/Lab and previously produced the film “The Way We Talk,” documenting his journey with stuttering. 
“Monument” will be screened at Cinema 21, located at 616 NW 21st Ave in Portland Oct. 18 at 7:15 pm. Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors and  available online at ojmche.org/events/film-screening-of-monument.