Director/scriptwriter: Harriet Wichin – Producer: Christine York – Diary by: Joanne Latimer

September 1988: Harriet Wichin has only made one student film at Concordia University when she decides to do a documentary on the Carmelite order of nuns, who live cloistered in former Jewish concentration camps in Germany. Since her days as an urban planning student, Wichin has been interested in the ‘spirit of public spaces,’ like the camps, and wants to render the feeling of these haunting places on film.

Spring 1989: A Canada Council Explorations grant of $10,000 allows Wichin to start research and take German classes at the Goethe Institute in Montreal.

September 1989: ‘The Goethe Institute gave me a cultural scholarship to go to Germany and study the language, so I went for two months and scouted locations at the same time – at Dachau and Auschwitz,’ Wichin recalls. ‘Then I realized that the film was about a larger picture than the nuns living on these sites. It’s about remembering and commemorating.’

Another Explorations grant of $16,000 is secured for production.

Summer 1990: While working as an ad on Bonjour! Shalom!, Wichin meets Christine York, who becomes the producer for Silent Witness.

January to April 1991: The two make a hurried application for more production money to sogic’s Jeune Creator fund. sogic gives them $45,000. In 10 days, they get together a small Quebecois crew with European ties and sensitivities to the project.

May 1991: The crew travels to Germany for the first leg of the shoot.

October 1991: The crew returns to Germany for three weeks to finish the filming, lodging with the Carmelite nuns in Berlin.

January to June 1992: Working evenings and weekends at the National Film Board, Wichin does the first edit of Silent Witness.

Early 1993: The nfb’s Program to Assist Filmmakers in the Private Sector gives Wichin daytime access to an editing room at the film board. Bill Merril at cfcf-tv agrees to prepurchase the film on the basis of its script and awards the filmmakers $5,000 from a program development fund.

Summer 1993: After seeing a test screening, Yvan Patry, producer at Alter-Cine, suggests York and Wichin apply to Telefilm Canada, and supports their application for $41,000.

Fall 1993 to Spring 1994: Heavy technical chores begin, including sound editing, mixing, opticals, color corrections and negative cutting.

June 1993: Friends finally get to see York and Wichin’s film.

September 1994: Silent Witness has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, five years after Wichin first approached a Carmelite nun about doing the film. Subtitling has been Wichin and York’s chief preoccupation of late.