In Lyon, a young Colombian shoots a web documentary on the Resistance during the Second World War

Telling about the Resistance in Lyon in an interactive and immersive way, bringing history to life through digital means, this is the starting point of Maria Alejandra Fernandez’s web documentary. This young film student is currently filming in the secret places of this period including those of detention.

In the silence of the former military prison of Montluc, Maria Fernandez turns. The Memorial, located in the third arrondissement of Lyon, serves as the setting for the young director’s web documentary. Maria Alejandra is Colombian, a film student at the University of Rennes, hasEven before coming to France, she has always been passionate about the history of the Second World War. Hours reading books, designing this project. A quest that takes on meaning after a phone call from his father. At the end of research, he discovers that his family has Jewish origins. From then on, Maria Alejandra has the answer to all her questions. She then decided to make a web documentary on the Resistance in Lyon. A dive into the past of his ancestors coupled with a duty to remember. “It is important for me to tell the story of the people who lived and fought at that time, in order to find and know these places with the look of today without ever forgetting what they meant in the past”. she says.

With this web documentary, Maria Fernandez also wishes to give a central place to the testimonies of the great French figures of the Resistance. Claude Bloch93, the last survivor from Lyons of the Auschwitz camp was once again in Montluc prison where he was detained for a few weeks in June 1944. The 15-year-old boy and his mother were finally deported in August, to Auschwitz.

Almost 80 years later, Claude Bloch has forgotten nothing. “I always accept when I am asked to testify mainly in schools”, he says. The story is dense and Maria misses no detail. “It’s really a pleasure for me to sit in front of him, to hear him and to have the chance to listen to what he says, it’s a magnificent moment for me”, she is moved.

Maria Fernandez’s website will contain an interactive map of the city on which it will be possible to access audiovisual content. Different types of capsules will be set up listing photographs from both eras: 1940-1945 and today, video accounts of historians, anthropologists and children of Resistance fighters, documents and objects from the Lyon Resistance.
Testimonials, drone images, the web documentary, financed by a participatory campaign will be edited and made available to everyone in a few weeks.