AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR
Peter Schumann and The Bread & Puppet Theater
The First Film About Bread & Puppet In 25 Years!
World Premiere In-Person Screening
Sunday, May 3 at 1pm
Highland Center For The Arts, Greensboro, VT
World Premiere Virtual Screening
Tuesday, May 12 - 8pm ET / 5pm PT via Kinema.com
A Film by Robbie Leppzer
A Production of Turning Tide Films
45 minutes • 2026 • 4K • Closed Captions
Sign up for emails here for info on the film’s release.
• If you are interested in hosting a film screening in your community, click here.
DONATE here to help us finish the feature-length film (to be completed next year)!
SYNOPSIS
AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR is a vibrant portrait of Peter Schumann, the visionary founder of the Bread & Puppet Theater, whose six decades of radical political performance have been forged from a single, searing childhood question: how do we as humans respond to the madness of war and violence?
Born in Nazi Germany and shaped by the brutal reality of war via the aerial bombardments he experienced as a child, Schumann channeled this trauma into one of the most boundary-breaking landmark theater companies in the world.
Bread & Puppet is an iconic theater group that has helped redefine political theater and public art in the U.S. for over 60 years. Founded in New York City in the early 1960s, the troupe helped to revolutionize street protests against the Vietnam War by utilizing gigantic paper maché puppet performances in public - making them one of the defining art groups of the 1960s.
The Bread & Puppet Theater grew into its full form on a 250-acre Vermont farm in the 1970s, where the landscape itself became a stage that continues to draw thousands to its epic, large-scale spectacles.
Decades later, as international norms collapse and atrocities unfold in Gaza in plain sight, Peter Schumann — now 91 and still working with fierce urgency — finds his life's central question more pressing than ever. Peter continues his relentless work using paintings and epic scale performances to show audiences the true cost of war.
Drawing on originally shot footage and a remarkable archive of spanning more than 40 years, film director Robbie Leppzer offers an intimate window into the man, his art, and his unbroken faith that creativity can stand against the brutality of power.
In an age desperate for hopeful figures of cultural resistance, AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR is a testament to the radical, enduring idea that art is not a retreat from the world — it is a way of fighting for it.
AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR
World Premiere In-Person Screening
Sunday, May 3 at 1pm
Highland Center For The Arts, Greensboro, VT
World Premiere Virtual Screening
Tuesday, May 12 - 8pm ET / 5pm PT via Kinema.com
Sign up for emails here for info on the film’s release.
• If you are interested in hosting a film screening in your community, click here.
DONATE here to help us finish the feature-length film (to be completed next year)!
REVIEWS
“AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR is a beautiful, heartrending film that meets this moment of global catastrophe and brutality. Robbie Leppzer documents the Bread & Puppet Theater’s story and that of Peter Schumann with the thoughtfulness of the great filmmaker he is.”
– Erin Axelman, Co-Director of the award-winning documentary ISRAELISM,
produced by Tikkun Olam Productions
“As a cinematographer myself, I fell in love with the beautiful and poignant images of artistic protest that Robbie Leppzer brings to viewers in the aptly titled AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR. We must all ask ourselves how we can respond to war and genocide, and Peter Schumann and Bread & Puppet can help us answer that question. It is deeply touching how Peter and the Bread & Puppet Theater call upon moral outrage against brutality through their art. Please watch this beautiful film.”
– Sam Eilertsen, Co-Director of the award-winning documentary ISRAELISM,
produced by Tikkun Olam Productions
“Filmmaker Robbie Leppzer is the master chronicler of contemporary movements of protest and social change. His latest work, AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR, focuses on the art of puppeteer/painter Peter Schumann, founder of the Bread and Puppet Theater, who describes himself as a “war child,” having grown up in Nazi Germany, and how this propelled him into a life of activism and opposition to war. The subject of his current work is the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as seen through the eyes of this artist. Leppzer has captured the haunting tragedy that Schumann expresses through his large-scale theater productions and paintings. Beautifully filmed and immaculately edited with deeply evocative music, he has managed to capture the power, emotion and outrage of the live performance. This is filmmaking of the very first order.”
– Sut Jhally, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Founder/Executive Director, Media Education Foundation
“Peter Shumann has been a creative and life-affirming voice against war for decades. In his powerful and cinematically beautiful new film, Robbie Leppzer reveals how Schumann and his Bread and Puppet Theater continue to use innovative puppetry, performance and paintings to oppose the genocidal war on Gaza that Israel launched after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. From intimate interviews with Schumann, we learn how his early childhood in Nazi Germany informed his lifelong hatred of war and commitment to fighting for peace. AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR is a much-needed film for our times.”
– Pam Sporn, Member of Jewish Voice for Peace, NYC
THE FILMMAKER & THE FEATURE-LENGTH FILM PROJECT
Robbie Leppzer has been making documentary films for his entire career that chronicle people who stick their necks out to work for grassroots social change in the world. Robbie has produced award-wining and critically acclaimed short and feature-length documentaries, including for CNN International, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, HBO/Cinemax, PBS, CNN, Sundance Channel, HDNet, Link TV, Free Speech TV, Vermont PBS, National Public Radio, and Pacifica Radio.
AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR is part of a larger feature-length film project – shot over nine years, which chronicles the full life story of Peter Schumann and the 63-year history of his iconic theater troupe entitled, BREAD & PUPPET: THE THEATER OF PETER SCHUMANN, that will be completed in 2027.
Help us finish the feature-length film!
DONATE to the Bread & Puppet Film Project.
To find out how you can help us finish our
feature-length film about Bread & Puppet, click here.
