---

COLD, THE 1918-19 SIBERIAN ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN EWALD LOEFFLER, follows a young WWI German soldier, Ewald Loeffler, as he battles wolves, tribal enemies and sub-zero weather, to finally reach home.

---

COLD, THE 1918-19 SIBERIAN ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN EWALD LOEFFLER, a novel by Rick Schmidt, follows a young German soldier, Ewald Loeffler, as he struggles to traverse 5000 km of frozen and barren land across Siberia, to finally reach Germany and his family home. After he´d been in a Siberian prison camp for four years, the guards suddenly deserted their posts to join the Russian Revolution in Moscow, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. Loeffler, in the minority of those who survived such extreme cold and other human dangers, tells a harrowing tale of just keeping alive, one day at a time. Later, after many years in America - Loeffler taught anthropology at a midwestern university - he manages to write his Siberian memoir of those early days. In the form of a daily log he recounts his fight against sub-zero weather, wolves and unknown enemies, both Russian and German. He also recalls his most intimate thoughts at the time, including interactions with a native woman, Nanra-naw, who saved him, loved him, and aided him physically, emotionally, psychically and spiritually before he restarts his journey home. Memories of violent combat continue to haunt Loeffler, both from past battlefields and from the ongoing, seemingly-unending trek across Siberia. He is also deeply affected by psychological wounds he received in youth, abuse from a distant, uncaring father, and his reticent mother, though specks of rare ´happier times´ do occasionally surface. His day-to-day survival in the cold is mostly a mind game, dependent on him keeping his spirits up against all the ghosts of war and remembrance. Schmidt´s novel (´Captain Loeffler´s memoir´), is loosely based on the 1918 real-life Siberian escape of his own father, Erich F. Schmidt ("Persepolis I, II, III"), who somehow survived his two year/5000 km walk back to Germany at the end of WWI.

---

Schmidt, Rick
Rick Schmidt is an award-winning American low/no-budget feature filmmaker, with 26 indie features to his credit. He is also author of the seminal filmmaking book, "Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices" (Penguin Books, 1988, 1992, 2000), regarded as ´the indie filmmaking bible´ by MovieMaker magazine. Frameworks magazine has called Schmidt a major innovator, in the era of early 1990s independent film, and Library Journal adds that his book has helped lead the way for film-artists to create their works outside the Hollywood system. With over 100,000 copies in print, ´Used-Car´ filmmaking has helped noted film writer/directors like Kevin Smith/Clerks and action star Vin Diesel to establish Hollywood careers.

---