A Film Unfinished
Location
JAAC 1037
Presentation Type
Event
Start Date
11-9-2018 7:00 PM
Description
In 1942, just three months before the Warsaw Ghetto was completely obliterated by the Nazis in the next stage of “The Final Solution,” Nazi propagandists went to Warsaw to shoot a film they never finished about Jewish life in the ghetto. A reel of this film, found shortly after the end of the war, was for the next fifty or so years used by historians as an authentic and reliable resource for understanding “Das Ghetto.” In 1998, an uncut reel shot as part of the original film surfaced, making clear just how much of the original film was staged, as opposed to simply recorded. Israeli filmmaker Yael Hersonski’s 2011 documentary presents and analyzes the newly discovered reel, revealing in the process not just the skill and horror of the Nazi propaganda machine, but more broadly how easily video that seems objective and historical may in fact be neither. The documentary also points to how complex the problem of Holocaust denial, the topic of a September 17th symposium presentation, can be when undergirded from beyond the grave by those who not only perpetrated these events but also obsessively recorded and shaped the recording of it. Discussion will follow the airing of the film.
Recommended Citation
Monteverde, Maggie, "A Film Unfinished" (2018). Humanities Symposium. 6.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2018/ff2018/6
A Film Unfinished
JAAC 1037
In 1942, just three months before the Warsaw Ghetto was completely obliterated by the Nazis in the next stage of “The Final Solution,” Nazi propagandists went to Warsaw to shoot a film they never finished about Jewish life in the ghetto. A reel of this film, found shortly after the end of the war, was for the next fifty or so years used by historians as an authentic and reliable resource for understanding “Das Ghetto.” In 1998, an uncut reel shot as part of the original film surfaced, making clear just how much of the original film was staged, as opposed to simply recorded. Israeli filmmaker Yael Hersonski’s 2011 documentary presents and analyzes the newly discovered reel, revealing in the process not just the skill and horror of the Nazi propaganda machine, but more broadly how easily video that seems objective and historical may in fact be neither. The documentary also points to how complex the problem of Holocaust denial, the topic of a September 17th symposium presentation, can be when undergirded from beyond the grave by those who not only perpetrated these events but also obsessively recorded and shaped the recording of it. Discussion will follow the airing of the film.
Comments
Convocation Credit: Society and the Arts & Sciences