SHOAH (FIRST ERA)
| 1985 – 274′ – Documentary, History, Classic, War.
Written by: Claude Lanzmann.
Directed by: Claude Lanzmann.
In French, German, Polish with English subtitles & In English.
An IFC Films release. |
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories — survivors, bystanders and perpetrators (He had to film ex-Nazis secretly since they only agreed to be interviewed by audio) –, Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka. His style of interviewing by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in the Holocaust is still alive in in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere. A Nine and a half hour work of reference presented in two parts, Shoah has been considered by international critics as one of the most important films of the 20th century.