Hollywood movies and television have shaped the way most of the world perceives the Final Solution, narrator Gene Hackman observes at the beginning of \”Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust.\” It is a statement that may not sit too well with generations of historians and authors, but the evidence validates the conclusion.
In 2005, Italian filmmaker Davide Ferrario decided to mark the 60th anniversary of Primo Levi\’s liberation by retracing the route of the writer\’s journey in January 1945, from Auschwitz to his hometown of Turin, with a camera crew. The result is Ferrario\’s documentary \”Primo Levi\’s Journey\”. Intercutting footage from the 2005 journey with Levi\’s earlier observations on the same places, the film is disorienting in the beginning. Only gradually does it become clear that Ferrario is contrasting how much — and how little — has changed in the 60-year interval.\n
\”We wanted to use four [American] towns as examples to get to know people — those who fought and those who stayed at home — and to get to their experiences as it happened.\”
The result is Burns and co-director Lynn Novick seeing the war as it was unfolding through the eyes of soldiers from Mobile, Ala.; Sacramento; Waterbury, Conn., and Luverne, Minn., to show, in so many ways, the ongoing hellishness of even a necessary war.
\”I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal\” runs for close to two hours, but the documentary is barely long enough to encompass the 96 years of the legendary Nazi hunter.\n
The documentary complements the audio from the trial with visuals of the Nazi era and death camps and features extensive in-person interviews with prosecutors and others involved in the trial.
Kodlawsky said her goal was to tell Thiranagama\’s story vividly; in a way, it reminded her of those late-night discussions over cigarettes and coffee. Her mother\’s friends often spoke of how Kodlawsky\’s mother risked death to smuggle food to others at Bergen-Belsen.
Monika Hertwig was 1 year old when her father Amon Goeth, sadistic SS commandant of the Plaszow forced-labor and concentration camp, was hanged as a war criminal in 1946. Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig was picked among the prisoners by Goeth as his maid and was brutalized for two years. Now, more than 60 years later, the two women are the unlikely protagonists of the feature documentary \”Inheritance: A Legacy of Hatred and the Journey to Change It.\”
A new Holocaust documentary, co-produced by the Los Angeles-based Shoah Foundation, is being filmed in Ukraine and targeted mainly toward a Ukranian and Russian audience. The film should be completed by September, in time for the 65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre.
Until recently, the riveting and much-acclaimed 2004 documentary, \”Paper Clips\” — which chronicles the attempt by the small, rural town of Whitwell, Tenn., to educate its students about the enormous number of Jews killed in the Holocaust — could be seen mostly at special screenings and community events. After an initial exclusive release of the DVD version to Blockbuster, as of March 7, the DVD has gone into general release so everyone can finally get a copy, which is sure to broaden the film\’s exposure.
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