Out of the Past / Shoah / France 1985
More than nine hours long, Claude Lanzmann’s monumental documentary consists exclusively of interviews with direct eyewitnesses of the Holocaust and quiet images of a bucolic landscape that looks like an idyllic intermezzo – until we identify various inconspicuous but sinister topographic details: train tracks, a brick building in the background, or a sign reading “Treblinka.” The film’s rigorous form, specifically its refusal to depict the Holocaust through scenes of horror, underscores the rawness of the survivors’ detailed recollections of the most horrific crime in human history. As Lanzmann himself said, “The proof is not the corpses; the proof is the absence of corpses.” One of the most celebrated films of all time, it is being shown at KVIFF to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Vojtěch Kočárník
542 min / Color, DCP
Director Claude Lanzmann
/ Dir. of Photography Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, William Lubtchansky
/ Editor Claude Lanzmann, Ziva Postec, Bénédicte Mallet, Yaël Perlov, Christine Simonot
/ Producer Dominique Lanzmann
/ Production Les Films Aleph
/ Sales mk2 Films
Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018). Selected filmography: Shoah (1985), Sobibór, Octobre 14, 1943, 4PM (Sobibór, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures, 2001), The Last of the Unjust (Le Dernier des injustes, 2013).
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