CLAUDE LANZMANN: SPECTRES OF THE SHOAH (TV)
Summary
This Academy Award-nominated documentary short film profiles French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and the creation of his magnum opus, the nearly 10-hour Holocaust documentary "Shoah" (1985).
Several associates and experts weigh in on why the film is a masterpiece of history and psychology, while Lanzmann himself is described as a "megalomaniac." Lanzmann then discusses the following topics: his sense of "bereavement" upon finally finishing the film after 12 years; how he was commissioned to make the film in 1973 after the release of his film "Pourqoui Israel" ("Israel, Why"); his difficult decision to accept the time-consuming and emotionally draining project; why the film is "not about survivors or survival"; the interview subjects as "spokesmen of the dead"; his challenging interview with barber Abraham Bomba, assigned to cut female prisoners' hair before they were sent to the gas chambers, who gradually became emotionally overwhelmed as he recalled his memories of the camps; Lanzmann's military service at age 17; how his father saved the family from capture in Europe; the lack of archival footage of the concentration camps within "Shoah," owing to the Nazis' extremely secretive nature; how he used hidden cameras and a seemingly detached demeanor to gain interviews with former Nazi guards, who matter-of-factly described taking part in atrocities; a harrowing incident in which a would-be interview subject, Heinz Schubert, discovered Lanzmann's hidden camera and chased him from his home, leading to a violent scene and a month-long hospitalization for Lanzmann; the impossible challenge of editing the film, originally required to be no more than two hours; Lanzmann's near-suicidal anxiety over the project, demonstrated in an incident in which he nearly drowned while swimming; encouragement and support from his close friend and former lover Simone de Beauvoir and her partner Jean-Paul Sartre, who did not live to see the finished film; his sense that the project has given him "a special relationship with time"; why he is not necessarily "optimistic for the world"; and his belief that the twentieth century was an "epic time" filled with many triumphs and horrors.
Details
- NETWORK: HBO
- DATE: November 30, 1999 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:40:00
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 129832
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Public affairs/Documentaries; Talk/Interview; Filmmaking; Holocaust
- SERIES RUN: HBO - TV, 2016
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Nick Fraser … Executive Producer
- Adam Benzine … Producer, Director, Writer
- Kimberley Warner … Co-Producer
- Halim Benzine … Associate Producer
- Kelsey Irvine … Associate Producer
- Alex Ordanis … Associate Producer
- Joel Goodman … Music by
- Claude Lanzmann … Interviewee
- Abraham Bomba
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Heinz Schubert