Shoah / IFC Films presents a film by Claude Lanzmann ; a co-production of Les Films Aleph and Historia Films ; with the participation of Ministry of Culture (France).
Material type:
FilmPublisher number: CC2257D | The Criterion CollectionLanguage: English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Yiddish Original language: English Subtitle language: English Series: Criterion collection ; 663.Publisher: [New York] : The Criterion Collection, [2013]Edition: Director-approved six-DVD special editionDescription: 6 videodiscs (566 min.) : sound, color, black and white ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 booklet (60 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 19 cm)Content type: - two-dimensional moving image
- video
- videodisc
- 9781604657197
- 1604657197
- Shoah (Motion picture)
- Film editor, Ziva Postec ; directors of photography, Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, William Lubtchansky.
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult DVD
|
Main Library | DVD | 940.5318 S559 | Available | 33111009508082 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Shoah is an astonishing film on a number of levels, starting with its own existence -- a documentary on a subject so horrendous, and horrific, that few potential filmgoers really want to think much about it, or the events related within. But Jewish-French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann took the plunge, head-first into his subject, in the hope that the audience would follow for 570 minutes. And as it turned out, Lanzmann's extreme approach to filmmaking was precisely the correct one to take in dealing with his subject, the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews from 1938 through 1945. At first, in its opening minutes, the documentary seems to be shaping up as a relentless parade of interviews, all done in the subjects' original languages and translated as audio live in front of the camera, as well as on-screen. But Shoah is a lot more than a succession of talk in multiple languages. Rather, Lanzmann did what one only wishes the Stuart Schulberg documentary Nuremberg (1947) could have done -- he brings us and many of his subjects (including some low-level perpetrators) to the sites of the crimes in question, so that we perceive the dimensions and settings when they tell of the vile acts of murder and desecration they were obliged to commit, or which were committed upon them or those around them (including family members -- in a quietly horrific moment, one survivor, recalls being forced to carry out the orders to hide a graveyard, and tells of finding the bodies of his own family in one layer of corpses). What's more, the calm of the talk, and the detachment brought about by the need for translation, has the eerie effect of making the nature of the film -- which is definitely not short of striking visuals in support of the interviews -- much more enveloping than one could possibly imagine it could ever be. Indeed, by taking a broad approach over a huge canvas, but keeping the moment-to-moment emotional intensity in check, Lanzmann ends up making the unthinkable into a manageable subject for purposes of his film, and delivers a movie that accomplishes the seemingly impossible. And in the process, gradually, one begins to comprehend the unthinkable in dimensions that those present, victims and participants alike -- based on the evidence of the survivors before us -- must have accepted at the time, which goes some way to explaining the seemingly unanswerable, of how the catastophic events at the film's center could have occurred. The sad answer, as one realizes about an eighth of the way through the movie, is that it happened in stages, and little steps taken in isolation, the latter being the key element -- most of the participants (though certainly not the planners or the major overseers) never realized precisely the dimensions of the horror in which they were complicit, or to which they were witness. Lanzmann's movie ends up presenting a revelatory account of the "how" behind the greatest international social horror of the twentieth century -- the why is better left to historians, social philosophers, and theologians. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
DVD; NTSC; region 1.
Full screen (1.37:1) presentation.
French, Italian, Polish, German, English, Hebrew and Yiddish (monaural) dialogue with English subtitles and English SDH (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing).
Interviewees: Armando Aaron, Paula Biren, Abraham Bomba, Czeslaw Borowi, Inge Deutschkron, Itzhak Dugin, Ruth Elias, Pan Falborski, Pan Filipowicz, Henrik Gawkowski, Richard Glazar, Franz Grassler, Raul Hilberg, Jan Karski, Martha Michelson, Moshe Mordo, Filip Müller, Joseph Oberhauser, Pana Pietyra, Jan Piwonski, Michaël Podchlebnik, Simha Rottem, Franz Schalling, Gertrude Schneider's mother, Alfred Spiess, Simon Srebnik, Walter Stier, Franz Suchomel, Rudolf Vrba, Motke Zaïdl, Hanna Zaïdl, Itzhak Zuckermann.
Film editor, Ziva Postec ; directors of photography, Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, William Lubtchansky.
Originally produced as a motion picture in 1985.
"This digital print of Shoah was produced by Why Not Productions in 2012, with the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée, as well as the participation of IFC Films and the Criterion Collection."
Special features: Disc 1: Trailer. Disc 5: On Shoah (interview with Claude Lanzmann by Serge Toubiana); Caroline Champetier and Arnaud Desplechin (new interview with Champetier, assistant camera person on Shoah, and filmmaker Desplechin); The Karski report (2010, 49 min., additional footage of Jan Karski). Disc 6: A visitor from the living (1999, 68 min., documentary of Theresienstadt, with interview of Maurice Rossel); Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001, 102 min., documentary of the uprising at the Sobibór concentration camp, with interview of Yehuda Lerner); Claude Lanzmann (director discusses the making of A visitor from the living and Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. with writer Helene Frappat). Booklet features essay by critic Kent Jones and writings by Lanzmann.
Disc 1. First era, part one -- Disc 2. First era, part two -- Disc 3. Second era, part one -- Disc 4. Second era, part two -- Disc 5. Supplements -- Disc 6. Supplements.
Over a decade in the making, this monumental investigation of the unthinkable: the murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. Using no archival footage, Claude Lanzmann instead focuses on first-person testimonies (of survivors and former Nazis, and other witnesses), employing a circular, free-associative method in assembling them. The intellectual yet emotionally overwhelming Shoah is not a film about excavating the past but an intensive portrait in which the past is always present.