{"id":15474,"date":"2015-10-30T00:07:13","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T07:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=15474"},"modified":"2015-10-28T16:08:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T23:08:46","slug":"filmmaker-as-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/10\/30\/filmmaker-as-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"Filmmaker as subject"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henrik Gawkowski, as seen in Shoah<\/em>, directed by Claude Lanzmann. (photo from Les Films Aleph\/Why Not Productions)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The French intellectual who created what many view as the definitive documentary of the Holocaust is himself the subject of a documentary, called Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah.<\/em><\/p>\n

Commentators in the film are unanimous that Shoah, Lanzmann\u2019s nine-and-a-half-hour study of the Holocaust, is a masterpiece. They also agree that Lanzmann is himself a piece of work.<\/p>\n

A former friend calls him a megalomaniac. Another commentator says he is \u201ca very challenging individual.\u201d Through interviews with Lanzmann, the viewer gets a sense of what they are talking about.<\/p>\n

Over a 12-year odyssey of interviewing and filmmaking, what Lanzmann set out to create was a film, in his words, \u201cnot about the Shoah, but a film that would be<\/em> the Shoah.\u201d<\/p>\n

His first challenge was how he would approach a topic so enormous and distressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is my theme?\u201d he asks during interviews for the documentary. \u201cThe heart of the Shoah, what is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

On this he concludes: \u201cShoah<\/em> is not a film about survival. And, as it is not a movie about survivors \u2026 the survivors are not in Shoah<\/em>, Shoah<\/em> is a film about death.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recounts an incident that left him hospitalized for a month after a former SS officer\u2019s wife discovered a hidden camera in his bag and Lanzmann and his female assistant were chased, beaten and bloodied by thugs associated with the war criminal. In another instance, Lanzmann relates how he almost drowned while swimming off the coast of Israel. He recalls that he had no gratitude to the individual who saved him and speculates that perhaps he had intended suicide because he knew he could not finish the film in the two years he had been given, with the instruction to keep it under two hours.<\/p>\n

As Lanzmann goes on at length about his artistic struggles and the terrible toll the project took on his spirit, a viewer\u2019s empathy may fade. Considering the subject matter of Shoah<\/em>, lamentations on the difficulties of making a film \u2013 however monumental \u2013 come across as startlingly self-absorbed. Given the advance billing of Lanzmann\u2019s character with which the documentary begins, the film comes full circle, providing a character sketch of a difficult individual who has done a remarkable thing.<\/p>\n

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah<\/em> double bills with What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy<\/em> at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (vjff.org<\/a>) on Nov. 11, 3:30 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henrik Gawkowski, as seen in Shoah, directed by Claude Lanzmann. (photo from Les Films Aleph\/Why Not Productions) The French intellectual who created what many view as the definitive documentary of the Holocaust is himself the subject of a documentary, called Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah. Commentators in the film are unanimous that Shoah, Lanzmann\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[4763,53,2280,2281],"class_list":["post-15474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-claude-lanzmann","tag-holocaust","tag-vancouver-jewish-film-festival","tag-vjff"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}