Shoah

Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour 1985 epic Shoah—its title is the Hebrew word for “catastrophe”—is the distillation of more than 350 hours of film gathered over 11 years. It tells the story of the Holocaust through interviews with the survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators. In 2000, the Guardian film critic Derek Malcolm called it “one of the most remarkable films ever made.” It has also provoked debates about the very possibility of Holocaust representation. Sue Vice provides a devoted study of the film, discussing the problematic role of Lanzmann as the director and the numerous controversies and conclusions that Shoah has produced. Some of the topics she covers are: Lanzmann as filmmaker, mise-en-scene, Lanzmann as interviewer, the ethics of filming, testimony, and more.