Shoah

by Sue Vice

Overview

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-scène, Lanzmann as interviewer, the ethics of filming, testimony, and more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844573257
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/26/2011
Series:	BFI Film Classics
Edition description:	2011
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

SUE VICE Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK. She is the author of Introducing Bakhtin (Manchester University Press 1997, second edn 1998), Holocaust Fiction (Routledge 2000), Children Writing the Holocaust (Palgrave 2004) and Jack Rosenthal (Manchester University Press 2008), and the editor of Representing the Holocaust: Essays in Honour of Bryan Burbans (Vallentine Mitchell 2003).

Table of Contents

Lanzmann as Director
Lanzmann as Protagonist
Shoah and Cinematic Holocaust Representation
Critical Estimates: is Shoah a Documentary?

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

…an insightful, balanced and accessible way into this intimidating work.' - Total Film