A secret ghetto film
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | A secret ghetto film |
| Original title | Shtikat Haarchion A Film Unfinished (International) |
| Country of production | Israel , Germany |
| Publishing year | 2010 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Yael Hersonski |
| script | Yael Hersonski |
| production | Itay Ken Tor , Noemi Schory |
| music | Yishai Adar |
| camera | Itai Ne'eman |
| cut | Joel Alexis |
| occupation | |
| |
A secret ghetto film (original title: Shtikat Haarchion , international title: A Film Unfinished ) is a German - Israeli documentary by Yael Hersonski from 2009 about recovered film scenes from an unfinished German propaganda film . The archive recordings were made in 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto .
Yael Hersonski, born in 1976, lives and works mainly in Israel. From 1996 to 1998 she studied philosophy in Tel Aviv and then until 2003 at the "Sam Spiegel Film & Television School" in Jerusalem .
content
The original film material was shot in 1942 by a German recording team ( propaganda company ), two months before the start of the resettlement campaigns, called deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the extermination camps . The original film was never completed.
In 2009, Hersonski made a film from the film material that had been preserved in the archives, in which the images without audio or subtitles were juxtaposed with reports from eyewitnesses or contemporary witnesses, statements from diaries and other minutes. The documentation reveals the cynicism of the filming at the time and questions the uncritical use of the partially staged recordings.
Origin and background
The question of the expressiveness and breadth of interpretation of images led Yael Hersonski to deal with archived film material.
“Unlike written reports in which people tell their own story, images have a completely different quality: They leave much more room for interpretation. [...] In relation to the time of the Holocaust, I asked myself what happened to it the footage as the survivors gradually die because of their age. We who stay behind then only have the archives. "
Noemi Schory, the film's producer and author of over 100 short films for the Yad Vashem Visual Center , helped Hersonski put together suitable archives. Among them was the unfinished Nazi propaganda film from the Warsaw Ghetto. In two and a half years of work, Hersonski researched information and background information on these film fragments for Secretsache Ghetto Film.
The client and the exact purpose of the recordings are still unclear. The cameraman Willy Wist later said: “At no time did I know for what purposes the films we had shot should be used. It was of course clear to me that they were used for propaganda. "
There are different speculations about the reasons why there is no documentation about the production and why the film remained in the raw version. One of these is that the film was intended to be archival material to capture Jewish life for future generations.
Yael Hersonski writes: “This assumption is supported by the fact that Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary a few days before filming began in Warsaw that Himmler was promoting the resettlement of German Jews to Eastern Europe. And that he, Goebbels, therefore commissioned film recordings in order to have documentary material for the education of the next generation in the Third Reich . "
Archival material
The material of the film fragment with the Archivtitel ghetto , shot from 2 May to 2 June 1942 to eight rolls of film with a length of 1,737 meters, about 63 minutes of film was in the 1950 years in the State Film Archives of the GDR found and is now in the Federal Archives , Berlin Film Archive Department. The material was also cataloged under the title Asia in Central Europe . The reference to this possible working title comes from the memory book of Holocaust survivor Jonas Turkow.
In addition, further material from the holdings of the Reichsfilmarchiv could be assigned to the shooting of Ghetto , including a. two rolls of dub negative (copy of the camera negative) that the Federal Archives received from the Library of Congress in 1998 under the takeover title Warsaw Ghetto . This material contains the preamble “Attention / Secret commando matter!” And is now archived in the Federal Archives under the title Ghetto Residual Material .
There are also two amateur films, which largely show scenes from the two ghetto recordings, but from a different perspective. On the one hand, around 10 minutes of recordings, which were probably made by cameramen Paul Adam and Andreas Honowski and are recorded in the Federal Archives under the title The Warsaw Ghetto . The other is a four-minute long color film, presumably made by Hans Juppenlatz, registered in the Federal Archives under the title Im Warschauer Ghetto . With the help of these recordings, the cameraman Willy Wist could be identified and confirmed.
Controversial use of the footage
The film contains many images that seem cruel to unprepared eyes. The scenes were created by the Nazi filmmakers, but the dead and living shown are not actors, but real victims of the Nazi extermination of Jews .
The first ghetto archive material was considered authentic for a long time and presented as truth in museums and exhibitions. It was not until the rest of the material appeared in 1998 that it became clear that the pictures had been staged. Uncritical reporters sometimes use the material without pointing out the staged nature of the scenes. On May 8, 2013, on the anniversary of the uprising in the ghetto, 3sat showed the ZDF documentary Jüdisches Leben im Ghetto by Armin Coerper about Jewish life in Warsaw, for example the culture before 1939, the destruction and the few traces that still exist are.
“Before the war there were many Jewish theaters. Jewish life pulsed in Warsaw. The Jewish culture lived here like nowhere else in Europe. People danced, played and sang until the Germans brutally destroyed this world. "
The pictures from the theater that Coerper showed with these words, however, come from the ghetto propaganda material. The Germans staged the alleged “Jewish life” just for their cameras, forcing people to behave according to stage directions. So the recordings were made in the theater, with exaggerated actors and dancers and spectators laughing on command, who were desperate in reality.
"In order to show the pulsating Jewish life and the Jewish culture in Warsaw before the war, Armin Coerper used scenes from the Nazi farce, which was exposed as propaganda just minutes before in the documentation by Yael Hersonski."
production
The film was produced by Belfilms Ltd. in 2009 with a budget of 300,000 euros . ( Tel Aviv ) in co-production with Yes (Israel) , Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) and Südwestrundfunk (SWR) , with funding and distribution from the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb).
The premiere took place in the USA on January 25, 2010 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City (Utah) , in Germany on February 15, 2010 at the Berlinale . The first broadcast on German Free TV was on December 8, 2010 on Arte .
On July 1, 2011, Absolut Medien released the documentation on DVD .
Awards
- 2010: World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at Sundance Film Festival in the International Documentary category
- 2010: Performance at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama Documents section
- 2010: Writers Guild of America Documentary Screenplay Award at the Silverdocs Documentary Festival
- 2010: Best International Feature Award at the HotDocs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
- 2011: Nomination for the Grimme Prize in the Information & Culture category
- 2012: Nomination for the Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Historical Programming - Long Form
Reviews
“On the one hand, Yael Hersonski shows large parts of the material that otherwise can only be seen by those who go to the archive themselves. On the other hand, the Israeli documentary filmmaker reveals the production process of the recordings. [...] It should therefore be noted critically that the secret issue of Ghettofilm does not consistently name either the diary authors or the interviewed witnesses. Whose voice can be heard at the moment can only be determined by listening carefully. But especially a film that is about source criticism should clearly identify its own sources. "
“The documentary 'Secret Issue Ghettofilm', which repeats the first in the late-night program, puts the original material in the right context. [...] But otherwise, too, there are harsh images that Hersonski expects of the audience. Starved people who are left lying on the street. Children who look like old people, like aliens, at least no longer like children, with legs crooked from malnutrition. […] 'The secret thing about ghetto film' is a slap in the face for everyone who pulls a line. And sorely needed. "
See also
- Fritz Hippler : The Eternal Jew , 1940, a Nazi propaganda film, in the style of a documentary film. It came into the cinemas.
- Theresienstadt. A documentary film from the Jewish settlement area. is also a documentary-style Nazi propaganda film that was shot from August to September 1944. It was supposed to represent the supposedly good living conditions in the Theresienstadt ghetto (Nazi assembly camp or concentration camp), in today's Terezín .
- Jud Süß - Film Without a Conscience (2010). Feature film that dramatizes the making of the anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süss (1940) .
Web links
- Ghetto film is a secret matter in the Internet Movie Database (English) Ghetto film is a secret matter in the online film database
- Federal Agency for Political Education: free stream of the complete film and dossier on the documentary film
- Official website A Film Unfinished
- Anja Horstmann: The film fragment "Ghetto" - forced reality and pre-formed images. Federal Agency for Civic Education , May 8, 2013, accessed on September 2, 2013 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Yael Hersonski: What happened "outside" the filming? Federal Agency for Civic Education , May 8, 2013, accessed on September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ a b c Sabine Metzger: Film review: We would have eaten the flowers! (No longer available online.) Monstersandcritics.de, June 15, 2011, archived from the original on February 1, 2014 ; Retrieved September 2, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ GHETTO (archive title), country of production: Unknown, client: Unknown, camera: Sonderführer Willy Wist, employed by the OKW film squad, shooting time: May 2 to June 2, 1942, location: Warsaw Ghetto; Copy: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, signature 17411, 35 mm, b / w, silent, 1,737 m (= approx. 63 '). Film without title and opening credits, copied with Tonkasch.
- ↑ a b c Anja Horstmann: The film fragment "Ghetto" - forced reality and pre-formed images. Federal Agency for Civic Education , May 8, 2013, accessed on September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ GHETTO - RESTMATERIAL (archive title), country of production: German Empire, production company. Unknown, client: Unknown, camera: Sonderführer Willy Wist, copy: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, signature: M 19675, 35 mm, b / w, silently copied with Tonkasch, 948 m.
- ↑ THE WARSAW GHETTO (archive title), production country: German Reich, production company: Amateurfilm, camera: Paul Adam / Andreas Honowski, copy: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, signature: M 3180, 16 mm, b / w, silent, 86 m.
- ↑ IM WARSCHAUER GHETTO (archive title), country of production: German Reich, production company: amateur film, camera: presumably Hans Juppenlatz, copy: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, signature: M 20814, 16 mm, color, silent, 106 m
- ^ Jewish Life in the Ghetto (Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 9:40 p.m.). 3sat , accessed on September 2, 2013 .
- ^ A b Henryk M. Broder: How ZDF fell for Nazi propaganda. Die Welt , May 21, 2013, accessed September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ Bernard Dichek: The Questions did Remain "A Film Unfinished" challenges prevailing images of the Warsaw ghetto. (PDF; 120 kB) Jerusalem Report via the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center, February 2011, accessed on September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ a b Ghetto film, a secret matter. filmportal.de , accessed on September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ 26th Sundance Film Festival (January 21-31, 2010): Competition Films. (PDF; 4.8 MB) sundance.org, December 15, 2009, accessed on September 2, 2013 .
- ^ OFDb: Ghetto film, a secret matter. OFDb , accessed September 2, 2013 .
- ^ Yael Hersonski: Secret thing ghetto film , absolut media (Arte Edition), English / German. Berlin, ISBN 978-3-89848-544-9 .
- ↑ a b Sonja M. Schultz: A secret ghetto film. critic.de, May 25, 2011, accessed September 2, 2013 .
- ^ AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival announces Award Winners. (No longer available online.) Discovery.com, 2010, archived from the original on January 28, 2013 ; Retrieved September 2, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hot Doc Awards Top Honors to A Film Unfinished and In the Name of the Family. hotdocs.ca, May 7, 2010, accessed September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ Nominations Information & Culture 2011. (No longer available online.) Grimme Institute , archived from the original on August 24, 2013 ; Retrieved September 2, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
