NORTON META TAG

15 May 2011

"DAS GHETTO" "A FILM UNFINISHED" from INDEPENDENT LENS

I saw this on Independent Lens last night, it is disturbing, haunting, it is hard to describe but I really recommend it be seen, especially by kids so they can see war and hate and prejudice are real, so they can see what people can do to each other, and so they learn the lesson we have to do every thing we can to try to prevent anything like this from happening again. Click the links to go to the websites for this film.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1851728978/
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/film-unfinished/film.html

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

A Film Unfinished


Trailer (1:59)

Clip 1 (1:03)

Clip 2 (1:15)

Extra (2:31)

About the Film

A frightened-looking young boy wearing a coat and a knit hat is comforted by a woman wearing a Star of David armband. At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film was discovered intact in an East German archive. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Das Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In 1998, another reel was discovered that radically complicated the scholarly interpretation of “Das Ghetto.” The footage, in which glimpses of the Nazi filmmakers can be seen when they accidentally step into each others’ shots, makes clear the great extent to which the Reich’s propagandists staged the scenes in the unfinished film that came to be known as “Das Ghetto.”
A Film Unfinished presents the raw footage of the latter reel in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing "the good life" enjoyed by Jewish urbanites. We also glimpse the filmmakers forcing some of the more prosperous Jewish inhabitants to ignore the corpses lying in the streets.
Without forcing any conclusions about what the object of the propaganda film, director Yael Hersonski offers insight into how what we believe to be definitive and historical is not always what it appears to be.

The Filmmaker

Producer/director Alexandria Hammond smiles for the camera. Yael Hersonski was content editor of the documentary program on Channel 10 in Israel, which won the Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary Television Program in 2004. She now directs documentary and fictional drama programs for Israeli television. A Film Unfinished is her first feature documentary film, and was made with Senior Producer Noemi Schory and Producer Itay Ken-Tor.

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