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2010 Press Release
LIFF Showing One of the Most Sobering, Powerful and Unorthodox Documentaries
Long Beach Island, New Jersey
May 28, 2010
The Lighthouse International Film Festival is showing what it considers to be one of the most sobering, powerful and unorthodox documentaries of the Festival on Sunday, June 6 at 3 pm at the Long Beach Island Foundation of Arts and Sciences.
In May 1942 a group of German soldiers were sent to film Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto. They would record various aspects of Jewish culture, always with the goal of emphasizing any extremes. Many if not most of the scenes of the Nazi film were staged, crafted for propaganda, fabricated to discredit the Jewish people in the eyes of the world-street scenes, gaunt faces and malnourished bodies, frozen faces with deep-set eyes, Jews barely alive. Juxtaposed to that are the staged scenes of Jews living in luxury, in spacious and well furnished apartments, eating sumptuous meals- even pastries and meats! There's even a phony ball with Jews drinking Champagne and dancing, the women in attractive dresses and men in creased suits.
In A Film Unfinished, a survivor views the footage of the German propaganda film and says, "What on earth? Where did one see a flower? We would have eaten the flower." This juxtaposition of the squalor and the decadence was meant to send the message to the world that Jews are indifferent toward and exploitative of, not just Aryans, but even their fellow Jews. The message it sends now concerns the premeditated cruelty of the Nazi propaganda machine forcing people to play these roles knowing they were about to be murdered. Survivors of the Ghetto and one of the film's original cameramen add depth and provide specifics, supplementing the powerful, disturbing images of the film itself.
Yael Hersonski, the director, was told by a German film archivist that this propaganda film which was never finished and simply stored and marked The Ghetto since the end of World War II is "the greatest mystery in our archive."
"Why the Nazis made the film, who actually made it, and why it was never completed." In a way A Film Unfinished which premiered at Sundance and Berlin this year is not finished. It will go on to other film festivals and events after this one before being released on DVD so that the story can reach an even wider audience. It is certainly worth watching the story unfold.
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