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Aftermath: How Filmmakers Responded to the Holocaust

January 27 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Free
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International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025 commemorates the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied troops – the moment when the world became fully aware of the almost unimaginable scope of the genocide perpetrated within the camps under Nazism. Today, our image of that experience is largely shaped by the hundreds of dramatic films and television programs that tell stories set during the Holocaust – from Schindler’s List and Life Is Beautiful to Inglorious Basterds and Jakob the Liar – images and narratives created decades after the events they depict.

In this talk illustrated with film clips, documentary filmmaker and programmer Peter L. Stein will discuss a number of films made between 1944-1949, in the immediate aftermath of the war, to consider the ways filmmakers working in the shadow of the Holocaust dramatized what their generation had just witnessed: how were they coming to terms with, or avoiding, what had taken place? These films include the prescient American drama None Shall Escape (1944); the stunning Polish resistance film The Last Stage—shot in 1947-8 on the grounds of Auschwitz and directed by Wanda Jakubowska, a former Auschwitz prisoner herself, who cast camp survivors to perform in the film; and the recently restored (and long suppressed) Czech melodrama Distant Journey, which daringly intercuts documentary footage with the fictional story of a Jewish woman sent to Terezin (Theresienstadt).

Details

Date:
January 27
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Category:
Event Tags:
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Website:
https://www.jccsf.org/event/aftermath-how-filmmakers-responded-to-the-holocaust/

Organizer

JCCSF
Phone
415.276.1576
Email
hpozen@jccsf.org

Other

County
San Francisco
Interests
Arts & Culture

Venue

The JCCSF
3200 California St
San Francisco,
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