Screening the Holocaust

3 units

The course will survey ways in which the story of the Holocaust is conveyed through film. Focusing on the individual and aesthetic pleasure, modern Western film seem to be an inappropriate genre to depict the German mass murdering of six million Jews. But since the broadcasting of the NBC series Holocaust in 1975, feature films have replaced documentaries and historiographies in educating the public about the traumas of the unprecedented genocide. With the continuing impact of the Holocaust on Jewish, American, and German identity and politics, Holocaust films are more scrutinized than any other genre. We will examine these aesthetic and philosophical controversies as well as the narrative and editing strategies filmmakers use to relate collective history and individual trauma. Special attention will be given to the complex cinematographic perspectives on human agency in a world of bureaucratically administered killing. In the course, we will try to close the gap between reading film theory and watching a Holocaust movie: we will analyze the properties of cinematic language, reconstruct the sociohistorical and psychological formation of memory and imagination, and even question our own evaluation of a film. Screenings include Shoah, The Wannsee Conference, Europa, Europa, Enemies, a Love Story, Jakob the Liar, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful. Required screenings.