Screening on the occasion of international Holocaust Remembrance Day
by Claude Lanzman, France 1985, 556 min.
Original version with French subtitles.
With introductions in English. We'll provide an abstract of the speech in French.
FILM SCREENING IN THREE PARTS
Monday, January 27 2020 | 6:30PM - Part 1
Introduction: Erin Corber, PhD
Erin Corber is a historian of modern Europe and modern Jewry with a particular interest in Jewish public life in interwar France. She currently serves as Graduate Career Advisor at McGill University, and is a research associate of the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies at Concordia University.
Wednesday, January 29 2020 | 6:30PM - Part 2
Introduction: Naomi Kramer Naomi Kramer is the President and founder of the Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention Foundation (HGEP), a non-profit organization mandated to educate the public about the destructive powers of prejudice and discrimination. Naomi has worked with the Gedenkdienst program for 28 years and recently was awarded the gold medal for services to Austria.
Thursday, January 30 2020 | 6:45PM - Part 3
Introduction: Norman Ravvin, PhD
Norman Ravvin is a writer and teacher. A faculty member of the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University, he was the university’s Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies. His critical essays on Holocaust literature and history are collected in A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory.
Free entry
Claude Lanzmann made his monumental documentary "Shoah," on the systematic extermination of Jews in Europe by the German Reich, without using any archive material. For eleven years, the filmmaker filmed former sites of mass murder and tirelessly identified and questioned survivors, witnesses and former perpetrators. The result is a 9.5-hour film that wrote film history – and counts as one of the most important films ever made.
“It is not easy to talk about SHOAH. There is magic in this film and magic cannot be explained. [...] Despite all our knowledge, the awful experience stayed away from us. For the first time, we are living it in our heads, our hearts, our flesh... - We are aware that we are contemplating a great work of art. A pure masterpiece.
Simone de Beauvoir
“I had seen a memory of the most debased chapter in human history. But I had also seen a film that affirmed life so passionately that I did not know where to turn with my confused feelings. There is no proper response to this film. It is an enormous fact, a 550-minute howl of pain and anger in the face of genocide. It is one of the noblest films ever made.”
Roger Ebert
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