Claude Lanzmann - Seminars / Workshops / Lectures
DOCUMENTARY FILM: History and Memory (3 credits)
Claude Lanzmann
Description: This course will examine history and memory within documentary film. We will examine these themes through Lanzmann's landmark films on humanity's most profound encounter with evil. As we do so, essential questions emerge about documentary film's relationship to ethics and aesthetics. We will also explore the illusive nature of objectivity and subjectivity.
Objectives: This course is aimed to inform artist, filmmakers and scholars interested in the relationship between memory and history. Through exploring evil as a necessary theme to be confronted we will push ourselves towards new ways of thinking and seeing the world. As we work together through the difficulties of historical trauma we necessarily revive the question of ethics. What responsibility does documentary film have to ethics? What is the role of the director, the artist, the media creator? And what role does theory play in these difficult questions?
Required Readings:
Claude Lanzmann. SHOAH - The complete text. DaCapo Press. September 1995. ISBN: 0306806657. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Lanzmann, Claude (Foreward) and Henry Orenstein. I Shall Live. Oxford University Press. January 1990. Paperback, 304 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0192852124. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah: The Complete Text of the Acclaimed Holocaust Film. Da Capo Press. September 1995. Paperback, Language English, ISBN: 0306806657. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Required Films:
Lanzmann, Claude (Director). Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures. France 2 Cinéma. 2001. 95 min, Starring: Yehuda Lerner. DVD, ASIN: B0000CARGY. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Lanzmann, Claude (Director). Un vivant qui passe (A Visitor from the Living). La Sept-Arte. 1997. 65 min, Starring: Claude Lanzmann, Maurice Rossel. DVD, ASIN: B0000CARGY. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Lanzmann, Claude (Director). Tsahal. Bavaria Film. 1994. 316 min. Starring: Ehud Barak, Amos Oz, Ariel Sharon. DVD, ASIN: B0018F6U1E. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Lanzmann, Claude (Director). Shoah. Films Aleph and Historia. 1985. 566 min. Starring: Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaidl, Hanna Zaidl, Jan Piwonski, Itzhak Dugin, Richard Glazer. DVD, ASIN: B000EDWW5O. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Lanzmann, Claude. Pourquoi Israel (Israel, Why). Stephan Films, Parafrance, Compagnie d'Entreprise et de Gestion, Laboratoire Vitfer. 1972. 190 min. DVD, ASIN: B001J0UQ40. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Recommended Readings:
Furman, Nelly. "The Language of Pain." in: Geoffrey H. Hartman (Editor). Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory. Blackwell Publishers. 1994. Hardcover, 208 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1557861250. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Rabinowitz, Paula. "Wreckage upon Wreckage: History, Documentary, and the Ruins of Memory." in: They Must Be Represented: The Politics of Documentary. Verso. 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1859840256. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Felman, Shoshana. "The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah." in: Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. Routledge. 1992. Paperback, 332 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0415903920. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. "The Book of Destruction." in: Saul Friedlander (Editor). Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution". Harvard University Press. 1992. Paperback, 416 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0674707664. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Koch, Gertrud. "The Aesthetic Transformation of the Image of the Unimaginable: Notes on Claude Landzmann's Shoah." in: Daniel and Hansen (Translators). October 48. Spring 1989, pp. 15-24.
Young, James E. "Holocaust Video and Cinemagraphic Testimony: Documenting the Witness." in: Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. University of Indiana Press. 1988. Hardcover, 286 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0253367166. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.