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Schindler's List
(1993) Dir. Steven Spielberg
Oskar Schindler is a vain, glorious and greedy German businessman
who becomes unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric Nazi reign when
he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based
on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100
Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. [more]
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Shoah
(1985) Dir. Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust
without using a single frame of archive footage. He interviews survivors,
witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since though
only agreed to be interviewed by audio). His style of interviewing
by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up
these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi
genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves
show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in
the Holocaust is still alive in well in many people that still live
in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere. [more]
Claude Lanzmann is a member of the faculty at the European
Graduate School. |
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Sobibor - 14 October, 1943, 16 hours
(2001) Dir. Claude Lanzmann
A documentary on the only successful revolt by Jewish concentration
camp inmates. The Sobibor uprising in 1943 in Poland was investigated
by Mr. Lanzmann many years ago when he was filming Shoah
and his interviews with a participant named Lerner date from then.
The director felt that the Sobibor uprising, which led to the closure
of the extermination camp by the Nazis after many escaped, was too
important to be a small part of his epic documentary. [more]
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Gebürtig
(2002) Dir. Lukas Stepanik
Gebürtig tells the tale of Jewish emigrant Hermann Gebürtig
and the German journalist Konrad Sachs (Peter Simonischek), and
their past as it catches up on them. While Gebürtig is being
persuaded by the Viennese journalist Susanne Ressel (Ruth Rieser)
) to return to the town of his birth and give evidence in court
against a former concentration camp supervisor, Sachs is forced
to finally face the agonizing reality that he is the son of a high
ranking SS-doctor. The filmmaker will present the film in
class. |
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Deutschland bleiche Mutter
(1980) Dir. Helma Sanders-Brahms
Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks
out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid
their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and
Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but
he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult
to live together again. [more]
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La vita è bella
(1997) Dir. Roberto Begnini
In 1930s Italy, a carefree Jewish book keeper named Guido starts
a fairy tale life by courting and marrying a lovely woman from a
nearby city. Guido and his wife have a son and live happily together
until the occupation of Italy by German forces. In an attempt to
hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of
a Jewish Concentration Camp, Guido imagines that the Holocaust is
a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank. [more]
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The Nasty Girl
(1989) Dir. Michael Verhoeven
Filmmaker Michael Verhoeven made one of the best films of the '80s
with this bold, 1989 German production about an adolescent girl,
Sonja (Lena Stolze of Verhoeven's The White Rose), who researches
the history of her hometown's involvement in the Holocaust.
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Hôtel Terminus
(1988) Dir. Marcel Ophuls
A documentary about the progress against Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo
Chief of Lyon, as well as Barbie's life after the war. [more]
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Au revoir les enfants
(1987) Dir. Louis Malle
During WWII, in a Catholic boarding school in the French countryside,
two boys become friends. One is a French boy, Julien Quintin, and
the other is a Jewish boy, Jean Bonnet, who is being hidden from
the Nazis by the friars who run the school. Louis Malle directed
this film based on what actually happened when he was at a boarding
school himself during the war. [more]
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Musame si pomahat
(2000) Dir. Jan Hrebjeck
In World War II Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, a childless couple,
Josef and Marie Cizek, can only watch while the Jewish family of
their employers are first removed from their own home to a spare
room in their house by the Nazis, then removed to the far off facility
of Thierenstadt. Years later, young David Wiener, the sole surviving
member of that family has managed to escape and make it to the Cizeks.
Although fully aware of the extreme danger of harbouring a Jew in
the Third Reich, the Cizek's can not permit themselves to leave
David to certain death and agree to hide him. [more]
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12 O'Clock High
(1949) Dir. Henry King
"12 O'Clock High" tells the story of an American Bomber Group low
on morale and performance after heavy losses over the skies of Germany.
General Frank Savage, a desk bound staff chief, is sent to the group
after the Bomber Commander is relieved of duty. At first encountering
resistance, Savage eventually shows the pilots how to take pride
in their unit and serve above and beyond the standards of the Army
Air Corps. [more] |
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Hitler - ein Film aus Deutschland
(1977) Dir. Hans-Jurgen Syberberg
A highly experimental film providing a panoramic view of the sources
which helped shape early twentieth-century Germany through the Nazi
period. [more] |
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Sophie's Choice
(1982) Dir. Alan J. Pakula
Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found
a reason to live in Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew
obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stingo, the movie's narrator,
a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness
of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions.
[more] |
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Berlin Alexanderplatz
(1979) Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Adapted by Fassbinder from Alfred Döblin's classic 1929 novel
of the underclass in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Berlin
Alexanderplatz is not merely Fassbinder's longest and most ambitious
film: it represents the crowning of the director's lifelong obsession
with Döblin's novel and is considered by many to be his greatest
film. Fassbinder identified closely with his protagonist, released
murderer Franz Biberkopf. Many of Fassbinder's familiar preoccupations
are explored in depth: the destructive pressures of society and
the inevitability with which people exploit and hurt those they
love. [more]
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The Wannsee Conference
(1987) Dir. Heinz Schirk
The horror of the holocaust began on January 20, 1942, when key
representatives of the SS, the Nazi Party, and the government bureaucracy
met secretly at a house in Wannsee, a quiet Berlin suburb, to discuss
the "Final Solution." While they enjoyed a buffet lunch,
brady, and cigarettes, they discussed how they could systematically
exterminate eleven million Jewish people. Director Heinz Schirk
and writer Paul Mommertz use actual notes from the conference—
along with letters written by Hermann Goering and Adolf Eichmann
as well as testimony given by Eichmann at his 1961 trial in Israel—
to re-create the shocking events of the fateful 85-minute meeting.
Viewers become stunned witnesses to the cold-blooded, matter-of-fact
manner in which the most hideous crime in history was set in motion |
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Conspiracy
(2001) Dir. Frank Pierson
By the winter of 1942, Hitler's dream of Aryan supremacy had become
a nightmare. His armies could be found freezing and starving on
the Eastern front, and America's fighting forces had just entered
the war to the West.
On January 20th of that year, 15 officials attended a conference
at Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin. Comprised of mid-ranking
SS commanders and a variety of government ministers, the meeting
was organized by SS Major Adolf Eichmann, under the direction
of the ruthless and efficient Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich.
It was to be a polite conference with food, wine and some debate,
but beneath this thin veneer of manners lay an evil intent. By
meeting's close, the fate of six million lives would be decided,
and a terrible machine put into operation that would alter the
shape of the world.
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