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World Cinema Series - Shoah (Reservations have closed)
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Please note that reservations have closed.
1985 | France | 550 min
Consumer Advice: Some disturbing content
Venue: The Gallery Theatre, National Museum of Singapore
Free entry for SFS members. Members have to reserve tickets for event by emailing shoah@sfs.org.sg. Please indicate your name, membership no. and expiry date.
“I would never have imagined such a combination of beauty and horror… A sheer masterpiece” – Simone de Beauvoir
Twelve years in the making, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah is a monumental nine-hour film about the Holocaust. Considered as one of the most powerful documentaries ever made, it awakened a new consciousness about this great evil.
Eschewing historical footage and re-enactments, Shoah is comprised of interviews with witnesses, survivors and former Nazi camp commanders who experienced the Holocaust first hand. Through the filmmaker’s patient and sometimes relentless questioning, the testimonies reveal an emotional truth that covey an unparalleled and harrowing immediacy to the horrors of the Holocaust. Interspersed with the interviews are shots of the now empty and tranquil sites of Auschwitz and Treblinka, where the genocide took place. Flowers and grass now cover the mass graves, and the concentration camps themselves look like disused factories. Even the tracks that were used to transport the prisoners are still being used today.
Although it contains not a single image or footage of the actual event, the film evoke a far more powerful and devastating image of the Holocaust than any historical document. It achieves this by situating the memories of the past firmly in the present, and allowing the viewers to imagine and reconstruct the horrors of what happened. A haunting and unforgettable testament, Shoah is essential viewing for anyone who wishes to understand one of the greatest tragedies of contemporary history.