Film and the Holocaust: New Perspectives on Dramas, Documentaries, and Experimental Films
At last—a wide-ranging, richly structured, incisive study of how this horrific event appears and reappears in dramatic, comedic, exploitative, pornographic, documentary, and poetic representations. No one has surveyed the full range of Holocaust material like this before. Kerner brings stunning clarity to the most basic issues involved in representing catastrophe.Bill Nichols, Professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University, and author ofEngaging Cinema, Introduction to Documentary (2nd edition)andRepresenting Reality.The unprecedented catastrophe of the Holocaust has thrown into question the ability of the cinema to adequately represent such an event in all its enormity and complexity. Yet this crisis of representation has done little to stem the flood of "Holocaust films" that has appeared over the last five decades. Scrupulously researched and theoretically informed,Film and The Holocaustis the first study that sets aside the high/low debates about authenticity, accessibility or moral value, to closely examine the myriad cinematic forms through which the Holocaust is represented. From theShoah-businessof the Hollywood blockbuster to the intimate and formally challenging explorations of the Avant-Garde, Kerner discusses all forms with equal authority.Film and The Holocaustis an essential introduction to the breadth of films and the wide range of scholarship of what has become a major cinematic genre.Jeffrey Skoller, Film Studies at UC Berkeley, and author ofShadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde FilmArticle in The Jewish Telegraph