Arts I Entertainment
The Jewish Community Center
Institute for Retired Professionals Presents
Yom HaShoah
ii
Growing Genre
As recent spate of films shows,
. „ , .
focus on Holocaust stztt thrives.
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Wednesday, April 30, 7:30 p.m.
Marion and David Handleman Hall & Auditorium
D. Dan & Betty Kahn Buliding
Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Jewish Community Campus
6600 West Maple Road, West Bloomfield
Featuring Detroit Symphony Orchestra principals Geoffrey Applegate, violinist,
Marcy Chanteaux, cellist, and Pauline Martin, pianist.
Open to the community. No charge.
This program is underwritten by a gift from Shirley Harris.
TCC
Call (248) 967-4030, ext. 2018 VAL a
ere
for more information.
76),, -
Ve
Thursdays All You
707960
E4t
Buy One Lunch,
Get 1/2 off
the 2nd of equal
or greater value.
Excludes Pizza & Daily Specials • coupons per table
Expires 4/30/03
(248) 474-2420
20300 Farmington Road
.114.
en
7 e, 8
Mile
Ot7
East Side
Illir ith the liberation of the
Nazi death camps and the
fall of Berlin, the
Holocaust and Hider's
reign came to an end almost 58 years ago.
Yet the fascination of filmmakers in
Hollywood and Europe with the hor-
rors and moral complexities of this
tragic era has only intensified with the
passage of time.
A case in point was the Los Angeles
opening on the same night earlier this
year of three new films dealing in dif-
ferent ways with the history and legacy
of the period.
The Costa-Gavras film Amen, which
has not yet opened in Detroit, indicts
the silence of the Vatican as 6 million
Jews were murdered.
Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, shown
last month at the Detroit Film Theatre,
is a 90-minute documentary, in which
Traudl Junge, the Rihrer's private secre-
tary from 1942 to his suicide in 1945,
recalls the daily, often banal, routine of
the man who terrified the world.
The French import, Pascale Bailly's
God Is Great, IM Not, scheduled as
part of this year's upcoming JCC
Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival, is
set in the present and tracks the ups
and downs of an interfaith romance.
Even here, though, much can be
understood about the male protagonist
by knowing that he is the son of
Holocaust survivors.
The simultaneous L.A. opening of the
three films was largely coincidental, but
they extend the seemingly endless pro-
duction of movies, television specials,
plays, novels and scholarly works using
the Holocaust as their dramatic focus.
One explanation for this attraction
comes from Costa-Gavras, the creator
of such political thrillers as Z Stage of
Siege, Missing and Music Box.
"Every year we discover new elements
about that period,” he said recently by
phone from Paris. "Every writer and
director in every generation will revisit
it and try to understand how a cultured
country was able to create officially an
industry for killing other people.
"Other countries under Nazi occupa-
tion were a party to this crime, so we
explore it again and again. We try to
understand how 40,000 people, men and
women, for four years got up every morn-
ing and then spent the day killing Jews.
A central character in Amen is an SS
officer known only as The Doctor,
modeled on Dr. Josef Mengele, known
in Auschwitz as "The Angel of Death."
He is the only completely evil per-
son in the movie, because "the most
cynical people of all were the doctors,
Costa-Gavras said. "They were trained
'—
`Incredible Shadarrs9 4141
Groundbreaking books document Holocaust in film.
XINK.OtOWbaboaVa
ACADEMY AWARD® WINNER!
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM/
ing
4/25
2003
78
Friday, April 25 at 7 & 9:45
Saturday, April 26 at 7 & 9:45
Sunday, April 27 at 4 & 7
DETROIT FILM THEATRE 313.833.3237
the DETROIT INSTITUTE of ARTS
www.dia.org/dft
explaining recent trends, adding dis-
cussion of 170 Holocaust-related films
since the 1989 update, including redis-
covered motion pictures made during
he daughter of Holocaust
and just after World 'War
.
.
survivors and the director .
"I write for a general rather than lim-
•
of undergraduate film
ited academic audience," says Insdorf,
studies at Columbia
University in: New York City, Annette who published the first edition of its
kind in 1983. In addition to quite a bit
Insdorf has put together three vol-.
of description, context and plot siunma-
umes. describing and critiquing
ry in her book, her latest effort includes
Holocaust films.
an annotated filmography that provides
The recently published third edition
capsule sum
_ maries of 100 motion. pic-
of Indelible Shadows: Film and the
Holocaust (Cambridge University Press; tures from around the world.
Insdorf, also a professor in the grad-
$25) investigates questions raised by
: uate film division of the School of the
the movies and offers five chapters
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
T