Arts & Culture

I have a friend who once told me that he can’t watch anything about the Holocaust.  He told me that growing up in a house with two survivors was more than enough education, and that no director could do justice to those who perished, and especially to those who survived.

I can understand that position.  Hollywood has gotten it wrong time and time again; I cringe at every Nazi soldier with a British accent, and I hang my head low watching movies about German kids making friends with Jews through barbed wire fences.  

While big studios tend to fail more often than they succeed when depicting the Holocaust, every now and then I see a documentary so well done that I hope that everybody has a chance to experience the film.  

Director Yael Hersonski has produced a new work of that caliber, the moving A Film Unfinished.  Every second of the footage of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 is treated with such a delicate hand, that I was moved beyond words after viewing.

On Thursday, August 19^th, Jewcy will be hosting a showing of A Film Unfinished, at the Film Forum in Manhattan, and it will be followed up with a Q & A with Yael Hersonski, moderated by myself.

Jewcy cordially invites you to:

A FILM UNFINISHED 

Followed by a Q&A with director Yael Hersonski Moderated by Jewcy Editor-in-Chief Jason Diamond

Film Forum • Thursday, August 19th • 8:20 pm • 209 W Houston St • Purchase tickets in advance • "

At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered.  Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings of the footage. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the raw footage in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing "the good life" enjoyed by Jewish urbanites, and probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film. A FILM UNFINISHED is a film of enormous import, documenting some of the worst horrors of our time and exposing the efforts of its perpetrators to propel their agenda and cast it in a favorable light.

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