Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust / Edition 3

by Annette Insdorf, Elie Wiesel

Overview

Indelible Shadows investigates questions raised by films about the Holocaust. How does one make a movie that is both morally just and marketable? Film scholar Annette Insdorf provides sensitive readings of individual films and analyzes theoretical issues such as the "truth claims" of the cinematic medium. The third edition of Indelible Shadows includes five new chapters that cover recent trends, as well as rediscoveries of motion pictures made during and just after World War II. It addresses the treatment of rescuers, as in Schindler's List; the controversial use of humor, as in Life is Beautiful; the distorted image of survivors, and the growing genre of documentaries that return to the scene of the crime or rescue. The annotated filmography offers capsule summaries and information about another hundred Holocaust films from around the world, making this edition the most comprehensive and up to date discussion of films about the Holocaust, and an invaluable resource for film programmers and educators. Annette Insdorf is Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University, and a Professor in the Graduate Film Division of the School of the Arts. She is the author of Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kielowski (Hyperion, 1999) and Francois Truffaut (Cambridge, 1995). She served as a jury member at the Berlin Film Festival and the Locarno Film Festival, and is the panel moderator at the Telluride Film Festival. Insdorf co-hosts (with Roger Ebert) Cannes Film Festival coverage for BRAVo/IFC.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521815635
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/25/2002
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	434
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.14(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. Finding an Appropriate Language: 1. The Hollywood version of the Holocaust; 2. Meaningful montage; 3. Styles of tension; 4. Black humor; Part II. Narrative Strategies: 5. The Jew as child; 6. In hiding/onstage; 7. Beautiful evasions?; 8. The condemned and doomed; Part III. Responses to Nazi Atrocity: 9. Political resistance; 10. The ambiguity of identity; 11. The new German guilt; Part IV. Shaping Reality: 12. The personal documentary; 13. From judgment to illumination; Part V. Third Edition Update: 14. The Holocaust as genre; 15. Rediscoveries; 16. Rescuers in fiction films; 17. The ironic touch; 18. Dysfunction as distortion: the Holocaust survivor on screen and stage; 19. Documentaries of return.

Editorial Reviews

"The standard book on the Holocaust in film..." The Nation

"...this book is a key source for this area and it is excellent to have available again." Fred Davies

"Indelible Shadows is a thoroughly researched and excellently compiled book."
Maria Kornatowska, The Polish Review

From the Publisher

A paper reprint of the original (1983) to which a brief new foreword by Elie Wiesel has been added. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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