LEADER 00000ngmaa2200529Ka 4500 001 610975266 003 OCoLC 005 20100504102742.0 007 vf czahou 008 100504s1999 fr 065 vlfre 035 (PFA-FILM)19430 040 CUY|beng|cCUY 245 03 Un vivant qui passe|h[videorecording] /|cla Sept-Arte ; les Films Aleph ; MTM Cineteve ; produced and directed by Claude Lanzmann. 246 3 Vistor from the living 257 France ; Germany. 260 France :|b[s.n.],|c[1999]. 300 1 videocassette of 1 (65 min.) (Digital Betacam NTSC) : |bsd., col. ;|c1/2 in. 500 Release title in the U.S.: A visitor from the living. 500 Release date and production credits taken from Internet movie database. 506 Pacific Film Archive collection; non-circulating.|5CUY. 506 PFA 0504-01-14173. Restricted: For PFA exhibition only. 508 Cinematography, Dominique Chapuis, William Lubtcharnsky ; editing, Sabine Mamou. 520 "Twenty years after he conducted the interviews that made up the nine-hour film Shoah, Claude Lanzmann has begun working with the material he did not include in that epic documentary. The story of the concentration camp at Theresienstadt was, as he says, "both central and tangential" to the process of the extermination of the Jews in Europe that Shoah documented. It is the focus of A Visitor from the Living. Theresienstadt was a walled town touted by the Nazis as a "model ghetto" for prominent, assimilated, artistic, and above all high-profile Jews from throughout Europe. Notwithstanding the music, drawings, and poems clandestinely created there, it was a transit point to Auschwitz and Treblinka, and was in fact a concentration camp with its own horrors, and its own ovens. In 1944 Theresienstadt was opened to Red Cross inspectors, but only after a rigorous surface revamping that included the planting of flowers, the training of actors-and a mass deportation to Auschwitz. The question that has always remained about Theresienstadt is, How could the Red Cross have fallen for this ruse, this cynical chicanery? Claude Lanzmann gives us a key to the answer in A Visitor from the Living, a fascinating 1979 interview with Maurice Rossel, the Swiss head of the Red Cross delegation that inspected Theresienstadt and gave this death camp a passing grade, indeed, a clean bill of health. (Previously, Rossel had snuck into Auschwitz, only to produce a tepid report on his findings.) The answer we get is tragically and trenchantly familiar, for it lies in the very will of anti-Semitism that so deviously fuels denial. Rossel, though he was duped, is no fool. Listen to his words-words like "privileged Jews," "docility and passivity." Watch his hesitations, his silences, and glances at Lanzmann, whose interrogative weapons are a passion for details and a broken heart. In order to capture in the imagination something like the Holocaust, Lanzmann has said, "one has to talk and be silent at the same time"--Juliet Block, Pacific Film Archive film notes. 538 Digital Betacam NTSC. 650 0 Concentration camps|zCzech Republic. 650 0 World War, 1939-1945|xConcentration camps. 651 0 Terezín (Ústecký kraj, Czech Republic) 655 7 Documentaries and factual works.|2mim 655 7 Features.|2mim 655 7 War documentaries.|2mim 690 French films. 700 1 Lanzmann, Claude,|edirection,|eproduction. 700 1 Chapuis, Dominique,|d1948-2001,|ecamera/lighting. 700 1 Lubtchansky, William,|ecamera/lighting. 700 1 Mamou, Sabine,|eediting. 700 1 Rossel, Maurice. 710 2 Sept/Arte (Firm) 710 2 Films Aleph. 710 2 MTM Cineteve. 941 0 PFA 0504-01-14173. PFA collection acquisition exhibition 2010/02/04 946 PFA 0504-01-14173. INV record created 2010/04/16 by pjs; MIN record created 2010/05/03 by sw. 948 PFA 0504-01-14173. Restricted: For PFA exhibition only. 956 pfsw 956 20140224|bPFA migration/merge load 957 OCLC xref loaded 20140309 994 C0|bCUY