Helmut Doork, a once great and famous clown, is fired from the circus. Getting drunk at a local bar, he pokes fun at Hitler in front of some Gestapo agents, who arrest and send him to a prison camp. Helmut angers his fellow prisoners by refusing to perform for them, wanting to preserve his legend. As times passes, Jews are brought into the camp, with fraternizing between them and the other prisoners strictly prohibited. Eventually, Helmut is forced by the others to perform or be beaten. His act bombs and he leaves the barracks depressed, trying the routine out again alone in the prison yard. He hears laughter...
A documentary. On the night between the 1st and the 2nd of October 1943 the German occupying power went into action against the Jewish population in Denmark. Shortly before, information had leaked from the German Head Quarter. Escape routes were organized, and the Jews - now refuges in their own country - flocked north to Gilelleje, the key port of disembarkation. During the weeks that followed, the Danish resistance movement - widely supported by the rest of the population - managed to get 95% of the Danish Jews safely across to neutral Sweden. About 500 Denish Jews were captured by the Gestapo and sent to...
A documentary. Leni Riefenstahl is considered one of the most controversial women of the 20th century as an artist and a Nazi propagandist. Her films "Triumph of the will" and "Olympiatand for perfectly staged body worship and the celebration of the superior and victorious. At the same time, these images project contempt for the imperfect and weak. Riefenstahl's aesthetics are more present than ever today - but is that also true for their implied message? The film examines this question using documents from Riefenstahl's estate, including private films, photos, recordings and letters. It uncovers fragments of...
A documentary. In 1972 the Jerry Lewis was at the peak of his career. Driven by the ambition to play a dramatic role for a change, he set out to craft a very special movie project for himself, "The Day the Clown Cried". Lewis left the set and never spoke about what happened. The movie was never completed and has become the ultimate Hollywood myth. Now, after years of research, extensive materials have been found, restored and put into their production context. This documentary tells the story as daring as the original project itself, with Lewis playing a German clown in a concentration camp long before any other...
A documentary. As WWII-era United States enlisted its greatest filmmakers to support the war effort through cinematic propaganda, even Alfred Hitchcock got involved. But with 1944s LIFEBOAT, some believe that despite the master’s best intentions, he accidentally crafted a pro-German film.
A recoded doscussion. The Audio-Visual Dimension of Holocaust Memory - Liat ben-Habib to Rotary International Holocaust Memorial day 2023. the topic was the Audio-Visual Dimension of Holocaust Memory. How was the Holocaust portrayed by cinema in the past 8 decades, and how can we learn about it from the digital film collection of Yad Vashem, comprising data on 14,000 titles? Are there still new stories to be told in film? What are Cinema's new challenges in bringing the history to present viewers?
A documentary film.takes footage from the Nazi propaganda film "Theresienstadt - ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet" and contrasts it with the testimony of Theresienstadt survivor Salle Fisherman z"l. Salle Fisherman, who was involved in the filming of the propaganda film, describes to the viewers scenes in the film, how they were made and how to recognize that they are propaganda. He points out the terrible conditions of Terezin and explains to the viewers what the images of the progaganda film intentionally do not show. The film raises awareness of how to critically analyze perpetrator-media,...
A feature film. In 1941 the Bucharest Pogrom breaks out at local cinema. A ten year old Jewish boy is an eye witness to his father's murder by his next door neighbor, the leader of the fascist militia. After surviving the massacre of Romania's Jews postwar Romania does not join the pursuit for justice. The young boy emigrates to the state of Israel.. Learning that his father's killer is now fighting in Vietnam with the French Foreign Legion while he is fulfilling his own military service in Israel, hedeserts and embarks on a quest for truth, justice, and revenge. This saga unfolds at the 1955 Court Martial in...