"Director: Claude LANZMANN"

• Shoah (and 4 Films After Shoah) | Blu Ray | (30/01/2015) from £32.95   |  Saving you £37.04 (112.41%)   |  RRP £69.99

  To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to make people realise that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary that not only records the facts but bears witness. We are commanded "Never forget"; this film helps us to fulfil that mandate, reverberating with the viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful, both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days, Schindler's List and Life Is Beautiful entering the mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 40s but talks with survivors, with SS men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6 million Jews.Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years tracking people down, cajoling them into talking, asking them questions they didn't want to face. When soldiers refuse to appear on film, Lanzmann sneaks cameras in. When people are on the verge of breaking down and can't answer any more questions, Lanzmann asks anyway. He gives names to the victims--driving through a town that was predominantly Jewish before Hitler's time, a local points out which Jews owned what. Lanzmann travels the world, speaking to workers in Poland, survivors in Israel, officers in Germany. He is not a detached interviewer; his probings are deeply personal. One man farmed the land upon which Treblinka was built. "Didn't the screams bother you?" Lanzmann asks. When the farmer seems to brush the issues aside with a smile, Lanzmann's fury is noticeable. "Didn't all this bother you?" he demands angrily, only to be told, "When my neighbour cuts his thumb, I don't feel hurt." The responses, the details are difficult to hear but critical nonetheless. Shoahtells the story of the most horrifying event of the 20th century, not chronologically and not with historical detail, but in an even more important way: person by person. --Jenny Brown

• Shoah | DVD | (19/02/2007) from £26.39   |  Saving you £23.60 (47.20%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Shoah is Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary meditation on the Holocaust. Assembled from footage shot by the filmmaker during the 1970s and 1980s it investigates the genocide at the level of experience: the geographical layout of the camps and the ghettos; the daily routines of imprisonment; the inexorable trauma of humiliation punishment extermination; and the fascinating insights of those who experienced these events first hand. Absent from the film is any imagery shot at the time the Holocaust occurred. There is only Lanzmann and his crew filming in private spaces and now-dormant zones of eradication to extract testimony from a series of survivors witnesses and oppressors alike. Through his relentless questioning (aided on occasion by hidden camera) Lanzmann is able to coax out material of unparalleled emotional truth that constitutes both precious oral history and withering indictment. Shoah (the title is a common designation for the Holocaust and a Hebrew word that can be translated as 'Catastrophe' or 'Annihilation') was the first of Lanzmann's films to analyse the effects of the death camps on individual lives and the world at large. It represents an aesthetic achievement in line with Alain Resnais's Night and Fog combining inquiry rage and mourning to create a monumental portrait of shame and grief. Shoah locates within the present a direct line to the horrors of the past and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful films of all time.

• Shoah: The Four Sisters (Masters of Cinema) DVD Edition | DVD | (18/02/2019) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Eureka Entertainment to release SHOAH: THE FOUR SISTERS, a powerful and poignant 4-part documentary from Claude Lanzmann, as part of The Masters of Cinema Series in DVD & Blu-ray editions from 18 February 2019. Paula Biren, Ruth Elias, Ada Lichtman, Hanna Marton: Four Jewish women, witnesses and survivors of the most insane and pitiless barbarism, and who, for that reason alone, but for many others also, deserve to be inscribed forever into the memory of humankind. What they have in common, beside the specific horrors to which each of them were subjected, is a searingly sharp, almost-physical intelligence, which rejects all pretence or faulty reasoning. In a word, idealism. Filmed by Claude Lanzmann during the preparation of what would become Shoah, each of these four extraordinary women deserved a film in their own right, to fully illustrate their exceptional fibre, and to reveal through their gripping accounts four little-known chapters of the extermination. THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH Ruth Elias was seventeen when the Nazis invaded her native city of Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia where her prosperous family had lived for generations. In April 1942, all were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Elias's parents and sister were deported to Auschwitz and soon murdered, but she was able to remain behind by marrying her boyfriend. By the winter of 1943 she became pregnant, a grave danger since pregnant women were targeted for deportation and Nazi regulations made it impossible to secure an abortion. She was sent to Auschwitz in the Fall of 1943. Interned in the infamous Czech Family Camp in Section B II B at Birkenau, she lived only a few hundred meters from a gas chamber and crematorium complex. When her pregnancy was finally recognized, she was placed under the care of the infamous Josef Mengele, who subjected her to a most cruel medical ordeal, forcing Elias to make the hardest possible decision a mother could face. THE MERRY FLEA On the very day Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, all the men in Ada Lichtman's town of Wieliczka were rounded up by the SS, taken to a forest and shot. One of them was Lichtman's father, a cobbler. From then on, she was possessed by a single question: how will I be killed? Every day, the Germans selected more victims for execution; the survivors of these massacres, including Ada and her first husband, were driven from village to village to perform forced labour. Eventually those still alive were deported in cattle cars to the extermination camp at Sobibor where more than 250,000 Jews from across Europe would be gassed. Among only three women selected for work in the camp, Lichtman washed laundry and repaired dolls taken from Jewish children for export to Germany. The dolls forever evoked memories of this travesty. NOAH'S ARK Hanna Marton was the wife of a professor who worked with Rezsö (Rudolf) Kasztner, the head of Aid and Rescue Committee for Jewish refugees in Hungary. Once the Nazis occupied Hungary in the Spring of 1944 and began to deport thousands of Jews every day to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kasztner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann for the release of 1,684 Jews in exchange for $1,000 per person. After an odyssey by train through the collapsing Reich, most reached safety in Switzerland. Although Kasztner had saved the largest number of Jews during the Holocaust, his plan scandalized many, because Kasztner had selected many of his family and friends, including Hanna and her husband, as well as those he deemed essential for the future of Zionism, to board the rescue train. Nearly 450,000 Hungarian Jews subsequently died in the gas chambers of Birkenau while the Martons survived. Hanna Marton remained acutely aware that her survival was purchased at the expense of countless others who died. Offered an opportunity to escape, she had taken it, though her sense of guilt about having been among the privileged in Kastner's convoy is deeply felt during her relentlessly painful account. BAŁUTY Bałuty is the name of a slum district in the Polish city of Lodz that the Nazis designated in 1940 as the ghetto for the large Jewish population of the city. The Nazi-appointed president of the Jewish council of elders, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, decided that part of the community would serve the Germans as a slave labour force. His strategy may have postponed the destruction of the ghetto, but nearly 45,000 Jews died of starvation and disease in Lodz. Paula Biren was just seventeen when she was forced to move with her family into the ghetto in 1940. Upon her graduation and in need of a job to avoid being deported, Biren accepted an administrative position with Rumkowski's Jewish women's police force. It was only after she realized her complicity in sending black marketeers to their deaths that she quit. Biren remained in the ghetto until August of 1944 when the Germans deported everyone, including Rumkowski, to camps. Her mother and sister were gassed upon arrival in Auschwitz, and her father died shortly Features: All four interviews presented across two discs Optional English subtitles PLUS: A booklet featuring new writing

• Shoah: The Four Sisters (Masters of Cinema) Blu-ray Edition | Blu Ray | (18/02/2019) from £30.76   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Eureka Entertainment to release SHOAH: THE FOUR SISTERS, a powerful and poignant 4-part documentary from Claude Lanzmann, as part of The Masters of Cinema Series in DVD & Blu-ray editions from 18 February 2019. Paula Biren, Ruth Elias, Ada Lichtman, Hanna Marton: Four Jewish women, witnesses and survivors of the most insane and pitiless barbarism, and who, for that reason alone, but for many others also, deserve to be inscribed forever into the memory of humankind. What they have in common, beside the specific horrors to which each of them were subjected, is a searingly sharp, almost-physical intelligence, which rejects all pretence or faulty reasoning. In a word, idealism. Filmed by Claude Lanzmann during the preparation of what would become Shoah, each of these four extraordinary women deserved a film in their own right, to fully illustrate their exceptional fibre, and to reveal through their gripping accounts four little-known chapters of the extermination. THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH Ruth Elias was seventeen when the Nazis invaded her native city of Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia where her prosperous family had lived for generations. In April 1942, all were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Elias's parents and sister were deported to Auschwitz and soon murdered, but she was able to remain behind by marrying her boyfriend. By the winter of 1943 she became pregnant, a grave danger since pregnant women were targeted for deportation and Nazi regulations made it impossible to secure an abortion. She was sent to Auschwitz in the Fall of 1943. Interned in the infamous Czech Family Camp in Section B II B at Birkenau, she lived only a few hundred meters from a gas chamber and crematorium complex. When her pregnancy was finally recognized, she was placed under the care of the infamous Josef Mengele, who subjected her to a most cruel medical ordeal, forcing Elias to make the hardest possible decision a mother could face. THE MERRY FLEA On the very day Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, all the men in Ada Lichtman's town of Wieliczka were rounded up by the SS, taken to a forest and shot. One of them was Lichtman's father, a cobbler. From then on, she was possessed by a single question: how will I be killed? Every day, the Germans selected more victims for execution; the survivors of these massacres, including Ada and her first husband, were driven from village to village to perform forced labour. Eventually those still alive were deported in cattle cars to the extermination camp at Sobibor where more than 250,000 Jews from across Europe would be gassed. Among only three women selected for work in the camp, Lichtman washed laundry and repaired dolls taken from Jewish children for export to Germany. The dolls forever evoked memories of this travesty. NOAH'S ARK Hanna Marton was the wife of a professor who worked with Rezsö (Rudolf) Kasztner, the head of Aid and Rescue Committee for Jewish refugees in Hungary. Once the Nazis occupied Hungary in the Spring of 1944 and began to deport thousands of Jews every day to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kasztner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann for the release of 1,684 Jews in exchange for $1,000 per person. After an odyssey by train through the collapsing Reich, most reached safety in Switzerland. Although Kasztner had saved the largest number of Jews during the Holocaust, his plan scandalized many, because Kasztner had selected many of his family and friends, including Hanna and her husband, as well as those he deemed essential for the future of Zionism, to board the rescue train. Nearly 450,000 Hungarian Jews subsequently died in the gas chambers of Birkenau while the Martons survived. Hanna Marton remained acutely aware that her survival was purchased at the expense of countless others who died. Offered an opportunity to escape, she had taken it, though her sense of guilt about having been among the privileged in Kastner's convoy is deeply felt during her relentlessly painful account. BAŁUTY Bałuty is the name of a slum district in the Polish city of Lodz that the Nazis designated in 1940 as the ghetto for the large Jewish population of the city. The Nazi-appointed president of the Jewish council of elders, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, decided that part of the community would serve the Germans as a slave labour force. His strategy may have postponed the destruction of the ghetto, but nearly 45,000 Jews died of starvation and disease in Lodz. Paula Biren was just seventeen when she was forced to move with her family into the ghetto in 1940. Upon her graduation and in need of a job to avoid being deported, Biren accepted an administrative position with Rumkowski's Jewish women's police force. It was only after she realized her complicity in sending black marketeers to their deaths that she quit. Biren remained in the ghetto until August of 1944 when the Germans deported everyone, including Rumkowski, to camps. Her mother and sister were gassed upon arrival in Auschwitz, and her father died shortly Features: All four interviews presented across two discs Optional English subtitles PLUS: A booklet featuring new writing

• Four Films After Shoah | DVD | (30/01/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  4 FILMS AFTER SHOAH will be released for the first time on DVD in the UK – Claude Lanzmann's four films that he made as follow-ups to his landmark SHOAH each of which explore in further depth specific aspects and events of the Nazis' extermination programme. Featuring the films A VISITOR FROM THE LIVING / SOBIBÓR OCTOBER 14 1943 4PM / THE KARSKI REPORT and THE LAST OF THE UNJUST (released theatrically in the UK & Eire on 9 January 2015) the four films will be released in a 2 x DVD set as part of the Masters of Cinema Series on 26 January 2015 to coincide to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. A VISITOR FROM THE LIVING [1997] is based on an interview conducted by Lanzmann with Maurice Rossel during the filming of SHOAH. A member of the Berlin delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1942 Rossel was the only member of the organisation to have visited Auschwitz in 1943 and to have also paid a trip to the model ghetto of Theresienstadt in June 1944. SOBIBÓR OCTOBER 14 1943 4PM [2001] recounts the prisoner uprising that took place in the Sobibór death camp in Poland. Only 50 prisoners ultimately evaded capture while the rest were sent to their murders in the gas chamber. THE KARSKI REPORT [2010] is Lanzmann's brief film on Jan Karski the Polish resistance figure who also featured in the final section of SHOAH and which recounts Karski's powerful testimonial given to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on what he witnessed during a trip to the Warsaw Ghetto and to the extermination camp Belzec. THE LAST OF THE UNJUST [2013] at 218 minutes in length moves between 1975 and 2012 detailing Lanzmann's mid-'70s Rome interviews with Benjamin Murmelstein the last President of the Jewish Council in the Theresienstadt ghetto and the filmmaker's own return to the location 37 years later — providing an unprecedented insight into the genesis of the Final Solution. Bonus Features: DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION Optional English Subtitles 2 x DVDs of the four films which total 439 minutes in length 120-PAGE BOOK containing writing analysis and interviews on the films by Claude Lanzmann and Aleksander Jousselin Laurence Giavarini and Emmanuel Burdeau plus more.