The Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival will screen a special director’s cut of Adam Benzine’s 2015 documentary, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah. It took French journalist, philosopher, and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, 12 years to make his Holocaust documentary, Shoah which was completed in 1985. Benzine’s film chronicles the challenges that dogged Lanzmann during the making of Shoah (1973–1985), including tracking down both Nazi officials and death camp survivors. The film also explores Lanzmann’s relationships with philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Benzine’s film was an Academy Award nominee for Documentary Short Subject. There will be an introduction by Jonathan Skolnik of UMass prior to the screening.
In a pre-screening lecture, Erin McGlothlin (German & Jewish Studies, Washington University), will offer new insights into Lanzmann’s holocaust documentary, based upon hundreds of hours of research and outtakes in the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 7:30 p.m. UMass Amherst, 137 Isenberg School of Management.
