A Film Unfinished (2010)

A Film Unfinished (Hebrew title: שתיקת הארכיון Shtikat haArkhion, German title: Geheimsache Ghettofilm) is a 2010 documentary film by Yael Hersonski, which re-examines the making of an unfinished 1942 German propaganda film (titled Das Ghetto, "The Ghetto") depicting the Warsaw Ghetto two months before the mass extermination of its inhabitants in the German operation known as the Grossaktion Warsaw. The documentary features interviews with surviving ghetto residents and a re-enactment of testimony from Willy Wist, one of the camera operators who filmed scenes for Das Ghetto. It premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the "World Cinema Documentary Editing Award". At the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the film won the Best International Feature award. The film was released theatrically in the US on 18 August 2010.

The film's distributor, Oscilloscope, appealed to the MPAA over the film's R rating, but were unsuccessful in reclassifying the film. Oscilloscope says the R rating is inconsistent with cultural norms because the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is visited by school children, has more graphic footage.

Synopsis

Ce sont des séries de bobines de films de 35 mm allemandes, anonymes, sans générique, portant la seule inscription : Das Ghetto, retrouvées dans les années 1950 qui sont à l'origine du film de Yahel Hersonski. Ces bobines constituent un « documentaire » allemand sur le ghetto de Varsovie durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Dans les années 1990, la découverte d'une bobine manquante viendra éclairer la propagande qui se cachait dans les premières images retrouvées et le véritable but des Allemands qui réalisèrent ces images.

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