Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies: Film and Video

"Relates how survivors of the concentration camps broke down as they gave evidence at Eichmann's trial and reveals how Eichmann, sitting in a booth of bulletproof glass, calmly protested his innocence. Also covers the Nuremberg trials, lasting from November 1945 through September of the following year, when a number of Nazi leaders were tried before an international tribunal."

"Follows the tragedy and triumph of the Weiss family of Berlin and intertwines their fate as European Jews with the story of a German family, the Dorfs, whose members include a high-ranking Nazi officer ... Uses the stories of these fictional families to portray the atrocities against the Jewish people from the 1930s to 1945, and presents a heart-wrenching portrait of their struggle."

"The Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh celebrated its 30th anniversary by releasing The Holocaust Testimony Project — a two-disc DVD set preserving the firsthand accounts of Pittsburgh residents who lived through that devastating time. The project consists of survivor accounts, and the account of one liberator. It features survivors Solange Lebovitz and Harry Schneider."

"Uses interviews from Jan Karski and others, official photos, home movies, and archival footage to explore the factors that shaped America's response to the Holocaust and asks the question "Why didn't America do more?" Looks at America's inaction through the experiences of a Jewish refugee trying to save his parents, and through documented evidence of official policy of the U.S. government."

A video documentary of three Holocaust survivors from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who return to Eastern Europe and the locations of the horrors after 60 years.""

" Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, this piece documents the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust and contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps' quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage."

"Several documentary films dealing with the Holocaust."

"Four documentaries from the PBS investigative series FRONTLINE are helping to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive — from presenting horrific firsthand footage of the atrocities Allied forces found when they liberated Nazi death camps in Germany, to telling the stories of some of the Holocaust’s last living survivors."

"Documentaries and short videos on exhibits, lectures, public programs, and survivor interviews."

"Programs on Holocaust remembrance, research, and testimony from Holocaust and genocide survivors."

"It is the site of the largest mass murder in the history of the world - Auschwitz. Yet few know the true and surprising history of this most infamous place, nor how it fitted into the Nazis' overall plan for the mass extermination of the Jews - what they called the 'Final Solution'. For Auschwitz, via its destructive dynamism, became both a microcosm of the Nazi State and the logical consequence of Hitler's warped worldview. Combining rare archive footage, CGI illustrations of the camp never before seen on television and dramatic reconstructions of the key decision-making moments, the story of Auschwitz and the horrific ideology behind it unfolds."

"The deportation, mass murder and torture of Europe’s gypsies during the Nazi regime have been largely forgotten. In France, the segregation and internment of 30,000 gypsies predated the German Occupation and more than 250,000 gypsies in Europe were deported to ghettos and concentration camps. Testimony from survivors of Auschwitz and other camps reveals how the Nazis planned the systematic genocide of the gypsy race."

"Combining personal testimony, never-before-seen photos, previously undiscovered family letters and rare archive footage (including the only known moving footage of Anne herself) with evocative contemporary film, ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED documents the history of the Frank family focusing on the spiritual girl whose Diary of her two years in hiding in her father's office building during World War II in Amsterdam, has sold over 25 million copies in 54 languages since it was first published in 1947. This is the first documentary to have been made in co-operation with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam who gave the filmmakers unprecedented access to their archives, research resources and the hiding place itself."

"“Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia” is an eye-opening snapshot of a nation poised at a political and cultural tipping point. Viewing the present through the lens of the country’s tangled history, the film follows the people of Cambodia as they fight to recover their culture and history in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide (1975-1979)."

"This documentary, directed by Roshane Saidnattar and featuring Roshane Saidnattar and Khieu Samphan, is about memories of the death camps in Cambodia."

""Ghosts of Rwanda," a special two-hour documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide -- a state-sponsored massacre in which some 800,000 Rwandans were methodically hunted down and murdered by Hutu extremists as the U.S. and international community refused to intervene -- examines the social, political, and diplomatic failures that converged to enable the genocide to occur."

"This film shows, with compelling historical footage and first-hand accounts, that the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994 had its seeds in the early colonization of the country. When German explorers first came to Rwanda they observed in the royal court a ruling class, the Tutsis, and a subservient class, the Hutus. This class structure was perpetuated by the Belgians and the French missionaries who followed, supporting as they did the Tutsi minority governing class. In the 1950's when decolonization movements were spreading in other parts of Africa, there was a stirring for independence in Rwanda as well. The Tutsis wanted to be free of foreign rule but keep the social status quo within the country. The Hutus, however, were in favor of democracy, even before independence, since that would have given them power. This then was the setting for the ethnic conflagration which was to tear the country apart. Despite the signals of what was to erupt, the rest of the world never acknowledged the seriousness of the threat until it was too late."

In a country where killers are celebrated as heroes, the filmmakers challenge unrepentant death squad leader Anwar Congo and his friends to dramatise their role in genocide. But their idea of being in a movie is not to provide testimony for a documentary: they want to be stars in their favourite film genres - gangster, western, musical. They write the scripts. They play themselves. And they play their victims. This is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass - murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit.
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"Through Joshua Oppenheimer's work filming perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered and the identity of the men who killed him. The youngest brother is determined to break the spell of silence and fear under which the survivors live, and so confronts the men responsible for his brother's murder - something unimaginable in a country where killers remain in power."