At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film was discovered intact in an East German archive. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply “Das Ghetto,” this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto.<\/p>\n
In 1998, another reel was discovered that radically complicated the scholarly interpretation of \u201cDas Ghetto.\u201d The footage, in which glimpses of the Nazi filmmakers can be seen when they accidentally step into each others\u2019 shots, makes clear the great extent to which the Reich\u2019s propagandists staged the scenes in the unfinished film that came to be known as \u201cDas Ghetto.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Film Unfinished presents the raw footage of the latter reel in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing “the good life” enjoyed by Jewish urbanites. We also glimpse the filmmakers forcing some of the more prosperous Jewish inhabitants to ignore the corpses lying in the streets.<\/p>\n
Without forcing any conclusions about what the object of the propaganda film, director Yael Hersonski offers insight into how what we believe to be definitive and historical is not always what it appears to be.<\/p>\n
The Filmmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n Yael Hersonski<\/strong><\/p>\n Yael Hersonski was content editor of the documentary program on Channel 10 in Israel, which won the Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary Television Program in 2004. She now directs documentary and fictional drama programs for Israeli television. A Film Unfinished<\/em> is her first feature documentary film, and was made with Senior Producer Noemi Schory and Producer Itay Ken-Tor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An examination of outtakes from an infamous Nazi propaganda film exposes how the Reich manufactured scenes of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto before the brutal deportations and ultimate liquidation of the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1216,1247],"class_list":["post-86","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-arts-and-culture","topic-cinema"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n