Claude Lanzmann Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Claude Lanzmann
Directing
Biography
Claude Lanzmann (27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985). Lanzmann was born on 27 November 1925 in Paris, France, the son of Paulette (née Grobermann) and Armand Lanzmann. His family was Jewish, and had immigrated to France from The Russian Empire. He was the brother of writer Jacques Lanzmann. Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. While his family disguised their identity and went into hiding during World War II, he joined the French resistance at the age of 17, along with his father and brother, and fought in Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed the 1960 antiwar petition Manifesto of the 121. Lanzmann was the chief editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and lecturer at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. In 2009 he published his memoirs under the title Le lièvre de Patagonie ("The Patagonian Hare"). Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah (1985), is a nine-and-a-half-hour oral history of the Holocaust. Shoah is made without the use of any historical footage, and uses only first-person testimony from perpetrators and victims, and contemporary footage of Holocaust-related sites. Interviewees include the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski and the American Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg. When the film was released, the director also published the complete text, including in English translation, with introductions by Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir. Lanzmann disagreed, sometimes angrily, with attempts to understand the why of Hitler, stating that the evil of Hitler cannot or should not be explained and that to do so is immoral and an obscenity. Lanzmann also oftentimes pushed his subjects to extreme emotional limits to bring out the most authentic reactions for his audience. The interview with barber Abraham Bomba is a staple of a Claude Lanzmann interview. A compilation of "Shoah: Unseen Interviews" was released in 2012 that included interviews filmed at the time of the original production but never made it into the film. On 4 July 2018, his last work, Les Quatre Soeurs (Shoah: Four Sisters) was released, featuring testimonials from four Holocaust survivors not included in his Shoah. Lanzmann died the following day. From 1952 to 1959, he lived with Simone de Beauvoir. In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre. They divorced in 1971, and he later married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer. He divorced a second time, and was the father of Angélique Lanzmann and Félix Lanzmann. Claude Lanzmann died on 5 July 2018 at his Paris home, after having been ill for several days. He was 92. Source: Article "Claude Lanzmann" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Lights And Shadows
At the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Israel, Claude Lanzmann made an interview of Ehud Barak, on March 1st, 2008.
The Karski Report
A powerful new film about Jan Karski, the Polish resistance figure who attempted to expose the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec, and met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
The Last of the Unjust
A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to testify. Even though he was without a doubt the one who knew the Nazi executioner best. More than twenty-five years after Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's new film reveals a little-known yet fundamental aspect of the Holocaust, and sheds light on the origins of the "Final Solution" like never before.
Ziva Postec: The Editor Behind the Film Shoah
This film tells the life story of Ziva Postec, emphasizing the period when she was editing Shoah from 350 hours of footage.
Tsahal
The ideologies underlying the foundation of modern Israel are explored in this documentary, the third of a trilogy (created over a twenty year span) exploring the Jewish experience. The two earlier documentaries, "Porquoi Israel," and "Shoah," have had great effect on the ways documentaries are produced. "Tsahal" zeroes in on the crucial role of the military in Israeli society and politics. The film uses many in-depth interviews to present the many feelings and thoughts about the Israeli military.
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
The process of making Shoah.
The Clown
A documentary about Jerry Lewis' never-released movie "The Day the Clown Cried".
Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
A Philosopher in the Arena
After his retirement, french philosopher and bullfighting enthusiast Francis Wolff decides to embark on a journey to France, Spain and Mexico joined by two mexican filmmakers who hardly know anything about bullfighting, a culture whose days seem to be numbered. During their road trip, they encounter numerous personalities with whom they reflect on mankind’s relationship with animals and nature, but most importantly on our relationship with death and the meaning of the ultimate journey: life itself.
Production
Lights And Shadows
At the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Israel, Claude Lanzmann made an interview of Ehud Barak, on March 1st, 2008.
Lights And Shadows
At the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Israel, Claude Lanzmann made an interview of Ehud Barak, on March 1st, 2008.
Shoah
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.
Documentary interview with Yehuda Lerner, who at 17 participated in a prisoner revolt at the Nazi-run Sobibor extermination camp. Originally filmed for inclusion in Lanzmann's 1985 documentary Shoah.
The Karski Report
A powerful new film about Jan Karski, the Polish resistance figure who attempted to expose the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec, and met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
The Karski Report
A powerful new film about Jan Karski, the Polish resistance figure who attempted to expose the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec, and met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
The Last of the Unjust
A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to testify. Even though he was without a doubt the one who knew the Nazi executioner best. More than twenty-five years after Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's new film reveals a little-known yet fundamental aspect of the Holocaust, and sheds light on the origins of the "Final Solution" like never before.
The Last of the Unjust
A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to testify. Even though he was without a doubt the one who knew the Nazi executioner best. More than twenty-five years after Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's new film reveals a little-known yet fundamental aspect of the Holocaust, and sheds light on the origins of the "Final Solution" like never before.
A Visitor from the Living
An interview with a WWII Red Cross official who wrote a glowing report on a Jewish ghetto-cum-death camp.
A Visitor from the Living
An interview with a WWII Red Cross official who wrote a glowing report on a Jewish ghetto-cum-death camp.
Gallery
