Witness Of The Holocaust In Film Art

The film Shoah(1985)by French Jewish philosopher and director Claude Lanzmann seeks to witness the brutal Nazi Holocaust during the Second World War through film by collecting testimonies from those who witnessed holocaust or were interviewed during the Nazi massacre in Germany.More than a documentary,the director’s use of lens,collection of testimonies and art of audiovisuals of Shoah not only brings to light the collective memory of Jews in the aftermath of the massacre,but also stimulates reflection on the paradox of witness the Holocaust.This thesis will explore the audiovisual art of Shoah from three points: interpreting the main lens language of Shoah,analysing Shoah’s presentation of the collective memory of the Nazi massacre,and exploring the paradox of witnessing the Holocaust in Shoah and its significance.The first part,“Shoah’ s Visual Expression”,takes the film’s three main shots,the long takes,close-ups and empty shots,as its starting point to analyse the film’s lens language and representative scenes through the guidance of film art theory,with the purpose of presenting the aesthetic and overview of Shoah.Meanwhile this part also lays the foundation for the second and third parts of the film.The second part,“Shoah’ s Memory of Trauma”,analyses the reconstruction and collective memory of the Nazi massacre in Shoah under the perspective of “trauma”theory.The value of Shoah being documentary is controversial,mainly due to the over-emotional depict of interviewees in the film,which directly leads to questions about its historical veracity,but,returning to collective memory itself,Shoah’ s representation of the collective memory of the massacre is in fact inherently distinct from “historical truth”.The third section,“The possibility of the Holocaust being witnessed in Shoah”,focuses on the witnessing effect of cinematic art.The famous Jewish poet Paul Celan raised the paradox that the Holocaust cannot be witnessed in its entirety,but Derrida’ s traces can reveal that there is a cover-up of the massacre that leads to multiple extensions of the trace of the Holocaust.In the light of Agamben and J.Hillis Miller’ s understanding of Holocaust witnessing,the film production Shoah provides an exceptional and powerful testimony to the events of the Holocaust in a visually artistic and emotionally moving way,despite the fact that the testimonies of the interviewees in Shoah are mostly abridged and incomplete testimonies.The concluding remarks argue that the documentation of the event and the emotional truthfulness of Shoah,the reconstruction of the collective memory of the massacre of Judea of Shoah,as well as the breaking of the paradox of witness of Shoah-these three aspects together illustrate the special power of film art in bearing the witness to the events of the Holocaust.