On the Submitterator, tcd004 points us to Israeli director Yael Hersonski's "A Film Unfinished." It's about found footage from a Nazi documentary rough cut, produced by the Goebbels Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels had a two-fold urgency to his work: short-term use as war propaganda, but also long-term use as historical propaganda of a race of people he thought would soon be extinct. He sent crews out to film extensively before the Warsaw ghetto and others were liquidated. The vast majority of this footage was lost, and the footage in question was found in an East German archive in 1954.
Hersonski discovered through first-hand reports that alleged documentary scenes were heavily staged: hand-picking people for crowd scenes, and "casting" subjects who represented archetypes. One apparent goal of the film was to juxtapose archetypical wealthy Jews with impoverished and dying Jews in the street, to make them look parasitic, even of their own people. Hersonski told PBS News Hour: "I think that my hope is that in a way the viewer's perception of footage of edited imagery [changes] — not only from the Holocaust, but the Holocaust as a case study."
Goebbels was that most unfortunate of souls, the hack visionary. He totally got it as far as using propaganda, but didn't have the abilities to create it himself. The Eternal Jew was completely ham-handed by today's standards (yet effective then), but he also got the best and brightest to work for him (Leni Reifenstahl's Olympia, etc.). From this came some highly sophisticated and innovative uses of film as a medium. One of the best documentaries on this topic is The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
Hitler thought that Jews would be eradicated in his lifetime, and he wanted all of this footage for a museum for the next generation. The plan was to put it all into an "exotic museum of an extinct race," tentatively based in Josefov, the Jewish Quarter of Prague.
The controversial ratings folks at MPAA gave "A Film Unfinished" an R rating, so it will probably not be seen by young people most in need of seeing it. In a world of "reality" television, the manipulation of reality has gotten completely pervasive, and the ethics of it are rarely discussed. Says Hersonski, "I think that this film, unlike others that used this sort of footage, really discuss the ethical meaning of the use of this footage, and therefore it has also an educational value. But this is their decision and that's how it's going to be."
Conversation: Director Yael Hersonski Puts New Lens on 'A Film Unfinished' [pbs.org]
A Film Unfinished website [afilmunfinished.com]
