FILM

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents an MFAH Film Revival. Enjoy these classics from world cinema on the big screen in Brown Auditorium Theater!

Shoah
1985, in multiple languages with English subtitles
Directed by Claude Lanzmann
New 35mm print!

Screenings cosponsored by the Holocaust Museum Houston.

Part I & II: Thursday, July 7, 10:00 a.m. (606 min.)
Part I: Saturday, July 9, 2:00 p.m. (291 min.)
Part II: Sunday, July 10, 2:00 p.m. (315 min.)

Part I includes a 15-minute intermission. Between the two films, there will be a lunch break and discussion in the American General Conference room on the mezzanine level of the Audrey Jones Beck building (3:15–4:15 p.m.). Part II begins at 4:30 p.m. and includes a 15-minute intermission. A discussion led by the speakers follows the conclusion of the film.

Twelve years in the making and re-released for its 25th anniversary, Shoah is a monumental epic on the Holocaust featuring interviews with survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators. The documentary contains no historical footage, but showcases interviews which seek to “reincarnate” the Jewish tragedy, and also visits places where the crimes took place.

The film was immediately hailed as a masterpiece upon its 1985 premiere—it won prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Boston Society of Film Critics, BAFTA (Best Documentary), Césars (Honorary), and IDA Awards.

On making Shoah, Lanzmann stated, “Making a history was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to construct something more powerful than that. And, in fact, I think that the film, using only images of the present, evokes the past with far more force than any historical document.”

*July 7 screening only: Introduced by Drs. Robert Jan van Pelt and Michael Berenbaum

Robert Jan van Pelt teaches at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and is the recipient of many academic honors, including the National Jewish Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the dignity of “University Professor.” He serves on various academic boards and has published seven books dealing with diverse topics such as the cosmic speculations on the Temple of Solomon, relativism in architectural history, and the construction history of Auschwitz. An internationally recognized authority on the history of Auschwitz, van Pelt appeared in Errol Morris’s film Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. and acted as a senior consultant to the BBC/PBS series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State. Van Pelt chaired the team that developed a master plan for the preservation of Auschwitz, and served as an expert witness for the defense in the notorious libel case Irving vs. Penguin and Lipstadt (1998-2001).

Dr. Michael Berenbaum is a writer, lecturer, and teacher consulting in the conceptual development of museums and the development of historical films. He is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute. He is a professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism). Berenbaum is the author and editor of twenty books, scores of scholarly articles, and hundreds of journalistic pieces. His most recent books include: Not Your Father’s Antisemitism, A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of Its Survivors and After the Passion Has Passed: American Religious Consequences, a collection of essays on Jews, Judaism and Christianity, Relgious Tolerance and Pluralism occasioned by the controversy that swirled around Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion.