In 1940, during World War II, the Nazis walled off a section of Warsaw, Poland and forced more than 400,000 Jewish residents of the city to live in the single zone of the city. The Nazis released a film about the “good life” of the ghetto inhabitants, “Das Ghetto,” but nearly 40 years later about half-an-hour of outtakes of the were found.
Today, the Gateway Film Center, in collaboration with the Wexner Center, will begin showing “A Film Unfinished,” a collection of the raw footage in its entirety. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Best International Feature Award at Hot Docs Film Festival.
“This film is a new way to look at the Holocaust, taking the footage that scholars had been treating as an official documentary and portraying the life in the Warsaw Ghetto … but which is actually heavily manipulated and staged by the Nazis for specific propaganda purposes,” said Chris Stults, assistant film curator at the Wexner Center.
“My interest in the archival footage from the Holocaust stems also from the fact that World War II not only confronted humanity with inconceivable atrocities, but also produced and carried for the first time, a systematical, obsessive cinematic documentation of that horror,” said Yael Hersonski, director of the film, in a press release.
The film also features interviews with former residents of ghettos such as the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as some statements from individuals involved in the making of the “Das Ghetto” propaganda film.
The film has been rated ‘R’ by the MPAA for “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.”
“It’s a film showing actual footage from the Holocaust … so some of the film is quite literally horrifying to watch. Very difficult material,” Stults said.
The film is distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories, an independent film distribution company owned by Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Yauch appealed the MPAA ‘R’ rating but was denied.
“This is too important of a historical document to ban from classrooms. … I understand that the MPAA wants to protect children’s eyes from things that are too overwhelming, but they’ve really gone too far this time. It’s bulls—,” Yauch said in an Oscilloscope news update.
“Ratings board upholds ‘R’ rating after serious discussion, proving you can, in fact, censor history,” read the title of the Oscilloscope news update.
