Through a Lens Darkly: Films of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1433122944 ISBN 13: 9781433122941

Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 2013

Synopsis

While the ashes of the Holocaust were still fresh, Polish Jewish attorney Raphael Lemkin put a name to the tragedy that had decimated his family – genocide. The twentieth century was brutally scarred by the massive scale of genocide and its manifest forms of ethnic cleansing, massacres, and atrocities. We ask how these horrors can be visually translated to the screen while both maintaining their authenticity and serving as commercial «entertainment». Through an analysis of a series of poignant films on the plight of the Native Americans, the controversial Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and its legacy, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the Hutu-sponsored massacres in Rwanda, the reader can grasp the driving mechanisms of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The oft-repeated, «Never again» rings hollow to our ears in the wake of these tragedies in a post-Holocaust era. The films discussed here, both features and documentaries, are set in an historical context that sheds light on the dark side of humanity and are then discussed with the hope of better understanding our frailty. In the end, however, we ask can the «unrepresentable» ever be represented?

About this title

About the Author:

John J. Michalczyk, film professor and Director of Film Studies at Boston College, is the author of 10 books and numerous articles on the relationships of film, literature, and political thought. Since 1991, he has been involved in documentary filmmaking, having completed 20 films, notably on social justice issues, including conflict resolution. His documentaries, especially Nazi Medicine: In the Shadow of the Reich, have been broadcast nationally and internationally.
Raymond G. Helmick, SJ, teaches ecumenical theology and conflict transformation at Boston College. He has worked as mediator, counselor, and an interpreter of events in many conflicts since 1972 – in Northern Ireland, the Middle East (Israelis and Palestinians, Lebanese, the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey), the Balkans, and several other sites. He has collaborated with John J. Michalczyk on nine documentary films on conflict resolution topics.

Review:

"With informative essays providing historical background and others focusing on specific documentaries and feature films, this series of enlightening analyses illuminates how cinema has conveyed an aural, emotional, and intellectual semblance of the atrocities, expulsions, and mass killings perpetrated in the Armenian, Cambodian, Native American, and Rwandan genocides, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings of Bosnia and Palestine, and the on-going turmoil in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur."
< i>--Lawrence Baron, San Diego State University, Author of Projecting the Holocaust into the Present

"This book is not only a history of recent centuries' genocide, as shown on film, but a critical reminder that genocide continues today throughout much of the world. Each discussion of nine major geographical areas of genocide presented in the book is followed by analyses of selected films dealing with the particular genocidal event. This coverage not only gives us information on films and genocide, but both challenges and reinforces our personal consciences and ethical commitments. Co-editor John J. Michalczyk hopes that this book will prompt other scholars and writers to help raise awareness of the continuing atrocities occurring daily and globally, and co-editor Raymond G. Helmick hopes that this book will help us 'understand the nature of genocide, its origins ... and what can be done to head off such horrors or how to deal with perpetrators.' You don't have to be either a film or genocide scholar to learn from and be affected by this book."
--Robert Hilliard, Author of Surviving the Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation and Hollywood Speaks Out: Pictures That Dared to Protest Real World Issues

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1433122944
• ISBN 13: 9781433122941
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 283
• Editor: Michalczyk John J., Helmick SJ Raymond G.