Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Aftermath - One of the most controversial Holocaust films ever!



logo




Aftermath

Canadian Premiere of a very important Polish film on the Holocaust.
Please join us for the Canadian Premiere of a very important film!

 



September 9, 2013, 7:00 PM 
Library & Archives Canada 
395 Wellington

Film, Remarks by Professor Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa, Q&A, and private reception. 

Admission: $20 - $5 for students.  Tickets for Aftermath are now available online, and at Compact Music (785 Bank, 206 Bank).

Tickets will also be available at the door.
Aftermath was just given a special award at the 2013 Jerusalem Film Festival by the Yad Vashem Institute!
Aftermath (Poklosie) trailer Wladyslaw Pasikowski Apple Film Production
Aftermath (Poklosie) trailer Wladyslaw Pasikowski Apple Film Production

   
Aftermath is a film based on one of the most controversial episodes in Poland's World War II history, the Jedwabne massacre of Jews by their Polish neighbours.

Inspired by the 1942 tragedy in which hundreds of Jews were burned alive in a barn, an event long blamed on Nazi Germany, "Poklosie" ("Aftermath") was directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski.

"I wanted to tell a story that would interest a broad number of Poles because it is one of the most painful parts of our country's history," Pasikowski said recently.

"We already have a huge number of films on the horrors committed by the Soviets and the Germans, and it's time to say what bad things we did ourselves."

The director said he was inspired by "Neighbours", a book by Polish-origin US historian Jan Tomasz Gross, which sent shock-waves across Poland when it was published in 2000.

Gross shed light on the role of local residents in the massacre in the eastern Polish village, sparking a bitter debate in Poland.

According to various historians' estimates, between 340 and 1,500 Jews perished in the massacre.

In 2003, a Polish commission of inquiry concluded that the massacre was perpetrated by Jedwabne's Poles, urged on by the Nazi occupiers, rather than by the latter, as long claimed.

Pasikowski said he was also influenced by French director and Holocaust survivor Claude Lanzmann's 1985 work "Shoah", as well as the documentaries of Poland's Pawel Lozinski.

His film is set in the 1990s, in the wake of the 1989 fall of Poland's post-war communist regime and shortly before the revelations about Jedwabne.

Its message is that covering up the truth of the past can have terrible consequences decades later.

The action takes place in the fictional village of Gorowka - the site of a war-time massacre - where present-day residents try to intimidate a man who aims to conserve Jewish tombstones and uncover the past.

Pasikowski, already known for his thrillers, stokes the tension until the film's tragic end.

"I didn't want to make a film that would be a look back at Jedwabne," he said.

"I made this film as a 'goy' and a Pole," he said, using a Hebrew term for someone who is not Jewish.

"As such, I only had the right to make a film about Poles," he added.

Polish directing legend Andrzej Wajda has already hailed the work.

"This is one of those films that will go down in cinematic history," he told the Polish news channel TVN.
       


September 24, 2013:  Free Speech on the Canadian Campus

Please don't miss this special event in association with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms on Free Speech on Campus 2013.  Stay tuned for further details. 






The 4th Annual Free Thinking Film Festival!

The 4th Annual Free Thinking Film Festival will run between October 31st and November 3rd, 2013 in Ottawa at the Library & Archives Canada.

We will announce our lineup right after Labour Day in September.







No comments:

Post a Comment