Claude Lanzmann

Claude Lanzmann

Born: November 27, 1925
Died: July 5, 2018
in Paris, Ile-de-France, France
Claude Lanzmann (27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985).

Lanzmann was born on 27 November 1925 in Paris, France, the son of Paulette (née Grobermann) and Armand Lanzmann. His family was Jewish, and had immigrated to France from The Russian Empire. He was the brother of writer Jacques Lanzmann. Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. While his family disguised their identity and went into hiding during World War II, he joined the French resistance at the age of 17, along with his father and brother, and fought in Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed the 1960 antiwar petition Manifesto of the 121.

Lanzmann was the chief editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and lecturer at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. In 2009 he published his memoirs under the title Le lièvre de Patagonie ("The Patagonian Hare").

Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah (1985), is a nine-and-a-half-hour oral history of the Holocaust. Shoah is made without the use of any historical footage, and uses only first-person testimony from perpetrators and victims, and contemporary footage of Holocaust-related sites. Interviewees include the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski and the American Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg. When the film was released, the director also published the complete text, including in English translation, with introductions by Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir.

Lanzmann disagreed, sometimes angrily, with attempts to understand the why of Hitler, stating that the evil of Hitler cannot or should not be explained and that to do so is immoral and an obscenity.

Lanzmann also oftentimes pushed his subjects to extreme emotional limits to bring out the most authentic reactions for his audience. The interview with barber Abraham Bomba is a staple of a Claude Lanzmann interview.

A compilation of "Shoah: Unseen Interviews" was released in 2012 that included interviews filmed at the time of the original production but never made it into the film.

On 4 July 2018, his last work, Les Quatre Soeurs (Shoah: Four Sisters) was released, featuring testimonials from four Holocaust survivors not included in his Shoah. Lanzmann died the following day.

From 1952 to 1959, he lived with Simone de Beauvoir. In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre. They divorced in 1971, and he later married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer. He divorced a second time, and was the father of Angélique Lanzmann and Félix Lanzmann. Claude Lanzmann died on 5 July 2018 at his Paris home, after having been ill for several days. He was 92.

Source: Article "Claude Lanzmann" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Movies for Claude Lanzmann...

We Shall Not Die Now
Title: We Shall Not Die Now
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: October 12, 2019
Type: Movie
A chronicle of the Holocaust, told by the resilient survivors who lived through it.
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A Philosopher in the Arena
Title: A Philosopher in the Arena
Character: Self
Released: February 1, 2019
Type: Movie
After his retirement, french philosopher and bullfighting enthusiast Francis Wolff decides to embark on a journey to France, Spain and Mexico joined by two mexican filmmakers who hardly know anything about bullfighting, a culture whose days seem to be numbered. During their road trip, they encounter numerous personalities with whom they reflect on mankind’s relationship with animals and nature, but most importantly on our relationship with death and the meaning of the ultimate journey: life itself.
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Ziva Postec: The Editor Behind the Film Shoah
Title: Ziva Postec: The Editor Behind the Film Shoah
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: July 29, 2018
Type: Movie
This film tells the life story of Ziva Postec, emphasizing the period when she was editing Shoah from 350 hours of footage.
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Shoah: Four Sisters
Title: Shoah: Four Sisters
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: July 4, 2018
Type: Movie
Since 1999, Claude Lanzmann has made several films that could be considered satellites of Shoah, comprised of interviews conducted in the 1970s that didn’t make it into the final, monumental work. He has just completed a series of four new films, built around four women from four different areas of Eastern Europe with four different destinies, each finding herself unexpectedly and improbably alive after war’s end.
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Napalm
Title: Napalm
Character: Self
Released: September 6, 2017
Type: Movie
Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
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The Clown
Title: The Clown
Character: Self
Released: February 3, 2016
Type: Movie
A documentary directed by Eric Friedler about Jerry Lewis' never released movie "The Day The Clown Cried".
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Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
Title: Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
Character: Self
Released: April 25, 2015
Type: Movie
The process of making Shoah.
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The Last of the Unjust
Title: The Last of the Unjust
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: November 13, 2013
Type: Movie
A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to testify. Even though he was without a doubt the one who knew the Nazi executioner best. More than twenty-five years after Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's new film reveals a little-known yet fundamental aspect of the Holocaust, and sheds light on the origins of the "Final Solution" like never before.
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Title: 28 minutes
Character: Self
Released: January 9, 2012
Type: TV
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The Karski Report
Title: The Karski Report
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: March 17, 2010
Type: Movie
A powerful new film about Jan Karski, the Polish resistance figure who attempted to expose the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec, and met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
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Lights And Shadows
Title: Lights And Shadows
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: April 15, 2008
Type: Movie
At the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Israel, Claude Lanzmann made an interview of Ehud Barak, on March 1st, 2008.
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Title: NDR Kultur – Das Journal
Character: Self
Released: April 29, 2002
Type: TV
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Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.
Title: Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: October 17, 2001
Type: Movie
A Claude Lanzmann documentary about one uprising by Jews in a Nazi-run concentration camp taken from his Shoah interviews.
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A Visitor from the Living
Title: A Visitor from the Living
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: July 26, 1999
Type: Movie
An interview with a WWII Red Cross official who wrote a glowing report on a Jewish ghetto-cum-death camp.
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Tsahal
Title: Tsahal
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: November 9, 1994
Type: Movie
The ideologies underlying the foundation of modern Israel are explored in this documentary, the third of a trilogy (created over a twenty year span) exploring the Jewish experience. The two earlier documentaries, "Porquoi Israel," and "Shoah," have had great effect on the ways documentaries are produced. "Tsahal" zeroes in on the crucial role of the military in Israeli society and politics. The film uses many in-depth interviews to present the many feelings and thoughts about the Israeli military.
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Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
Title: Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
Character: Self
Released: November 1, 1988
Type: Movie
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
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Shoah
Title: Shoah
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: April 21, 1985
Type: Movie
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
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Title: Apostrophes
Character: Self
Released: January 10, 1975
Type: TV
Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.
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Israel, Why
Title: Israel, Why
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: October 1, 1973
Type: Movie
Using interviews and other footage shot especially for this documentary, French director Claude Lanzmann investigates the state of Israel in 1972. This movie concentrates on Israelis going about their business of everyday living.
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Delphine Seyrig
Title: Delphine Seyrig
Released: June 1, 1970
Type: Movie
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Title: Grimme-Preis-Verleihung
Character: Self
Released: January 16, 1964
Type: TV