Faces of Humanity - DaaVeeDee

Faces of Humanity (DVD) (*)

~~$28.99~~ $22.97

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )

Product Origin/Format:
France ( PAL/NTSC/Region 0 )

Running Time:
71 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Biographies
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Booklet

Movie filmed in 2005 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )

Directed By:
Rose Lallier
Elisabeth Logak

Written By:
Rose Lallier
Elisabeth Logak

Actors:
Rose Lallier
Elisabeth Logak

Synopsis:

Five combined interviews of French people (both Jewish and non-Jewish) describing France during the Vichy regime, the persecution of the Jews, the German conquest and the 'resistance'.» An enthralling historical picture, important and extremely interesting.

Faces of Humanity in all their diversity during the years of the Occupation and Vichy France' could be the extended title of this documentary. What did people in France know of the exactions against the jews and how did they react? This question, which underpins the film, is examined in the light of the accounts of five people who spent the whole of the Second World War in France. These five people recall daily life during the war: their actions and feelings, and those they were witness to. They testify with simplicity, without a retrospective sense of guilt and without heroic posturing. Some jewish and some not, but all French, together they sketch an astonishing portrait of French society at the time, as they experienced it from the inside, since none of them was deported to concentration or extermination camps. The contributors discuss their experiences in an atmosphere of trust that enables them to talk with total freedom. Equipment and crew were pared down to the strict minimum: we were alone with the contributor, equipped with a camera and microphones. We were respectful of their silences and careful not to pry with intimate questions. This approach leaves room for slips of the tongue and blanks in the memory, as well as silence about intimate tragedies. We were happy to accept this with the contributors' full agreement. In particular, some people named by our witnesses were killed in extermination camps ; we deliberately decided not to mention their tragic fate during the film. Furthermore, empty chairs in a public garden were for us a way to give a 'glimpse' of the absence of those who did not return from the camps. For although we edit our contributors' accounts chronologically from the Fall of France in June 1940 until the survivors' return from the camps in April 1945. However the narrative tense of the film is the present. No reconstructions of past events, no historical archives, just personal accounts starting with an implicit, 'I remember…', and a document that one of the contributors has kept with him since his release from the Drancy internment camp. The film engages with the viewers, most particularly if they find themselves in empathy with the contributors. There is no explicit description of historical context or historical figures, simply that of the actions and reactions of ordinary people in France that the contributors encountered. There is no overview, just the story of minor or major betrayals, the recollection of indifference or courage that our contributors witnessed first-hand. So many human reactions that each of us can understand, recalled simply and factually. Eschewing all determinism, our contributors illustrate and evoke the freedom to act and room for manoeuvre available respectively to jews and non-jews. Rather than stark black and white, it is a portrait in shades of grey that gradually emerges. Faces of Humanity aims to fit in with a perspective of remembrance, in the sense used by Walter Benjamin. These five contributors draw 'an island of time', which enables the creation of a space of retrospective contemplation. This remembrance takes shape amidst silences, gaps, snippets and blanks. It allows a silent process to take place within us: a confrontation, not with images, but with absence itself, with ruin, while enabling us to relate to those who lived through those years.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 02 January, 2012.