Israeli documentary on rare Holocaust footage airs in U.S.

Israeli documentary film "A Film Unfinished," based on rare World War II archive footage aired in the United States on this week.

Israeli director Yael Hersonski  took an unfinished Nazi propaganda film from 1942 filmed in Warsaw Ghetto and titled “Das Ghetto" by the Nazis. The film reel itself was uncovered in the 1950s by Germans and lay in a German archive for over four decades until it was shipped to archives in Jerusalem.

The four hours of footage exposed Jewish elites in the Ghetto attending parties and generally having a good time, a narrative the Nazis tried to expose to the world. Yet one of the reels documented the Nazis orchestrating the set filmed for that purpose. Camera men, bystanders forced to pose next to Jewish beggars and instruction from the scene directors are suddenly exposed as a non realistic depiction of the Ghetto.

Together with producer Noemi Schory, Hersonksi set out to uncover the story behind the extraordinary footage that had never been seen before, a journey which culminated in the documentary film "A Film Unfinished."

The film sets out to ask how can we trust what we see in footage when there are no holocaust survivors left to bare witness? The obviously choreographed footage puts to question how can we know what really happened, and how can we trust all historical documentation?

Since its premier in the Sundance Film festival earlier this year, the film has been accepted into the worlds leading festivals, including the Berlin film festival, and has been distributed to several commercial cinemas in N.Y. and L.A. as well.
 

	Scene from Israeli documentary "Film Unfinished" which airs in U.S. this week.