A recording of the Q&A with A FILM UNFINISHED filmmaker YAEL HERSONSKI, recorded August 20, 2010 at Film Forum

Summary: Since the end of WWII, one copy of a 60-minute (unfinished) propaganda film, shot by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1942, labeled simply “Ghetto,” sat undisturbed in an East German archive. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the entire film, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (e.g. dozens of Jewish patrons at an elegant restaurant; a luxurious funeral cortege). The film’s documentary footage is of an entirely different nature: corpses on sidewalks, beggars pacing the streets, children ravaged by hunger. The film includes a revealing interview with the only cinematographer identified with the production, as well as scenes in which now-elderly former residents of the Warsaw Ghetto review footage and occasionally recognize their neighbors. This is a film of enormous import: it documents some of the worst horrors of our time and the efforts (however imperfect) of the perpetrators to recast those events to suggest an entirely different scenario. This podcast episode is a recording of the Q & A with A FILM UNFINISHED filmmaker YAEL HERSONSKI, recorded August 20, 2010 at Film Forum