Watch: How Disparate Storytelling Styles Can Help Us ‘Always Remember’
Much of the discussion about how to tackle the horrors of the Holocaust through art have been filtered through a declaration by German philosopher Theodore Adorno after World War II: “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today.”
Although Adorno later walked back this view, the underlying question remains relevant: can art ever truly do justice to something as terrible as a genocide? Does story have the power to hold and transform that much pain, or will it always be a pointless or “barbaric” endeavor?
Two films currently screening digitally as part of our Always Remember series grapple with just that question. The screenings are free for Film Independent Members.
The Most Precious of Cargoes, directed by Oscar-winner Michel Hazanavicius, and Inked: Our Stories Remarked, by director/producer Dara Bratt take different tacks to explore how, 80 years on, we can understand what happened, and strive for the ever relevant goal, “Never Again.”
In Inked, Bratt explores the idea of the using the profane as a way to process trauma. The documentary is about the phenomenon where third generation decedents of Holocaust survivors choose to remember their ancestors by getting tattoos, often times with the same identification number branded onto their grandparents. Tattoos are traditionally prohibited in the Jewish faith, so the tattoos the Nazis inked into Jewish prisoners were not only dehumanizing, but a callous violation of internees’ religious beliefs.
The grandchildren of survivors the film focuses on want to let their ink be a way to keep the story alive on their own bodies, even if the act went against traditional values or could bring up pain in older generations. Much like how the queer community reclaimed the pink triangle the Nazis used to label them, this generation of Jews is intent on taking back tattoos. “I was really interested in how tattoos have become a language, how moved on from like oral storytelling to written to now a graphic sense of storytelling.” Bratt said in a Q&A at the New Orleans French Film Festival. “I really wanted to explore the idea: ‘how do we preserve legacy?’”
For The Most Precious of Cargoe’s Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), animation was a way he could process tragedy. “I could not make a live action movie on that topic,”
“Animation does not pretend it’s reality. It’s, it’s obviously, a representation and evocation, a suggestion of, what happened, but it’s not pretending that it’s real,” Hazanavicius said in a Q&A recorded for this series. “It’s impossible for me to ask to extras, for example, to pretend they are being deported in a train for Auschwitz.”
The film is about a couple who find a baby thrown from one of the mysterious trains that pass by their forest home. They realize the child is one of the so-called “heartless” that is demonized by the local population, which leads to conflict and asks who gets to determine who has a heart or not.
“This story was not about the past,” he said. “It was more like a bet on the future. It’s something that you can say to the young generation and to the kids– to bring them heroes that say to them, even when you feel that the world is falling around you, you always have the choice to be a good person.”
Go to our Events page to find out more about these and other Film Independent Presents screenings.
Always Remember is sponsored by the Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation and the Claims Conference with Vision Media as its Screening Partner.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
Keep up with Film Independent…