Moving Memories: Propaganda, Documentary and Holocaust Feature Films

Abstract

Perhaps it is no accident that the word ‘usher’ — which nowadays we associate with the person who shows us our seats in the cinema — has its etymological roots in the phrase ‘the keeper of the door to the bones’.¹ Though the practice of gathering in the darkness of the tomb of our ancestors around their bones to listen to genealogies is less common,² in late capitalist mass-mediated cultures people gather together in the dark cave of the cinema to watch on the flickering screen, among other stories, the filmed memories of various pasts. This chapter explores gender and the making and configuration of socially inherited memories in the medium of film. I look at how gender is articulated in propaganda film, liberation footage, documentary and feature films about the Holocaust.³

‘And if Moses appeared to see a film made about his life —he’d also say “but that’s not me”. (Frank Reiss, survivor of Theresienstadt, 2001)