Through a Lens Darkly

Films of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

John J. Michalczyk, SJ Raymond G. Helmick

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781453911112
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

While the ashes of the Holocaust were still fresh, Polish Jewish attorney Raphael Lemkin put a name to the tragedy that had decimated his family – genocide. The twentieth century was brutally scarred by the massive scale of genocide and its manifest forms of ethnic cleansing, massacres, and atrocities. We ask how these horrors can be visually translated to the screen while both maintaining their authenticity and serving as commercial «entertainment». Through an analysis of a series of poignant films on the plight of the Native Americans, the controversial Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and its legacy, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the Hutu-sponsored massacres in Rwanda, the reader can grasp the driving mechanisms of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The oft-repeated, «Never again» rings hollow to our ears in the wake of these tragedies in a post-Holocaust era. The films discussed here, both features and documentaries, are set in an historical context that sheds light on the dark side of humanity and are then discussed with the hope of better understanding our frailty. In the end, however, we ask can the «unrepresentable» ever be represented?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: Trail of Tears: Cleansing the Land of the Indian “Problem”
• Part Two: Armenian Genocide: “Who Remembers?”
• Part Three: Nanking: Evil Unleashed
• Part Four: Holocaust/Shoah: A Moral Tragedy and Where Was Man?
• Part Five: Cambodia: “The Khmer Rouge Come to Town”…to Purge
• Part Six: Ethnic Cleansing: “Purifying” the Land
• Part Seven: Rwanda: 100 Days Engulfed in “Unimaginable Terror”
• Part Eight: Sudan: Far from the Western Eye
• Part Nine: Congo: In a Jungle of Man’s Inhumanity
• Contributors
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Films