Through a Lens Darkly: Films of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

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:
Contents: Jordan Jennings: «Make His Paths Straight»: Removing the Indian Obstacle to US Expansion – Marilyn J. Matelski: Stagecoach (1939) and the Image of «Indians» in John Ford’s Films – Nancy Lynch Street: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007): The Epic Fall of the American Indian – Dikran M. Kaligian: The Armenian Genocide: History and Turkish Government Denial – Devin O. Pendas: Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2002) and the Critique of Diplomatic Reason – Paul Bookbinder: Everyone’s Not Here (1987): Families of the Armenian Genocide – You Guo (Joseph) Jiang, SJ: The Rape of Nanking from a Chinese Perspective – Rebecca Nedostup: City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing! 2009) and the Silenced Nanjing Native – Jeremy Clarke, SJ: Nanking (2007): «A Question of Righteousness» – John J. Michalczyk: The Growing Consciousness of the Shoah through Film: For Better or Worse – John J. Michalczyk: Night and Fog (1955): A Microcosm of the Genocide – Jeffrey Gutierrez: A Note on Image and Sound in Memory of the Camps (1985) – James Bernauer, SJ: The Flawed Vision in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) and the Corrective Lens of Pierre Sauvage – Melanie Murphy: The Architecture of Doom (1991): Blueprint for Annihilation – Kevin P. Spicer, CSC: Amen. (2002), the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust – Diana Elise Araujo: A Jewish Mother in the Ghetto in the Shadow of Genocide: Fred Wiseman’s The Last Letter (La Dernière Lettre, 2002) – Michael Resler: Saviors in the Night (2009): German Loyalty - to the Reich or to Humanity? – John J. Michalczyk: The Complicity of the French in The Roundup (La rafle, 2010) and Sarah’s Key (2010) – John J. Michalczyk: Cambodia: The Bones Cry Out! – John J. Michalczyk: Epic Genocide: Roland Joffé’s Killing Fields (1984) – John J. Michalczyk: Who Are the «Enemies of the People»? – Raymond G. Helmick, SJ: Ethnic Cleansing – Charles David Tauber, MD: The Balkan Conflict and Its Psychological Ramifications – Cynthia Simmons: Snow (Snijeg, 2008): So That a Trace Remains – John J. Michalczyk: Srebrenica: Graves Cry Out – Trevor Laurence Jockims: Sarajevo Ground Zero (1994): SaGA’s Films of Crimes and Resistance Produced Under Siege, 1992–1993 – Eve Spangler: No Exit: Palestinian Film in the Shadow of the Nakba – John H. Stanfield, II: Rwanda: Where the Genocidal Devil Ran So Wild – Zine Magubane: Saviors and Survivors: Western Passivity, African Resistance, and the Politics of Genocide in Hotel Rwanda (2004) – Sara L. Rubin: Specificity in Genocide Portrayal on Film: Sometimes in April (2005) – John J. Michalczyk: Village Justice: In the Tall Grass (2006) – Nada Mustafa Ali: Making Sense of Sudan’s Conflicts – Ajak Mabior: No Heaven on Earth: Lost Boys of Sudan (2003) – John J. Michalczyk: Eyewitness to Genocide in Darfur: The Devil Came on Horseback (2007) – Willy Moka-Mubelo, SJ: Atrocities and Exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo – David Northrup: A Reign of Terror in the Congo Free State: Congo: White King, Red Rubber, and Black Death (2004).

About the Author :
John J. Michalczyk, film professor and Director of Film Studies at Boston College, is the author of 10 books and numerous articles on the relationships of film, literature, and political thought. Since 1991, he has been involved in documentary filmmaking, having completed 20 films, notably on social justice issues, including conflict resolution. His documentaries, especially Nazi Medicine: In the Shadow of the Reich, have been broadcast nationally and internationally.
Raymond G. Helmick, SJ, teaches ecumenical theology and conflict transformation at Boston College. He has worked as mediator, counselor, and an interpreter of events in many conflicts since 1972 – in Northern Ireland, the Middle East (Israelis and Palestinians, Lebanese, the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey), the Balkans, and several other sites. He has collaborated with John J. Michalczyk on nine documentary films on conflict resolution topics.