Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Studies at the Central European University
Angaben zur Quelle:
6 (2007-2009) 7-19
Keywords:
Koltai, Lajos
;
Sorstalanság (Motion picture)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in motion pictures
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Sources
;
World War, 1939-1945 Photography
Abstract:
Discusses problems of the visual representation of the Holocaust in the East-Central European region; this issue was treated as taboo until 1989. Focuses on the example of the film "Fateless" (2005), directed by Lajos Koltai and based on the novel by Imre Kertész. Examines how the medium of (documentary) photography and film is transformed into another medium for artistic purposes, and what happens aesthetically when this transformation takes place. Contends that the effects of the film stand in radical contrast to the terse, ironic discourse of the novel, despite the fact that Kertész himself wrote the film script. The film was sentimentalized and aestheticized, thereby failing to create a viable cinematographic language for discussion of the Hungarian Holocaust, an event that still remains to be worked through twenty years after the political transition.
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