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Published in:
Introduction: The Identity of European Cinema Read chapter Read first chapter

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

6. The Trauma of (Post)Memory: Women’s Memories in Holocaust Cinema

Author : Ingrid Lewis

Published in: European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Lewis signals a representational shift in twenty-first-century Holocaust cinema that breaks with previous, stereotyped, imagery of women and assigns them a central, privileged, authorial position from which to tell their stories. The chapter discusses some of the most relevant examples of this cycle of films, namely, Nina’s Journey (Lena Einhorn, 2005) and Remembrance (Anna Justice, 2011) and The Birch-Tree Meadow (Marceline Loridan-Ivens, 2003), among others. In particular, it explains how recent films engage with concepts of trauma and vicarious witnessing, while recovering women’s voices and memories in their diversity and uniqueness. As the chapter contends, these contemporary counter-narratives demonstrate that films are much more than (re)presentations of history: they can function as important interventions in their own right, which challenge and re-interrogate history’s gender biases.

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previous chapter Ecocritical Perspectives on Nordic Cinema: From Nature Appreciation to Social Conformism
next chapter An Ordinary Warrior and His Inevitable Defeat: Representation in Post-Yugoslav Cinema
Footnotes
1
According to Suleiman, the 1.5 generation represents the “child survivors of the Holocaust, too young to have had an adult understanding of what was happening to them, but old enough to have been there during the Nazi persecution of Jews”, Susan Rubin Suleiman. 2002. The 1.5 Generation: Thinking About Child Survivors and the Holocaust. American Imago 59, no. 3: 277–295.
 
2
The film Retrace (2011) by the Hungarian filmmaker Judit Elek had a limited release in the cinemas of Eastern Europe, and it is not available in DVD format. Because of the unsuccessful attempts to source this film for viewing, it will be taken into account in my research only for numerical purposes, without being analysed.
 
3
In the Croatian film Lea and Darija, the Jewish female character does not survive, but she is present as ghostly voice that haunts her best friend from childhood who, now at old age, is immersed into oblivion.
 
4
The novels have also been published in English with the following titles: Writing the Book of Esther (1995) by Henri Raczymow and The Final Station: Umschlagplatz (1994) by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz.
 
5
In the 2000s, there are other Holocaust films by women filmmakers that do not fit in the topic discussed here.
 
7
Niedan, Christian. 2014. Pamela Katz on Hannah Arendt. Camera in the Sun. http://​camerainthesun.​com/​?​p=​24233. Accessed 3 September 2014.
 
8
Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. 2009. Marceline Loridan-Ivens. Jewish Women’s Archive. http://​jwa.​org/​encyclopedia/​article/​loridan-ivens-marceline. Accessed 3 September 2014.
 
Literature
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Metadata
Title
The Trauma of (Post)Memory: Women’s Memories in Holocaust Cinema
Author
Ingrid Lewis
Copyright Year
2020
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Book
European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33435-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-33436-9

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33436-9_6