Because of This War. The Shoah in Israeli Cinema Cover Image

Z powodu tej wojny. Szoa w kinie izraelskim
Because of This War. The Shoah in Israeli Cinema

Author(s): Bartosz Kwieciński
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego

Summary/Abstract: The author reflects upon the presence of the Shoah‑ related issues in Israeli cinema, from the early Zionist films to the newest productions, and from the apology of the Jewish state to the focus on an individual protagonist. The ideological stigma of first films from 1950s and 1960s gives way to the authorial narration in which the fates of the survivors are told by the Second and Third Generation representatives. The topic of the article is also the artistic weakness of such narrations which – against common opinions – are posited not in the centre but merely on the peripheries of interests expressed by Israeli filmmakers. Transgressions of memory, entanglement in the history of Israel, the fates of the survivors and their children are marginal in Israeli cinema. The emancipatory and integrative function that the cinema has served for multicultural Israeli society tackles the narrations of the Shoah to an inconsiderable extent. Sometimes, the Holocaust becomes an attractive background for genological stories present in mainstream cinema.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 81-95
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Polish