Yale French Studies, Number 141 : Claude Lanzmann after Shoah

The 141st volume of Yale French Studies examines the life and work of Claude Lanzmann following his masterpiece, Shoah   This volume of Yale French Studies charts the different paths the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018) took after the release of Shoah in 1985.

These paths are explored through a consideration of his late films—Tsahal (1994), A Visitor from the Living (1997), Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001), Light and Shadows (2008), The Karski Report (2010), The Last of the Unjust (2013), Napalm (2017), and Four Sisters (2018)—and of his memoir, The Patagonian Hare.

The volume also includes an English translation of his last major interview, “Self-Portrait at Ninety.” The original essays collected here show that Lanzmann’s late films and writing stand as something more than mere footnotes to his 1985 masterpiece.

Continuing to wrestle with questions of cinematic transmission and the relationship among film, history, and testimony, they confront anew and in a variety of approaches the challenge of representing the Holocaust, and of living in its aftermath.