Pare Lorentz’ Nuremberg film on DVD
Pare Lorentz, born in Clarksburg, WV, raised in Buckhannon, made several of the most important documentaries ever made. One of them is his official film of the Nuremberg Trials that uses some of the Nazi’s own footage. Facets Multimedia in Chicago is now selling the DVD. Lorentz told me in person that he was for a while in charge of de-Nazifying the German art world. I have not read anything in print about this subject, but I am sure his story would have been fascinating. ( There are several films about the subject of the art world as controlled by the Nazis, most famously the film “Mephisto.”)
Here is their description of the film -
Documentarian Pare Lorentz was commissioned to edit captured Nazi footage of concentration camps for use against the Nazi war criminals on trial at
Nuremberg. In addition to these upsetting images,
Nuremberg includes Lorentz’s footage of men like Goering, Keitel, and von Ribbentrop as they defend themselves. After being rediscovered in 1996, the film has become of staple of college libraries and Holocaust studies.
I programmed the film and screened it at the Cultural Center during the 50th anniversary celebration of the State Capitol in June 1982.
Here is a link to a recent expanded Pare Lorentz Film Festival sponsored by the IDA.
The restored version of the film was shown at the Garden State Film Festival - here is their description of the restored film.
SynopsisPare Lorentz was the first great American documentary filmmaker. His films about the Depression, including The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River, defined the era – and are still considered the most important documentaries of their day. In 1945, at the end of World War Two, Lorentz was sent to
Germany by the Truman Administration to oversee the most important film of his career. In the ruins of Nazi Germany, the Allies had come across over a million feet of Nazis film footage, detailing all of their atrocities. Lorentz was assigned the task of editing this captured footage into a documentary that would be shown throughout the world, to display, in stark visual terms, the evils of fascism, racism, and intolerance. Before Lorentz could finish the film, which he had titled
Nuremberg, U.S. authorities pulled the plug on the project. They thought the movie was too harsh, too graphic. Government officials seized the unfinished print, flew it back to
Washington, and buried it in an unmarked canister in the National Archives. Lorentz returned to the
U.S. a broken man – even though he would live another forty-five years, he never made another film. The sole existing print of
Nuremberg was recently discovered in the National Archives, and it’s being restored and completed by a group of documentary filmmakers, using Pare Lorentz’s original director’s notes (supplied by Lorentz’s widow, Elizabeth). After sixty years, the unfinished masterpiece of a great filmmaker will finally be completed.Forms: Documentary
Genres: Educational, Human Rights, War/Peace, Period/Historical, Reality
Niches: Jewish https://sfindie08.withoutabox.com/festivals/event_item.php?id=14061
