Invited on the set of the newspaper, journalist and director Claude LANZMANN expresses his refusal in the film "Shoah" of psychological explanations on what happened, the mass murder of Jews, A film that required ten years of work for a duration of 9.5 hours and is based on the exploration of many archives, which allowed him to measure the immensity of his ignorance on the subject.
Questioned by Laure ADLER on the capacity of intellectuals to maintain the link with the French people, Claude LANZMANN returns the conditions of the creation of the review "Modern times" cofounded by Jean Paul SARTRE, on the occasion of the publication of a special issue for its 50th anniversary.
After defining the difference between concentration camps and extermination camps, the director of the film "Shoah", Claude LANZMANN evokes the way he shot his film with witnesses, survivors or former executioners of extermination camps who relive what they experienced. "To relive it, they had to pay the highest price, ie suffer by telling me their story".
Bernard PIVOT interviews Claude LANZMANN on his book "Shoah" taken from his eponymous film and prefaced by Simone de Beauvoir: the book revives this era -the extermination of Jews during the Second World War by the Nazi regime-, without image, while provoking images in the reader, with the transcription of the text of the testimonies of survivors, victims, executioners and neighbors of the camps. Claude LANZMANN explains how his film also evokes the past with images of the present, without any archival documents, the word giving life to today’s places.
The DVD of the film "Shoah" was screened in front of students of the Lycée Buffon in Paris in the presence of Jack LANG and filmmaker Claude LANZMANN. Claude LANZMANN addresses the students and explains how he obtained the testimonies of the former Nazis in his film by paying them. A student gives her impressions of the film.
Guest of the newspaper, the journalist and director Claude LANZMANN returns on the three categories of witnesses he met to make his film "Shoah": the direct victims of the death of their people, the Jews, who agreed to speak for the duty of transmission and witness to extreme experiences, the Nazis responsible, who never speak of their role in the extermination camps, do not allow themselves to be filmed and have been silent for 40 years, -only one to agree to talk about all the machinery of death set up in the extermination camps- and witnesses close to the extermination like the Polish peasants living near the camps.
On the occasion of the broadcast this night of the entire film testimony "Shoah" on FR3, 20 years after its release, the director Claude LANZMANN returns to this "film of eternity" which catches the spectators, which has not aged and includes all the genres of cinema: western, criminal investigation, epic movie and Nazi hunt.
At the request of Mikaël Gorbachev, met by Claude LANZMANN in Paris, the film "Shoah" was screened for the first time in the USSR in Moscow at the Maison du Cinéma. Interview with director Claude LANZMANN and reaction of Russian spectators expressing their emotions in French after the screening of the film.
Claude LANZMANN evokes the difficulties encountered to find witnesses of the extermination camps and convince them to testify, in particular, the executioners. He explains the meaning of the title of his film "Shoah", a Hebrew term for what the Jews suffered, or "the storm", "the disaster", the "absolute destruction" without the sacrificial connotation of holocaust, which does not exist in Hebrew.
Claude LANZMANN, co-director of the journal "Les Temps modernes" returns to the manifesto of the 121 or "Declaration on the right to rebel in the war of Algeria" - which denounces the practice of torture- signed by all the members of the journal "Les Temps modernes" including Jean Paul Sartre and himself and the repercussions for the signatories like his own sister, the actress Evelyne REY, the fears of the arrest of Jean Paul SARTRE, protected by General de Gaulle with these words: "Voltaire is not arrested".
Claude LANZMANN, co-director of "Modern Times", left-wing writer, atheist, explains his relationship with Judaism and his indulgence towards Jewish religious because, for him, it was the rabbis who maintained the permanence of Jewish identity through the centuries despite attempts at conversion. It also evokes the role played by religion in the Nazi extermination camps of the Second World War when some Jews -called sheep- entered the gas chambers singing their faith.
The INA Galaxy 
