Prof. Cazenave “An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah'”
In her first book, An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” (SUNY Press, 2019), Professor Jennifer Cazenave undertakes a comprehensive examination of the 220 hours of filmic material Claude Lanzmann excluded from his 1985 Holocaust opus. In retrieving alternative eyewitness accounts captured by the camera but ultimately left on the cutting room floor, this book offers a voice to testimonies from the margins. It also addresses crucial questions raised by Lanzmann’s film, including the absence of a gendered experience of the Holocaust. An Archive of the Catastrophe was awarded an Honorable Mention for the 2020 Best First Book Award presented by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.