CONFERENCE: Filming the Unimaginable? The Representation of the Holocaust in Cinema, from 1945 to the 1980s
In collaboration with the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel (CNA)
Web 16/03 at 18:30

In the context of the theatrical release of the Luxembourgish film “Le Chemin du Bonheur” (The Way to Happiness) by Nicolas Steil, in collaboration with the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel (CNA).

The Holocaust (also known by the Hebrew word “Shoah”), stands for the exclusion, persecution, and ultimately the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany. This genocide constitutes an event that is as painful as it is central to the recent history of humankind.

Since the realisation and acknowledgment of the scale of this massacre and the methods (often industrial) employed by the National-Socialists to put in place their plan for the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, many debates have taken place to discuss the possibilities and limits of the cinematic representations. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote in the 1980s: “One does not imagine the unimaginable. And in particular, one does not show it on screen.”

Nevertheless, since 1945, innumerable documentaries, films, and TV productions, European and American, have tried to retrace and represent the experience and the realities of the concentration and extermination camps of the “Third Reich”. How have these works approached the task of rendering tangible the incommensurable and unimaginable?

This cinema-conference will be held in French and, complemented by multiple interspersed film clips, will offer a historic survey of the representation of the Holocaust in cinema, from 1945 to the 1980s.

Chaired by Yves Steichen, historian at the Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA)

Date: March 16, 2022
Time: 18:30 – 20:00pm
Free entrance / Reservations required:
Address: Auditorium Cité, 3 Rue Genistre, 1623 Luxembourg
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ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: Finding « The Way to Happiness »
In collaboration with MemoShoah and the Luxembourg Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah
Mon 21/03 at 18:30

In the context of the theatrical release of the Luxembourgish film “Le Chemin du Bonheur” (The Way to Happiness) by Nicolas Steil, in collaboration with MemoShoah and the Luxembourg Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (FLMS).

More than 75 years after the Second World War, only few direct time witnesses of the Holocaust are still with us, while most of these survivors lived through this painful period of our history as children. Iris Productions, MemoShoah, and the Luxembourg Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah invite you to a roundtable discussion where two of these survivors will share their life paths and how they were able to find happiness following the experiences they had to endure in the past.

We invite you to meet:

• Henri Roanne Rosenblatt, Former film critic and documentary filmmaker, Henri Roanne- Rosenblatt, was put on a Kindertransport from Vienna to Brussels at the age of 6, several months after the Kristallnacht. After staying with a foster family, Henri lived in hiding from 1942 to 1944. This experience inspired his novel “Le cinéma de Saül Birnbaum”, which became the basis for the film adaptation “Le Chemin du Bonheur” (The Way to Happiness), directed by Nicolas Steil.
• Claude Marx, Former president of the Jewish Consistory of Luxembourg, former co-president and founding member of MemoShoah, Claude Marx was evacuated from Nancy in 1940 at the age of 6. Alongside his family, he was relocated to a small town in central France. In 1943, with raids and roundups targeting Jews becoming increasingly more threatening, Claude’s neighbours hid him in their attic, at the risk of their freedom and life. They were awarded the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations after the war.
• Robabe Sharifi, an Afghan refugee woman who has been living for three years with there son in Luxembourg in a center in Schifflange. In 2019, she crossed Iran, Turkey, Greece and Germany to arrive in the Grand Duchy.
• Laurent Moyse, Moderator of the roundtable discussion, President of the Luxembourg Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, and a graduate in Journalism and Communications, as well as Economics, Laurent Moyse is an independent journalist and author of multiple books. He is committed to the preservation of the memory of the victims of the Second World War. Within that context, he is the author of numerous articles, radio chronicles, and conferences.

Date: March 21, 2022
Time: 18:30 – 20:30
Address: Auditorium Cité, 3 Rue Genistre, 1623 Luxembourg
Free entrance / Reservation required:
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CINEMA-DEBATE: Resilience through Cinema
In collaboration with the Luxembourg City Cinémathèque
Wed 30/03 at 19:00

How can we live with the abandonment of our parents, who are supposed to be there for us and love us unconditionally? By inventing another world, a different reality. By living in a lucid dream that is, incessantly and day by day, reconstructed all over again. It prevents us from thinking about our original trauma, gives us a thirst for life, while approaching the other with as little risk as possible.

The love Saül carries for cinema paves the way to his resilience. It helps him to rebuild and get back a so-called “normal” life, following a trauma during his childhood – the abandonment by his parents, caused by the Jewish extermination. Reputed psychologists and psychoanalysts, including Boris Cyrulnik, have looked into the question of resilience and unanimously agree about the level of difficulty in finding the proper means to achieve it. In “Le Chemin du Bonheur” (The Way to Happiness), the affectionate passion of Saül helps in healing his wounds, while cinema plays a central role in the psychological reconstruction of this character.

“Le Chemin du Bonheur” (The Way to Happiness) is a story that teaches us to never, ever abandon love!

► The screening of the film is followed by a debate:

With Laurent Jullier (French film theorist and professor of Film Studies at the University of Nancy), Bruno Humbeeck (PhD in Education Sciences from the University of Rouen) and lecturer at the University of Mons), Gilbert Pregno (President of the Luxembourg Advisory Committee on Human Rights), and Nicolas Steil (Luxembourgish author, stage and film director, and producer) | around 60’ | language: French

Time: 19:00 – 22:00 pm
The screening will be followed by a debate.
Address: Luxembourg City Cinémathèque, 17 Place du Théâtre, 2613 Luxembourg.
Entrance: full € 3,70 ; reduced € 2,40
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