Post-Holocaust Jewish Identities in Hungarian Cinema

FAIN: FA-52596-06

Catherine E. Portuges
University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Amherst, MA 01003-9242)

“The Subjective Lens: Post-Holocaust Identities in Hungarian Cinema,” to be published as a book and interactive DVD, compares post-war and post-communist Hungarian films in which Jewish identity is inscribed in first-person narratives. Combining research in archival sources including the Hungarian Film Institute, the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, and the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, with close and comprehensive analyses and interviews from the last fifteen years of Hungarian film production, I show how intergenerational transmission of filmmakers' voices as witnesses, victims, survivors and observers shaped the views of successor generations through documentary, fiction and new media representations.