Historical Discourses of the Unimaginable
Historical Discourses of the Unimaginable
The Maelstrom
This chapter focuses on the film The Maelstrom and the Holocaust film as documentary genre. It discusses the source of the Holocaust’s fascination for Jewish filmmakers. Péter Forgács’s The Maelstrom, a film about a Dutch Jewish family destroyed in the Shoah, actively deconstructs the institutionalized divide between the real and the imaginable by producing historical discourses of the unimaginable. Drawing his visual sources from the depths of the world’s archives and from recovered amateur footage, Forgács affords the viewer access to worlds unknown and unanticipated. The chapter also argues that The Maelstrom functions both as a self-critical act of historical interpretation and as a formally innovative work of art, the affective power of which engender both empathy and understanding.
Keywords: The Maelstrom, Holocaust film, documentary genre, Jewish filmmakers, Péter Forgács, archive, amateur footage
Minnesota Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
