The most famous of director Alain Resnais’ many outstanding documentaries, Night and Fog juxtaposes grainy black-and-white archive footage of the Auschwitz concentration camp with eerie colour footage of the same deserted camp a decade after its closure. The haunting images are accompanied by readings of a poetic text by former Auschwitz inmate Jean Cayrol. This powerful cinematic essay examines the effects of time on memory and shows how human beings can be used as objects.
France, 1955. English subtitles. Colour/Black and white. 31 mins.
Plus Statues Also Die/Les Statues meurent aussi, Chris Marker’s profoundly humanistic study of African art and its decline under French colonialism.
France, 1953. English subtitles. Black and white. 30 mins.