Pourquoi Israël from 1973 is Shoah filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s first film (he’s also Chief Editor of Les Temps modernes).
International media attention was caused by an incident at b-movie cinema in Hamburg on October 25, 2009, where leftist groups violently prevented a showing of the movie, claiming it took a one-sided zionist perspective. Here’s an interesting interview (German only, sorry) with Lanzmann, regarding this incident and specifically the incapability of the German press to cover it, as the offenders were no far-right but leftist groups.
His documentary Pourquoi Israël (Israel, Why / Warum Israel) examines life in Israel twenty-five years after the birth of the state. Lanzmann spends time with, among others, German-Jewish émigrés, intellectuals, dock workers, police, prison inmates, and the newly arrived surveying life in the new homeland. Although the film is now 36 years old it doesn’t seem dated as the subject hasn’t lost its timeliness.
This Sunday at 4:00 pm a new attempt will take place to screen the film in Hamburg, same cinema: b-movie, Brigittenstrasse 5, 20359 Hamburg.
