Last week in cinema studies I was able to experience an Australian student film called ‘The Illustrated Auschwitz.” The film itself is a documentary, how ever it differs from other holocaust documentaries as rather using facts and figures, it shows obscure images (such as short clips from the ‘Wizard of Oz’) to the story of a holocaust survivor Zsuzsi Weinstock.

At first the images, may present themselves as odd, or lead you to believe they might subtract from the seriousness of the story. However it’s the combination of Weinstocks emotional story and images that hint at whats going on that forces the viewer to imagine whats happening. Like mentioned in this weeks reading, “to kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thousands deaths” you can’t help but imagine the worst.

For example a scene that really affected me was the use of found footage (‘Wizard of Oz’) in combination with the story being told. The film marker uses the line; “There’s no place like home” and trims it to say “There’s no place,” as Weinstock speaks about knowing that she would return the ruins. She then goes on to say about seeing the Wizard of Oz and thinking to herself, that maybe she to would be able to return home and everyone would be there waiting for her and that it was a hope she kept with her for her entire journey home. The last spoken words of the film is again from the Wizard of Oz and it’s Dorothy saying “I don’t ever want to go home”. For me this only made me think of a young girl afraid that when she finally arrives the hope she carried with her would finally die out.

Like the reading suggests the imagination is a powerful thing, and is taken advantage of by many creative mediums. Through this course I think it’s important to recognise when to add less so that the audience can experience more.

View The Illustrated Auschwitz here