On Tuesday 16 September, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Night Will Fall, followed by an insightful Q&A with director André Singer and producer Sally Angel. The powerful film interweaves eyewitness testimony and original archive footage in order to chronicle the process of the filming, by American and British and Soviet combat cameramen, of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945.

Originally commissioned to provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes, the film was never completed. Seventy years on, however, the Imperial War Museum has restored the filmic testimony in its intended order and under its original title, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. Night Will Fall also explores the political context in which the production of this film was suspended.

Angel commented on her initial interest in the project, sparked by a meeting with the Imperial War Museum’s senior curator Dr Toby Haggith, who was, at that time, beginning to digitally remaster and piece together fragments of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey:

“When he started describing the footage and the story behind it, I knew that would be something that I’d want to take further and really explore that moment of liberation and the challenges of bearing witness to atrocity.”

Singer agreed on the importance of the project, and emphasised his desire to create an “experiential” film rather than a reportage dictated by historians and critics, whose detached narrating of events he later labelled “not just superfluous, but intrusive”.

“If there’s one major thing that I feel most strongly about, it’s that the film should respect that the story was something that had to be told by the people who experienced it, not by others. . . . We ended up with the right combination of characters who . . . had the right to interpret what was happening at that time for another audience, 70 years on.”

Singer then touched on the potential re-traumatisation of the film’s central witnesses, all of whom reacted emotionally during their recounting of the events of 1945.

“The trauma that you’re creating is something that preys on your mind as a filmmaker . . . yet I feel the justification is that everybody who participated in the film overwhelmingly insisted that this was an important story to tell . . . and that their own personal angst or trauma . . . contributed to show how important the project was.”

Sally Angel and Andre Singer discuss NIGHT WILL FALL following a packed preview screening @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/Lj9cQ8SFZK

— Emma Hewitt (@EmzoH) September 16, 2014

An audience member asked whether Singer and Angel intended to produce a film about the atrocities themselves, or about the process of filming the atrocities by Allied cameramen. Singer responded:

“It’s a genuine conundrum about the direction of the film. . . . The starting point of the film was that this was going to be very different in so far as it was going to be a film about the original film, the reconstruction of that film, the importance of that film, the extraordinary role of the cameraman.”

The filmmaker continued by revealing Night Will Fall’s evolution into a wider project:

“I personally . . . got more and more absorbed by the chaos of 1945, that political cauldron that was happening . . . before and then after the end of the war, the Palestine issue, the problems in England and Germany at that time . . . are we telling a narrow story about the film itself or are we trying to paint a broader picture?”

Another audience member commented on the intensely graphic nature of the footage included, not at all habitual in previous combat footage. Singer responded:

“Atrocity footage used out of context is pornography, it has no rational or reason to be used. But put in context and explained, it can carry the message that one needs to carry. . . . Nearly 50% of the footage we were tempted to use, we pulled out of the film because we didn’t want to overwhelm. . . . I hope that we have the balance about right.”

Angel echoed this sentiment, and commented on the radical difference in the extremity of this footage in comparison with previous combat images:

“The cameramen were very aware that they were gathering evidence . . . and part of their filming close-ups was about their anger as well, . . . about making sure that the world knew what was going on.”

Singer closed the discussion with an evaluation of the educational and cautionary elements of the project, recalling the words of Richard Crossman, the future cabinet minister who pinned the emotive script for the original documentary:

“‘Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But, by God’s grace, we who live will learn.’ . . . We see now in everything we’ve seen subsequent to World War II, in 10 or 15 different cases, that of course we haven’t learnt. The tragedy of the film lies in those words.”

Visit the BFI website to find out more information on Night Will Fall and upcoming screenings.

In 1945, a team of top filmmakers came together to make a documentary about the horrific findings in the concentration camps. This film would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. Led by Sidney Bernstein, founder of Granada TV, the making of the film also involved editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman, and, as treatment adviser, Alfred Hitchcock. Despite initial support from the British and US governments, the film was never finished. Today, 70 years on, it has been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums.

Using original archive footage and eyewitness testimonies, Night Will Fall tells the extraordinary story of the filming of the camps by British, American and Soviet cameramen. Acclaimed filmmaker André Singer chronicles the untold story of this film’s history and the fate of Bernstein’s project.

Directed by André Singer
Duration: 75′
Year: 2014

Night Will Fall opens in cinemas on 19 September

On Thursday 24 April, the Frontline Club welcomed a full house to a screening of Aleppo. Notes from the Dark. It was followed by an insightful Q&A with directors Michal Przedlacki and Wojciech Szumowski, which touched on the misrepresentation of the conflict in Western media and the possibility of a foreign peacekeeping intervention.

The unique and powerful film aims to document, in the words of Przedlacki, the “fate of ordinary people in extraordinary, dreadful times”, and gives voice to an assortment of Aleppo residents experiencing the daily hardships of life in a war zone.

Created from over 200 hours of footage, Aleppo. Notes from the Dark paints a complex and unique portrait of the Syrian people through a panorama of personal accounts, including those of a doctor at a makeshift field hospital and an Islamic cleric devoted to the pursuit of zakat (alms). Filmed over a period of 44 days, the film communicates the position of its subjects with regard to the state of the Syrian Revolution, their lives prior to the conflict and their expectations and hopes for the future of their homeland.

From left to right: Marta, Wojciech Szumowski andMichal Przedlacki

Humanitarian aid worker and photographer Przedlacki and filmmaker Szumowski commented on the film’s origins, born out of a mutual desire to provide evidence of the extensive bloodshed inflicted on the Syrian people:

“We decided to take the risk and go together to Aleppo. Not for news, not for three days, not for a week, but to stay there for two months in order to properly document and follow the fate of ordinary people. . . . We decided that we had to tell this story . . . there was too little information about Syria.”

An audience member questioned the lack of screen time dedicated to the narratives of Christian Syrians, Szumowski responded (with the help of a translator):

“We think that it would not be optimal to put Christians and Muslims in opposition, I think this is a mistake that we make in the West. Christians amount to 6% of Syrian society, and in the film we have shown the (positive) attitude of Muslims towards Christians. Both Muslims and Christians are Syrian citizens, and we would not like to divide them.”

A second audience member enquired as to whether the conflict in Syria had the potential to radicalise those involved, and the extent to which this would pose a threat to the West. Przedlacki responded:

“To understand why we have seen the influence of foreign extremists we need to understand the despair that Syria has faced, . . . the Syrians have a feeling that the world is letting them burn. . . . We are now ‘drinking the beer that we brewed ourselves’.”

The question of the West’s role in supporting a resolution to the conflict was likewise raised. Szumowski proposed the following:

“The first thing that the West can do is to tell an honest story. I have been following the information that has been in the media about Syria very closely, and I have the impression that there are some deformations of the real situation…. Placing terrorism in the headlines is already a sort of lie… and giving it precedence over everything else distorts the situation… So first it would be to tell the truth, and second it would be to use solidarity”

Przedlacki added:

“Our film is a protest against the ‘civilisation of indifference’. . . . Each one of us can do something. We made a film . . . some of you can write about the film, or can support Save the Children or a humanitarian organisation. . . . This is not some imaginary world. All of this has happened.”

Another audience member warmly thanked the filmmakers for bringing such a pressing situation to light, and enquired as to the extent of Russian involvement in the eyes of the opposition fighters. Szumowski recalled interactions with residents of the Syrian city:

“The people that we met in Aleppo kept talking about Russian mercenaries. . . . We heard tales that some of the aircrafts are being piloted by soldiers from North Korea. . . . It is almost as if the war is not between Syrians but between other nationalities as well.”

Szumowski likewise commented on outsider interests, highlighting the Russian base with access to the Mediterranean Sea as a clear motive for their involvement.

The filmmakers were asked to detail the extent to which the residents of Aleppo that they came into contact with demonstrated support for the suggestion of a Western military intervention.
Przedlacki offered a response and articulated his proposal for a peaceful resolution to the fighting, drawing on his work with humanitarian response programmes in diverse regions, including Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia and Pakistan:

“Every option should be considered in order to stop the bloodshed in Syria. . . . We have a dictator that is creating a bloodbath for his own Syrian nation. . . . If diplomatic means are not working then there should be an initiative of the Arab countries to intervene, and the Western role would be to support such an initiative. . . . I don’t really believe that we would see American boots on the ground.”

An audience member pressed Przedlacki on which Arab countries would be involved in this initiative:

“The Arab League itself. In 2012, they agreed to have a peacekeeping operation, which was then stopped by the Russians. . . . Imagine how many people could have lived . . . if this had happened.”

Szumowski expressed greater concern at the extent of mis-information in the West, and demonstrated a reluctance to endorse Przedlacki’s backing of foreign military intervention:

“I am an artist, a creator, not a politician. I think that force is the absolute last resort. I think the most important thing is informing the society openly and honestly about what is going on in Syria.”

Szumowski closed the discussion by recalling the inaction of Allied troops during the Second World War with regards to intervening to prevent the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, pointing out the West’s current complicity in the situation in Syria owing to its failure to act:

“We are committing a similar sin now when we are not talking about Syria. This is something that neither me, nor my friend (Przedlacki) can accept.”

To find out more about Aleppo. Notes from the Dark, the film’s Twitter page is available here.

Interview given by Przedlacki to BBC World News about Aleppo. Notes from the Dark,  on 25 April 2014. Courtesy of BBC:

[vimeo clip_id=”92959490″ width=”630″ height=”354″]

View the trailer of Aleppo. Notes from the Dark here:

[vimeo clip_id=”88060806″ width=”630″ height=”354″]

This screening was supported by the Polish Cultural Institute London.

The Church never seems to do itself any favours when it comes to the media. Admittedly, most secular news outlets pay little heed to the institution’s main message, preferring headlines like ‘Randy Reverend in Love Tryst’ to stories on civic outreach or sermons on loving our neighbour. 

Still, knowing what the media agenda is, you’d think a comms expert from the flock would step up and give them some basic instruction. The Williamson story provides a good case in point. When the news first broke, I travelled out to the bishop’s seminary on the edge of Buenos Aires. Instead of providing a spokesperson, they padlocked the gates and hid away inside.

I phoned as well for an entire week. I finally got to speak with the telephone receptionist, but only because I met her at the seminary gates arriving for work. Apparently the phone lines were down. An unfortunate coincidence to be sure – especially given that the Pope was trying to get through too.

Williamson no doubt didn’t want to add fuel to the flames. But by saying nothing, he let reporters speak for him. After a fortnight or so, he did eventually break his silence, giving an email interview to Der Spiegel. 

The frustrating aspect of this whole saga was that Williamson has his own blog. For a week or more, the world waited for some clarification on his opinions on the Holocaust. And what was the bishop blogging about? A film with Meryl Streep that he’d just been watching and "the varied wealth and dynamic force" of Beethoven’s Third Symphony!