Nine hours of historic film at the Cinema

It is a grueling documentary about the Holocaust.

It includes no footage from the time of the war.

It is more than nine hours long.

It is “Shoah,” and at 11:00 a.m. Sunday it will be shown in the IU Cinema, which may be the last chance to see it.

IU Cinema Director Jon Vickers seized the opportunity to stage a cinematic event with French director Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 film. A print was re-released for its 25th anniversary last year.

Despite its troubling subject matter and length, Vickers hopes students and community members alike make an effort to see “Shoah.”

“It is a nine-hour documentary on the Holocaust. It’s a tough sell,” Vickers said. “This is probably your one chance to ever see this in a public setting. If you are interested in film or filmmaking, and you want to see a serious piece of documentary film, this is something you should see.”

Alvin H. Rosenfeld, an IU Professor of Jewish Studies teaching a course about Hitler and Anne Frank, spoke to the film’s overwhelming might.

“It is among the most powerful films ever made on the Holocaust,” Rosenfeld said. “It grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go.”

He agrees with Vickers that “Shoah” is an experience worth enduring, as it serves as a heart-wrenching historical document for the Jewish community.

“The trauma of those years has not been diminished in the case of numbers of these people,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s probably as up-close and cinematically truthful as films about the Holocaust can get. It’s unsparing in its depiction of those crimes. It doesn’t have one second of sentimentalizing or romanticizing. There’s nothing commercializing about the film. It just goes right to the heart of the catastrophe.”

The film is being shown as part of the ongoing Themester series, “Making War, Making Peace,” within the College of Arts and Sciences.

English and theater and drama Professor Steve Watt said he is pleased to have the film associated with classes about the war and Holocaust.

“It is an initiative for which we have lots of wonderful partners across campus,” Watt said. “We have a lot of great partners both within the University and within the community.”

But Rosenfeld said he feels “Shoah” can serve more than just academic purposes.

“We know a great deal about the Holocaust in terms of what happened, where it happened, who caused it, who the victims were and how they were victimized,” Rosenfeld said. “To this day, though, we’re still asking major questions as to why. This film will raise those questions in you, and it may just help the students get some answers.”