Page 73 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.
P. 73

A still from Photographer   image) or animated by merging and other ‘soft’ editing
            [Fotoamator]              techniques.
            directed by Dariusz Jabłoński,  All this, combined with the sounds of the streets,
            1998 – courtesy
            of Apple Film Production  trams and human voices is supposed to deprive the im-
                                      ages of their static, or ‘dead’ character. Such a framing
                                      method engages the audience (with a moving picture,
                                      which moves the mind and body of the viewer) and re-
                                      duces the feeling of alienation and stillness of the pic-
                                      tures.  However,  it  is  those  reduced  features  which
                                      absorb us, though in a different way than in a cinematic
                                      reading; our attention is drawn to those small pictures
                                      so strongly that sometimes we wish we could look away
                                      – or, on the contrary, we activate our reserves of atten-
                                      tion and ‘patience techniques’.
                                         Animation of Genewein’s colour slides juxtaposed
                                      against the black-and-white, mute images of Łódź of the
                                      1990s is justified in the film’s construction through the
                                      montage  of  documents  which  constitute  a  personal
                                      commentary: private and business correspondence, of-
                                      ficial reports are read as a voice-over to bring the audi-
                                      ence closer to the mind of the photographer. In the face
                                      of the tragedy of the ghetto Walter Genewein is worried
                                      only  about  the  technical  quality  of  his  photographs,
                                      which transform the ghetto into an idyllic advertisement


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