Arnaud Sauli made the documentary film Sheol in 2022 , dedicated to the material traces of the Sobibor extermination camp . By following the work of archaeologists and architects of the museum under construction , the film shows the tensions at the heart of memorial work on the Shoah . His film received the grand prize for historical documentaries at the RDV de l ’ histoire in Blois and has been selected in many festivals .
Ania Szczepanska is a researcher at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and a film director . Her work and films are informed by her research on the history of Poland and more broadly on the visual and cinematographic archives of the Communist period in Eastern Europe . She is currently making a film on archaeological excavations carried out and filmed at Auschwitz in 1967 .
Based on their respective experiences , the two discuss the role of documentary cinema in memorial work and the writing of the history of the Shoah .
Ania Szczepanska : In biblical Hebrew , the word sheol designates a place that is not easy to define and is subject to many different interpretations . It is a place where the living do not go and seems to have a mixed nature , combining the singular and the universal , the
closed and the open . Sheol is the collective “ grave ” of the dead , capable of expanding to accommodate new arrivals . It can also be considered a place of rest without transcendence . It is not the equivalent of Hell , but rather a purgatory or , as Professor Tabor explains , a “ dark and deep ” region , “ the Pit ”, or even “ the land of oblivion ”. After a few seconds of images of life taken from pre-war family archives , your film
Sheol fully opens with wide shots of landscapes filmed in southeast Poland , around the small town of Wlodawa , 250 km from Warsaw . Three shots in bird ’ s eye view , then still shots of the forest , contemplative , on the ground , with no human presence . A striking shot
2 . Sous la terre de Polin , Ania Szczepanska © Bachibouzouk-Les poissons volants
Deep VIEW
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