Weil ich Künstler war (2013)

Weil ich Künstler war: Directed by Christophe Cognet. With Yehuda Bacon, José Fosty, Walter Spitzer, Samuel Willenberg. In 1945, when the Allies liberated the concentration camps, they discovered thousands of secretly created artworks.

“Saw this last night at Jewish International Film Festival in Sydney and was appalled by it. There was so little merit in this unfocused and ill-conceived attempt to illustrate the work of a handful of Jewish illustrators. Postcards shots of concentration camps clamour for attention with dreadfully out-of-focus and hard to see pencil drawings that are almost completely devoid of feeling or soul-power. I was left wondering what the film was really about and was lost most of the time in a kind of rambling assemblage of thoughts that never quite rose to the level of dramatic storytelling. In fact, that was the greatest weakness of the film – its lack of story – and wonderful storytellers. Instead we are treated to curators in white gloves, waving their hands in front of the drawings, and wondering to ourselves, what exactly is the filmmaker trying to say?”