1° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Opere Prime 1982

Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?

by Laurence Jarvik
Country: USA
Year: 1981
Duration: 90'


The film illustrate the responsibilities of American administration that allowed the Jew’s massacre in Europe after refusing, at the proper time, to offer indiscriminate asylum to German, Austrian and Czechoslovak refugees. Through testimonies and documents, it shows how Roosevelt’s government took as an excuse a mysterious “Fifth Column” to prevent Jews mass immigration, it hid behind the unrealistic proposal by Duvalier to open a settlement area for Hebrew pioneers and later it has refused until 1944 to consider the defense of European Jews as part of the war effort. (…) From 1942, when the range of the slaughter was revealed in the United States, the Hebrew associations have regularly opposed (defamed and isolated) those who shocked by the revelation tried to mobilize the public opinion and pressure the government. The film contrasts the testimony of Bergson, the leader of the committee of the defense of European Hebrews and those of the people who were guilty of having buried the protest action: on one side, the indignation that is still burning after forty years, on the other the dreadful good conscience of the Jews who arrived, more careful not to do protest actions that could threaten their position than to act in order to save their slaughtered brothers. About the guilty Zionists, the film has this quote: “We are not a rescue firm, we care about the settlement of the pioneers, not the fleeing masses of Jewish people”.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Biography

film director

Laurence Jarvik

Laurence Jarvik is 25 years old and he graduated in Philosophy in 1977, at the University of Berkeley, California. Just after that, he started working on Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?, which is his first film.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Declaration

film director

How did you get to the cinema?
I was studying philosophy and I was interested in the problems of morality, right or wrong, good and bad. I asked myself what happened during that crisis in the United States. I decided to make a movie because the people who lived that period are quite old by now and it’s important to collect their experiences so that in the future people can know who they were and what they had to say about themselves. There was no time to waste, so I used the interviews and I illustrated them with stock footage. I never attended a cinema school, we collected some money and hired an operator. (…)
How did you choose who to interview?
I started from a very famous book: "While six million died", on the Department of State and the Roosevelt administration. I made contact with some people, who gave me some other names and so on. This way I managed to meet people that weren’t mentioned in the book. I left out someone who didn’t really have to do with my subject; so it was the topic to make a selection. I didn’t have any established philosophy. It was about getting close to people who had been involved at the time and those who wanted to talk about it. Their answers defined the choice of the stock footage for the film. (…)
The editing of the film is remarkable, but there wasn’t a professional editor.
No, thank you! We tried to oppose the people who had contradictory positions, as it happens in trials. It gives the impression that they answer each other, but they actually never confronted in front of a camera. We wanted to show the process of History, a very simple idea. At the beginning we thought about introducing a narrator, but then we gave up, because nobody believes in a narrator, it has a propaganda effect. We showed the testimonies like the ones of a court of justice, like bills of indictment. The witnesses are called without defense attorneys. If someone among the audience wants to do it, he can, but I draft the accusation. (…)

Cast

& Credits

Director: Laurence Jarvik.
Director of photography: Reuben Aaronson (bianco e nero, 16mm).
Music: Frédéric Chopin.
Editor: Laurence Jarvik.
Production company: James R. Kurth e Laurence Jarvik.
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