’Shoah’ to re-open with 2 brand new 35mm prints in New York City on Friday, December 10 at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and on Friday, December 24th at IFC Center followed by a national rollout in 2011
New York, NY (November 2, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company is acquiring rights to Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half hour landmark documentary SHOAH which is considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made. On the occasion of the film’s 25th Anniversary, SHOAH will be re-released in New York City on December 10th at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, and on December 24th at IFC Center. A national rollout will follow in 2011.
Twelve years in the making, SHOAH is Lanzmann’s monumental epic on the Holocaust and features interviews with survivors, bystanders and perpetrators in 14 countries. The film does not contain any historical footage but rather features interviews which seek to "reincarnate" the Jewish tragedy and also visits places where the crimes took place. First released in New York City on October 20, 1985, the film was immediately hailed as a masterpiece by critics. It won prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Boston Society of Film Critics, BAFTA (Best Documentary), Cesars (Honorary) and IDA Awards. On making SHOAH, Lanzmann stated at the time of the initial release, "Making a history was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to construct something more powerful than that. And, in fact, I think that the film, using only images of the present, evokes the past with far more force than any historical document."
Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented, "It is a profound honor to be entrusted with the re-release of SHOAH by Claude Lanzmann and Pascal Caucheteux and our friends at Why Not Productions in Paris. We believe it is important to keep the legacy of this peerless film alive by bringing it to new audiences, and we will aggressively pursue younger audiences and critics to discover the film for the first time."
Notes Lanzmann: "Museums come to terms with death and institute forgetting as well as memory. On the contrary, SHOAH, because it is an incarnation, because nothing will ever replace Abraham Bomba’s tears, Filip Muller’s reverberating voice, or the minute-by-minute description of the executions in Treblinka by the Unterscharfuhrer Franz Suchomel or Polish train conductor Henrik Gavkowski, SHOAH is an absolute barricade, the true wall against oblivion. Memory is reactivated every time SHOAH is presented in the world, in Europe, in Asia, in America. IFC Films’ decision to re-release SHOAH theatrically with two new 35mm prints after 25 years is, for me, like a new birth for the film. For years, SHOAH has been incomprehensibly absent from New York’s cinemas. It is high time to show it again, and I thank the young distributors at IFC Films for having understood this."
The U.S. deal was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for IFC Films with Pascal Caucheteux of Why Not Productions on behalf of Lanzmann.
About IFC Films
Established a decade ago, IFC Films – a division of Rainbow Media’s IFC Entertainment – is the leading U.S. distributor of independent and foreign film. Its unique day and date distribution model makes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them simultaneously in theaters as well as on cable’s On Demand platform and through Pay-Per-View, reaching nearly 50 million homes. IFC Films’ "IFC Midnight" label, launched in 2010, offers the very best in international genre cinema, including horror, sci-fi, thrillers, erotic arthouse, action and more. Some of the company’s successes over the years have included MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, TOUCHING THE VOID, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, GOMORRAH, CHE, SUMMER HOURS, IN THE LOOP, ANTICHRIST, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, CAIRO TIME and WORDPLAY. IFC Films has worked with established and breakout auteurs including Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Miranda July, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Todd Solondz, Cristian Mungiu, Susanne Bier, Olivier Assayas, Jim McKay, Larry Fessenden, Gregg Araki, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, as well as more recent breakouts such as Andrea Arnold, Mia Hansen Love, Corneliu Porombiou, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Daryl Wein and Abdellatif Kechiche.