The 1985 film Shoah is a landmark in both documentary and Holocaust-education circles.
Over the course of 10 hours, French director Claude Lanzmann presents the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, witnesses and even some German SS officers (the latter recorded with hidden cameras). But while Shoah is still widely discussed decades later, little is known about Lanzmann himself, or the struggle he went through to make the film. With that in mind, Toronto arts journalist Adam Benzine self-financed his own film, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, which recently received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary short subject.
The Globe and Mail spoke with Benzine over the phone from Miami, where he was attending a television conference – after all, just because he’s nominated for an Oscar doesn’t mean he can give up his day job.
You’re still covering the film world for trade publisher C21 Media, yet you’re also on the other side of the industry divide, too. Do you find the role reversal at all strange?
It’s certainly interesting to see things on the other side of the fence. I’ve felt it most starkly when covering film festivals. I mean, I’ve covered Hot Docs for years, and to be there last year with my own film was strange. But I think the main difference is that it would have been awful if I had made a bad film and everybody was giving me wincing looks like, well, you tried.
I imagine you’d be able to read those expressions pretty well.
Exactly – I’ve given those looks before. You know, the I-thought-your-film-was-interesting looks. But that said, I’m in no rush to make another film. This took four years and was just a side project that blossomed into this huge thing. I don’t want to make another film just for the sake of making another film.
Why were you drawn to Lanzmann, then?
It simply came from the idea that there hadn’t been a film about Lanzmann before. My background working at Realscreen magazine allowed me to interview pretty much every major documentary maker working today: D.A. Pennebaker, Barbara Kopple, Werner Herzog. But when I started reading about Lanzmann and Shoah [the Holocaust in Hebrew and French], I was stunned that there was nothing out there about his life story. Here was a guy who fought for the resistance, lived with Simone de Beauvoir, was friends with Jean-Paul Sartre, travelled the world tracking down Nazis. My first thought was, I would love to see a film about him, but there wasn’t one. I also had just seen Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, and thought his approach to filmmaking could work with Claude. Sometimes there are just characters who you don’t need much more than to point the camera at them and let them tell their story in their own words.
Did you have much in the way of any technical experience, though?
No, but having worked in the industry, I had a sense of the moving parts. But one of the key skills in filmmaking is to know what you can’t do, and surround yourself with those who do. I would say I drew confidence from other writers who made documentaries, like Sebastian Junger who made Restrepo. But I also hired an editor, someone for sound recording, a makeup artist, all that. The skills I brought to the picture were as an interviewer and a researcher.
This was also a self-financed project.
That’s something I knew from the industry, too: If I waited around for money, I’d be waiting forever. I knew I could put together a crew and cover the flights to Paris to interview Claude, but that was with me putting forward my own money. I’ve had buyers since, but that was only for the finished acquisition.
Did you go into this prepared that you may never recoup your costs?
I wanted to set limits. If I landed a couple of film festivals or maybe even a broadcaster, I’d be happy. If I didn’t lose any more than $10,000, I’d be happy. The vast majority of documentaries lose money. I’ve met filmmakers with even Oscar-nominated films that are not profitable. But I went into this not as a money-making venture, but for the reason that Lanzmann should have a film, that his life should be captured.
How difficult was it to get Lanzmann onboard?
It took a while in the beginning. He didn’t know who I was, of course, and even at 90 years old, he keeps remarkably busy. The breakthrough was when I told a friend of mine who works at the BBC that it would be a good idea to broadcast Shoah in 2015 to mark the 30th anniversary of the film, and that maybe it’d be good to have another film to run alongside it. He liked the idea, but of course said he couldn’t offer me any money. But he did write me a letter that the BBC would be interested and something with BBC letterhead went a long way to show Lanzmann that I was serious.
Lanzmann seems like an intimidating, often difficult interview subject.
Yeah, he is impatient and you have to know your material. I put in a lot of time between 2011 and 2013 watching all his films, reading everything that he wrote or had been written about him. He also found the shooting physically tiring, and there were questions, like the film’s negative reception in Poland, that he refused to talk about. But we built a rapport. Claude is an historic figure, and who am I? Nobody. So for him to talk with me, I felt like I was touching history. I can also say he’s coming to the Academy Awards – HBO is going to cover his flights and accommodations. I’m just really pleased he’ll be able to walk down the red carpet. Shoah itself was not nominated for an Academy Award, so this in some small way makes amends for an historical oversight.
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah airs Jan. 27 at 9 p.m. on the CBC Documentary Channel. The 2016 Academy Awards will be held Feb. 28.