Un Spécialiste - Portrait d'un criminel moderne
Eyal Sivan & Rony Brauman
France, Germany, Israel, Austria, Belgium | 1999 | 128 min
Languages : Hebrew, German
Subtitle : English
Adolf Eichmann was the head of the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo. He acted as chief of operations in the deportation of three million Jews. Captured by a team of Mossad and Shin Bet agents in Argentina, his trial began in Jerusalem in 1961. Sivan, working with the materials he found in the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, aims to deconstruct the Zionist ideology behind the trial.
Adolf Eichmann was the head of the Department for the Jewish Affairs in Gestapo with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer. He acted as chief of operations in the deportation of three million Jews to the extermination camps. After the end of the Second World War, Eichmann managed to escape in Argentina on 14 July 1950. On 11 May 1960, he was captured by a team of Mossad and Shin Bet agents in San Fernando (Buenos Aires). The trial began in Jerusalem on 11 April 1961. Philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt reported on the trial for ‘The New Yorker’ and later published her essay ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil’ that was published in Israel only in the year 2000 after Sivan’s film was released. Sivan, working with the materials he found in the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, culled his film from over 350 hours of footage. His aim is not to reconstruct the actual trial but to deconstruct the Zionist ideology behind it. The argumentative approach to the archival footage questions the notion of history and asks for the right to re-vision it. “Documentary is the idea of re-vision.” (ES)
