PHOTOGRAPHER

POLISH TITLE: FOTOAMATOR

In 1987, 400 color slides were found at a second hand bookstore in Vienna. But these were no ordinary pictures. They turned out to be photographs taken in the Lodz Ghetto by Walter Genewein, the Nazi's chief accountant for the notorious slave labor camp for Jews. The Non-descript bureaucrat Genewein was good at increasing productivity and controlling costs, oblivious to the unspeakable suffering caused by his actions. And he cold-bloodedly photographed - using pioneering color film - the devastation wrought upon more than 300,000 Jews in the Ghetto; by the end of the war, only 15,000 had survived. The photographer brilliantly juxtaposes Genewein's heartless pictures with narration by a survivor of the Nazi atrocities, Dr. Arnold Mostowicz. He gives chilling eyewitness testimony to German savagery in the Ghetto - committed by those, like Genewein, who were just "following orders." Unique in the annals of Holocaust films - evoking the "banality of evil" as no other documentary ever has - it shows the guilt of ordinary men in the Final Solution. And we have the photographs as proof.

GENRE:

documentary

RUNNING TIME:

57'

YEAR:

1998

DIRECTING:

Dariusz Jabłoński

EDITOR:

Milenia Fiedler

PRODUCTION:

Apple Film Production, Broadcast AV, Telewizja Polska, Canal+ Polska, Agencja Produkcji Filmowej, MDR