Holofiction

Documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann (Shoah) once stated: “Fiction is a transgression. It is my belief that the depiction of certain things is prohibited.”

In his XXL supercut, director Michal Kosakowski takes this provocation head-on. Drawing on more than 3,000 fiction films and television series, Holofiction interrogates Lanzmann’s claim through a simple, crystal-clear yet painstaking methodology. The film demonstrates how profoundly our collective memory – and our practices of remembrance – have been shaped by the entertainment industry. In doing so, it reveals the Holocaust film as one of cinema’s most prominent subgenres, deeply reliant on repetition, tropes and archetypes. At a moment when the Palestinian genocide is being live-streamed to our devices, Holofiction also invites reflection on how certain injustices are foregrounded, while others remain at the peripheries of shared awareness and historical perception.

– Thomas Streekstra

TALK

The film will be introduced by Jeroen Boom, Assistant Professor in Visual Culture Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. In his pre-screening presentation, he will situate Holofiction within broader critical debates, drawing on his research into the politics and ethics of seeing and not seeing in contemporary (documentary) cinema and global conflicts.