Claude Lanzmann has died, at the age of 92. The director of "Shoah" passed away on Thursday, July 5 in Paris, according to the famous director's entourage who spoke with France's Le Monde:
"Claude Lanzmann died this morning at his home, he was very very weak for a few days," said a spokesman for the publisher Gallimard.
Lanzmann was the author of a dozen films, including, the1985 groundbreaking documentary on the Holocaust "Shoah" which dealt with the extermination of the Jews in Europe during the Second World War. His latest film, "The Four Sisters", the fifth from his "Shoah" series, came out this Wednesday, July 4th.
His work as a filmmaker was therefore marked by the memory of the Jewish genocide, making him a figure for holocaust cinema and his obsession with the subject matter of memory.
Lanzmann has had a fascination with the holocaust his entire life. His seminal eight-hour 1985 documentary "Shoah," was the final and indisputable statement on the tragedy. No offence to Steven Spielberg of course. "The Last of the Unjust" was a recent spiritual sequel to "Shoah,"
a series of interviews Lanzmann concocted over the years, some that didn't make "Shoah" and others that were never even thought to have existed. At 92, Lanzmann seemed to still be haunted by the genocide that killed six million Jews, so much so that it became
an entire career's obsession, a seeker of truth and a way for him to release all the tension and demons that have lured inside him for the last 6 decades.
His contributions to not just non-fiction film, but historical documentation are massive and almost impossible to describe in just a measly 500-word article. Legendary is the word that comes to mind.