NUREMBERG
Official U.S. War Department documentary of Nuremberg trial, restored from “lost” 1948 original film, opens January 21, 2011 for one week run in Bay Area
Schulberg Productions presents NUREMBERG, opening January 21, 2011 at Landmark’s Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco and Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley.
NUREMBERG was originally written and directed in 1948 by Stuart Schulberg, a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Field Photographic Branch/War Crimes Unit that was charged in 1945 with locating Nazi film evidence to be shown in the courtroom at Nuremberg. The film shows how the international prosecutors built their case against the top Nazi war criminals using the Nazis’ own films and records. The trial established the foundation for all subsequent trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Buffeted by conflicting policy objectives, the film was shelved and over the years the original picture negative and sound elements were lost or destroyed.
In 2003, Stuart Schulberg’s children discovered numerous documents about the making of NUREMBERG and the controversy surrounding it in their mother’s apartment. A year later, daughter Sandra Schulberg began to inventory the documents and invited two Holocaust scholars to examine them: Ronny Loewy (of the Deutsches Filminstitut) and Raye Farr (Director, Steven Spielberg Film & Video Archive, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum). It became clear they were extremely important and previously unknown. She began a five-year effort to assemble a team and raise the necessary funds to restore the film.
Sandra Schulberg and Josh Waletzky created a new 35mm negative and re-constructed the soundtrack using original sound from the trial. The Schulberg/Waletzky restoration allows audiences to hear Justice Robert H. Jackson’s famous opening and closing statements to the Tribunal, and the testimony of German defendants and their defense attorneys – all in their own voices – as well as bits from the English, Russian and French prosecutors. Now, more than 60 years later, the newly restored film can be seen and properly heard for the first time. Narrated by Liev Schrieber.
http://www.nurembergfilm.org.
“Haunting and vivid. What this documentary shows, from an unmediated, eyewitness perspective, is how a vital and indispensable principle of humanity was restored.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times
“****. Critic’s Pick. Another mesmerizing lesson in how even the most cynical propaganda can be recast in the service of truth. "Nuremberg" couldn't be more of the moment. Something of a minor miracle. –Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
“CRITICS’ PICK! RIVETING. More powerful than any fictional courtroom drama could hope to be.” – Bilge Ebiri, New York magazine
“*** ½ * POWERFUL. This long-overdue restoration…offer(s) an enduring lesson for mankind. A definitive rebuke to all Holocaust deniers.” – Lou Lumenick, New York Post
“Compact and devastating. A startling example of postwar global cooperation. An intensely riveting 78-minute portrait that tries to capture both the flavor of a dramatic 10-month trial -- one of the 20th century's first and biggest media spectacles -- and the horrific history that provoked it.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
“An eye-opening find. Excerpts from the Nazis’ own films of their dirty work, used as evidence against them, will shock even the most jaded History Channel addict; these real-life horror films only underscore the monsters lurking beneath the docile men in that courtroom, awaiting history’s verdict.” – David Fear, Time Out New York
“The reason it has the power to shock, appall and infuriate is because of its truth.” – Stuart Klawans, The Nation
The film’s running time is 78 minutes; it is not rated. In English, German, French and Russian; non-English portions subtitled in English.
DIRECTOR IN PERSON: Sandra Schulberg will speak to audiences at select shows; Friday January 21: all showtimes at Shattuck in Berkeley; Saturday, January 22: all showtimes at Opera Plaza in San Francisco.