The Third Generation: Hungarian Jews on Screen

• Main Author: Catherine Portuges
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 2009-01-01
• Series: Hungarian Cultural Studies
• Online Access: http://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/ahea/article/view/21

The post-Cold War era, with its redrawn European topographies and renegotiated political and cultural alliances, has witnessed the return of Central European Jews to the screen in fiction features, documentary and experimental films, and new media. A younger generation of filmmakers devoted to speaking out on the Holocaust and its aftermath is opening vibrant new spaces of dialogue among historians, literary and scholars, as well as within the framework of families and audiences. By articulating unresolved questions of Jewish identity, memory and history, their work both extends and interrogates prior narratives and visual representations. My presentation compares recent films by several filmmakers with regard to the contested meanings of Jewish identity; issues of gender and the filmmaker’s voice and subject position; the contextualization of historical evidence; and innovative modes and genres of cinematic representation.