''Fotoamator'' (internationally released as ''Photographer'' ) is a 1998

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by Dariusz Jablonski, examining the life of the Jewish population and their Nazi overseers in the

Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of ...

Subject

In 1987, several hundred color slides documenting scenes from the Łódź Ghetto during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

were discovered in a second-hand bookstore in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. These slides were the work of Walter Genewein, an Austrian citizen serving the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

. Being an accountant in the ghetto's council, he solicited for turning the ghetto into a prosperous and well-organised company, and since he was not just an ambitious office worker, but also an enthusiastic photographer, he recorded their "achievements" with a camera. Genewein's slides are used by the authors to show—both through them and, to some extent, in spite of them—the real history of the Łódź Ghetto and the suffering and eventual extermination of the Polish Jews living there. The photographs are combined and compared with the recollections of Dr. Arnold Mostowicz, who worked as a doctor in the ghetto, and the last surviving witness of the events.

Awards

Adolf Grimme Awards The Grimme-Preis (Grimme Award), formerly known as the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, is one of the most prestigious German television awards. It is named after the first general director of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, Adolf Grimme. The Grimme Institute ...

2000 – Documentary/Cultural * Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival 1999 – Joris Ivens Award * Banff Television Festival 1999 – Banff Rockie Award * Bavarian TV Award 1999 * Biarritz International Festival of Audiovisual Programming 1999 – Golden FIPA & Prix Planète * Cracow Film Festival 1998 – Don Quixote Award * DoubleTake Documentary Film Festival1998 – Jury AwardInternet Movie Database
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References

External links

*{{IMDb title, id=0188996, title=Fotoamator *
Fotoamator
' discussed on www.culture.pl 1998 films Documentary films about the Holocaust Polish documentary films 1998 documentary films Łódź Ghetto Documentary films about Poland in World War II Films scored by Michał Lorenc