Anne Frank 'And The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas'

Firstly, it is important to understand how the documentary form is best suited to illustrate the film’s theme. In order to do this, one must have an overview of the documentary style of filmmaking. Documentaries concern themselves with the “exploration of

The Holocaust was a distressing time in history and is not a story everyone can absorb. Both the book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne and the film, Life is Beautiful, directed by Robert Benigni, are based upon the real life events of the Holocaust but with a difference. They made clever use of different techniques to dim and censor the reality of the events and interpret it in a more tolerable way. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas depicts the life of a young nine year old boy named Bruno who is the son of the Commandant of the Auschwitz

“It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” (Anne Frank) Anne Frank was one of the many children who fell victim to the Holocaust during the World War II. Anne’s story is nothing short of a tragedy; she died at the early age of fifteen from Typhus while being held by the Nazi Regime, in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Before dying, Anne and her family went into hiding and lived secretly in her father's office building in the Netherlands. While living in the “Annex,” a secret hiding place, she developed many interests such as reading and writing. Anne is famous because she is one of the best-known victims of the Holocaust, her story has been shared with millions in a publication of her diary, and through her writing’s she introduces many people to the massacre and its horror.

Jews have perished because of their beliefs since the beginning of time but never have so many Jews been persecuted worldwide as they were in World War II. Anne Frank’s diary reaches a place within all of our hearts because it reminds us how easily the innocents can suffer. Sometimes we may choose to close our eyes or look the other way when unjustifiable things happen in our society and Anne’s tale reminds us that ignorance, in part, claimed her life. Sadly, her story is but one of many of those who died in the Holocaust and as with other Jews, her fate was determined by the country she lived in, her sex and her age.

Holocaust film has emerged as its own genre throughout time. Originally, directors ignored the possibility of Holocaust films, then the content started to take form in non-fiction recordings. Eventually, the genre of Holocaust film took off and today there is an abundance of Holocaust related films that appear when one scrolls through movie streaming sites. The Pawnbroker (1964), directed by Sidney Lumet, is a perfect example of a film that deals with both the lasting effect of the Holocaust and the stereotyping of a multitude of characters. Exploring the Holocaust in media through The Pawnbroker and The Pawnbroker’s film techniques, serve as a prime example for not only how Holocaust survivors felt emotionally imprisoned, but stereotypes different groups as well. Critics responded harshly to this stereotypical labeling and this shows how the meaning of the film has been interpreted by society differently over time.

Media is so powerful that many people in business and politics have long realised that documentary filmmaking is a powerful way to influence or persuade the masses as to which side they should take on certain issues. Although the media claim their documentaries to be neutral, subjectivity is always an issue. Like any form of communication, including journalism, documentary filmmaking involves interpretation and choice-making on the part of the filmmaker, and is therefore unavoidably subjective. You might set up a camera to record a "day in the life of a Year 12 student” and end up with some interesting footage, but until it is shaped and given meaning by the filmmaker, and until

A documentary is a genre of film that provides a factual report on a particular story, viewpoint, message or experience. In this essay, two documentaries, Bowling for columbine by Michael Moore and Made in Bangladesh by CBC news will be explored to show how persuasive techniques are used to make an audience feel a particular way.

The Holocaust was a time of great suffering and inhumanity. The novel Night, which took place during this time, was written by Elie Wiesel and talks about his teen self-experiencing the concentration camps of Auschwitz. This is related to the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas which is the story of a young German boy named Bruno who befriends a Jewish boy in a concentration camp. The many similarities and differences between the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the novel Night include their many themes of “inhumanity” and “guilt and inaction”, and the two also share and differ in the loss of innocence of the characters and how they develop in each medium.

As a viewer, the documentary’s intention to inform is more completely fulfilled by research conducted beyond the scope of the camera lens. Had I never written this paper, for instance, the reason for all the violence embedded within the subject matter would remain as enigmatic as the documentary itself.

Documentaries also include films which are intended to ‘expose’ and often carry interviews, for example Michael Moore’s films on social concerns

“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to.

The basis of the documentary was interviews with various professors, authors, and journalists (and the like) who were considered the “experts. News clips, infographics, and documents were also used plentifully to try to build its credibility. Although the “expert” interviews help to appeal to the viewers’ logic, I thought that they didn’t help all that much to build the credibility as

The documentary created was more subjective than objective as the group used various persuasive techniques as mentioned before rather than absolute facts and data. However, the presentation had elements of an objective documentary. For example, the statistical evidence

This documentary has a voice which is the most important part of any movie, furthermore, it has it own way of living and breathing and speaking to

Francois Truffaut continued on to say that Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, made in 1955, was the “greatest film ever made”. The 30-minute film based on the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps after World War II combines Resnais’ own cinematography with original images and footage of the captives in their unfathomable state. The film is lead with a somber narrative that not only accompanies the sobering images being shown but both compliments them and puts them into perspective. Carl R. Plantigna’s chapter from his book ‘Rhetoric and Representation in