Photographer (Fotoamator) (1998) (NR)

synopsis

A used book store in Vienna, 1987: 400 color slides, in mint condition, of the Lodz Ghetto are found. They were the handiwork of the now-deceased Walter Genewein, who during WWII was the Nazis' top accountant, responsible for keeping detailed records of the destruction of the Ghetto's Jews. Genewein was equally obsessive in pursuing his hobby: documenting the Ghetto's 300,000 starving denizens with some of the first color stock manufactured by Agfa. The filmmaker makes brilliant use of these images, juxtaposing the original slides (and Genewein's correspondence with Agfa complaining that certain hues were not quite exact), with a first-person account of life in Lodz, by survivor Arnold Mostowicz.