Retrospective Bella Ciao! program 4 – Surviving

The Return

Henri Cartier-Bresson. France, 1945. 32′

The great Henri Cartier-Bresson documents the fate of newly liberated camp prisoners: their incredulous faces, their hesitant smiles…

cameramen from the U.S. Army Signal Corps and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson filmed the liberation of prisoners and deportees from Nazi camps, their transfer to temporary hospitals, and their reunion with their families in Paris. Cartier-Bresson shot only the final sequence: the arrival of the prisoners at the Gare d’Orsay, but his touch can be recognized in many other scenes, especially those depicting the atmosphere that reigned among the Russian and American soldiers.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century: founder of the Magnun agency, reporter all over the world, and filmmaker of some documentaries all to be rediscovered. “For me the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”

following

The illegals

Meyer Levin. Palestine and the United States of America, 1947. 77′

A very rare and extraordinary film: the story of the illegal immigration to Palestine of Jewish survivors of the concentration camps.

Mika Vilner, a Holocaust survivor, and his wife Sara meet in a refugee camp. When Sara becomes pregnant, the couple decides to go to Palestine. They meet aboard a Haganah ship bound for the Land of Israel, but a British plane spots the ship off the coast of Haifa… A unique blend of documentary and fiction, telling the story of the illegal immigration to Palestine of Jewish survivors of the concentration camps.

Meyer Levin (1905-1981) was an American novelist, journalist and filmmaker. A war correspondent, he helped innovate the form of reportage through hybridization with fiction, anticipating Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel.” The Illegals is his only feature film.