Filmmakers for the Prosecution + Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today

Adapted from Sandra Schulberg’s monograph, Filmmakers for the Prosecution retraces the hunt for film evidence used to convict the Nazis at the 1st Nuremberg Trial. The searchers were two sons of Hollywood – brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg – serving under the command of OSS film chief John Ford. The motion pictures they presented in the courtroom became part of the official record and shape our understanding of the Holocaust to this day. Seventy-five years after the trial, French journalist and filmmaker Jean-Christophe Klotz returns to the German salt mines where films lay burning, uncovers never-before-seen footage, and interviews key figures to unravel why the resulting film about the trial – Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today by Stuart Schulberg – was intentionally buried by the U.S. Department of War. Klotz’s riveting film also fills in the gaps of how these groundbreaking materials were sourced, and poses still-pertinent questions about documentarians’ obligations to posterity. 

 

The 2009 Schulberg/Waletzky restoration of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today is also included on this disc. Their version is the only one that permits audiences to hear the actual voices of the lawyers and defendants. One of the greatest courtroom dramas in history, it shows how the international prosecutors built their case against the top Nazi war criminals using the Nazis’ own films and records. The trial established the “Nuremberg principles,” laying the foundation for all subsequent trials for crimes against the peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

 

DVD extras on this disc include fascinating interviews with Holocaust film scholars and historians Annette Insdorf, Michael Berenbaum, and Stuart Liebman.