Claude Lanzmann (87 and still going strong), director of Shoah, cinemas implacable chronicler of the Holocaust, returns three decades after his cinematic milestone with a new ethical debate fashioned around his 1975 interrogation of Benjamin Murmelstein. Murmelstein was a Vienna rabbi who became the chief Jewish elder at Theresienstadt, the concentration camp the Germans presented to the world as a model Jewish settlement. A brilliant talker and alarmingly charismatic, Murmelstein calls himself both a ‘calculating realist’ – one who managed to prevent the liquidation of the camp while helping more than 120,000 Jews to leave the country – and a “marionette that had to pull its own strings”. He was the main liaison between the ghetto’s Jews and the Nazis running the camp, and was accused of being a collaborator (a charge for which he was tried and acquitted). Lanzmann has shaped his 38 year old footage with new material shot at the locations discussed in the film to present a sombre and searing new investigation, one that richly deserves discussion. Demanding and deeply rewarding, this is the Holocaust from an entirely new personal, historical and aesthetic perspective.

Tim Cole, Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol, will introduce the Sunday screening.

Conversations About Cinema: Impact of Conflict

Last year's commemoration of the start of World War I was cause for reflection on the scale and impact of that war and the immense global repercussions which still ripple 100 years later. The impact of a war, any war, is not confined to its dates, but goes far wider, far deeper, across people, society, places and politics. Impact of Conflict is a new strand where we will explore these effects through screenings, events and publishing - it is all about the opportunity for you to share your responses.

You can join the discussion by posting your thoughts on our noticeboard or tweeting using #convocinema or @wshed.

Ticket prices: Screenings before 16:00: £5.50 full / £4.00 concessions. Screenings after 16:00: £8.00 full / £6.50 concessions.

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