While studying at Yale, I took
a seminar on documentaries following two other, more pertinent film courses on narrative itself. I even took a
preaching seminar on story-telling. The documentary choice was off my
trajectory. The opportunity cost was large, considering that I was otherwise
taking courses in Yale’s better-reputed humanities fields of philosophy of religion,
theology, and history. Now perhaps my excursion into the documentary genre can
bear some fruit, for I analyze here the documentary, Anne Frank Remembered (1995). The strength of this documentary I
take to be its reliance on witnesses even at the expense of narration to tell
the story. People could say with definiteness what had happened to Anne Frank
since she and her sister and parents left Amsterdam. Their journey evinced the
mentality of the Nazis as one not just as dehumanizing the Jews, but as
treating them worse than livestock. Even when Nazi Germany was losing the war,
the Nazis foreswore the use-value of the Jews starved or gassed.
The full essay is at "Anne Frank Remembered."