When the Allied forces of World War II formed an international tribunal to prosecute Nazi war crimes, they introduced two major innovations to court procedure. The prosecution projected film footage and newsreels shot by British, Soviet, and American soldiers as they discovered Nazi camps. These images, presented as human testimony and material evidence, were instrumental in naming and prosecuting war crimes. At the same time, the Nuremberg tribunal was filmed so that the memory of "the greatest trial in history" would remain strong in future generations. In the decades that followed, the use of film in the courtroom greatly influenced the conduct of the Eichmann trial-and subsequently the trials of Klaus Barbie, Paul Touvier, and Maurice Papon in France, as well as the proceedings against Slobodan Milosevic and the Khmer Rouge Kang Kek lew.
Combining the practical knowledge of a renowned director with the perspective of a historian and media specialist, Christian Delage examines archival footage from these trials and explores the conditions and consequences of using film for the purposes of justice and memory. Revised and expanded from the original French publication, Caught on Camera retraces the steps by which the United States pioneered jurisprudence that sanctioned the introduction of film as evidence and then established the precedent of preserving an audiovisual record of those proceedings. From the Nuremberg trials to the current Khmer Rouge trials, Delage considers how national attitudes toward the introduction of filmic evidence in court vary widely, and how different countries have sought to use film as a recordkeeping medium. Caught on Camera demonstrates how reproduced images, as evidence, testimony, and archival documentation, have influenced the writing of modern history.
When the Allied forces of World War II formed an international tribunal to prosecute Nazi war crimes, they introduced two major innovations to court procedure. The prosecution projected film footage and newsreels shot by British, Soviet, and American soldiers as they discovered Nazi camps. These images, presented as human testimony and material evidence, were instrumental in naming and prosecuting war crimes. At the same time, the Nuremberg tribunal was filmed so that the memory of "the greatest trial in history" would remain strong in future generations. In the decades that followed, the use of film in the courtroom greatly influenced the conduct of the Eichmann trial-and subsequently the trials of Klaus Barbie, Paul Touvier, and Maurice Papon in France, as well as the proceedings against Slobodan Milosevic and the Khmer Rouge Kang Kek lew.
Combining the practical knowledge of a renowned director with the perspective of a historian and media specialist, Christian Delage examines archival footage from these trials and explores the conditions and consequences of using film for the purposes of justice and memory. Revised and expanded from the original French publication, Caught on Camera retraces the steps by which the United States pioneered jurisprudence that sanctioned the introduction of film as evidence and then established the precedent of preserving an audiovisual record of those proceedings. From the Nuremberg trials to the current Khmer Rouge trials, Delage considers how national attitudes toward the introduction of filmic evidence in court vary widely, and how different countries have sought to use film as a recordkeeping medium. Caught on Camera demonstrates how reproduced images, as evidence, testimony, and archival documentation, have influenced the writing of modern history.
Editor's Note
Introduction
PART I. FILM AS EVIDENCE: AN AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE (1920-1945)
Chapter 1. The Filmmaker, the Judge, and the Evidence
Chapter 2. The Camera: An Impartial Witness of Social
Relations?
Chapter 3. Learning to Read Enemy Films
Chapter 4. Face to Face with Nazi Atrocities
PART II. THE STAKES OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL
(NUREMBERG, 1945-1946)
Chapter 5. "Establishing Incredible Events by Means of Credible
Evidence"
Chapter 6. Getting Film into the Courtroom
Chapter 7. Catching the Enemy with Its Own Pictures
PART III. NUREMBERG HISTORY ON FILM
Chapter 8. The Un-United Nations and the Ideal of a Universal
Justice
Chapter 9. Documentary Archives and Fictional Film Narratives
PART IV. THE ERA OF JUSTICE ON FILM (1945 TO THE PRESENT)
Chapter 10. Trials of the Present or the Past?
Chapter 11. Hearings on Film, Film in Hearings
Chapter 12. The Face of History
Chapter 13. The Spectator's Place
Chapter 14. Court Settings and Movie Stagings: From Nuremberg to
the Khmer Rouge Trial
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Combining the practical knowledge of a renowned director with the perspective of a historian and media specialist, Christian Delage explores the conditions and consequences of using film for the purposes of justice and memory by examining archival footage from war crime trials from Nuremberg to the present.
Christian Delage is a historian and filmmaker based at the University of Paris-VIII, who has been elected the incoming Director of the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Present. He has also taught at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Paris and the Cardozo Law School in New York. His film Nuremberg: The Nazis Facing Their Crimes, narrated by Christopher Plummer, was released in 2007 and is now available on DVD. He served as a policy advisor on the filming of the Khmer Rouge trials and produced Cameras in the Courtroom, a documentary about the filming of legal trials. Ralph Schoolcraft is Associate Professor of French at Texas AandM University. He is author of Romain Gary: The Man Who Sold His Shadow and translator of The Haunted Past: History, Memory, and Justice in Contemporary France by Henry Rousso, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Mary Byrd Kelly teaches in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Kansas.
"While other scholars have focused on film-as-evidence or
trial-as-film, Christian Delage, a historian and documentary
filmmaker, addresses both in this meticulously researched book.
Tracing the double history of the use of film in legal cases and
the filming of court proceedings, Delage reveals how what we see on
film in and of human rights trials is a modern construction rooted
in the Holocaust and its aftermath. . . . Caught on Camera will be
of interest to anyone wanting a historical lens through which to
analyze our culture's current obsession with cell phone-generated
footage and its potential to transform adjudication for human
rights abuse."
*American Historical Review*
"Caught on Camera provides an invaluable overview of the role films
played in the historic international criminal trials that so
indelibly marked the second half of the twentieth century. Ranging
in scope and rich in reference, this admirable book shows how
prosecutors used films as evidence in court and how court sessions
were themselves filmed and widely diffused for public audiences. As
the international community continues to struggle with the legacies
of Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, the original perspectives
Christian Delage offers will helpfully inform the ongoing quest for
justice."
*Stuart Liebman, Professor Emeritus, CUNY Graduate Center*
"Meticulously researched and highly topical, Caught on Camera is
the first scholarly work to tell the story of the impact of film on
advocacy, trials, and legal judgment. Historian, filmmaker, critic
and adjunct professor of law, Delage is ideally qualified to
uncover the extraordinary narrative of the introduction of film
into legal evidence in the Nuremberg trials and its subsequent and
expanding role in tribunals and international criminal proceedings
to the present day. In a meticulously researched and fluently
argued analysis, this book not only exposes the link between visual
evidence and war crimes trials but also, and even more
surprisingly, shows how film has subtly and persistently impacted
the staging, process, performance, and even architecture of
law."
*Peter Goodrich, Cardozo School of Law*
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