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In August 1944, during the chaotic climate of the Liberation, American GIs committed rapes and murders against French civilians. The U.S. Army set up a court-martial to try them. Almost by chance, it hired the writer Louis Guilloux as an interpreter. Little by little, the novelist discovered that only African-American soldiers were sentenced, often to death. He recounts this in a short story: "Okay, Joe!" By comparing his account with historical reality and the recollections of witnesses and descendants, this documentary reveals several taboos of World War II: the atrocities committed by the U.S. Army against civilians, the rape of women, racial segregation, and the cruel and selective punishments it inflicted on its Black soldiers. The film tells a little-known side of World War II.
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
FR
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
