ABSTRACT
Trauma films too require a particular use of cinema technique if they are to be successful in conveying the reality of the trauma. Annette Insdorf in her masterly analysis of the filmography of the Holocaust, Indelible Shadows, cites over 100 documentaries and over 170 fiction films made before 1989 and around another 170 films made after this date, all of which attempt to represent the reality of the Holocaust. Waltz with Bashir too struggles with the problem of how to represent the effects of trauma by bringing imagination to bear on the real facts but the film is profoundly therapeutic. According to Janet Walker in Trauma Cinema, ‘certain films and videos advance our understanding of the etiology and sequelae of trauma by elaborating the links between, and the consequences of, catastrophic past events and demon memories’. A greater awareness of film aesthetics allows us to reflect in very different ways on its relevance to the narrative reconstruction of traumatic memories.
