ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses more precisely on the ethics of the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject of her/his film. In order to interrogate the matter in some detail, the chapter presents a famous scene between Bomba and Lanzmann in the latter’s epic film Shoah. The chapter compares the documentary studies literature regarding the scene in order to demonstrate the strikingly different attitudes to it; what one writer views as ethical and beautiful, another might deem obscene. It looks at the scene as both a concrete object and also as the epitome of any encounter in documentary films in which testimony is given or intimate matters are discussed. The chapter compares briefly Lanzmann’s stance to that of another filmmaker who deals with matters of gathering difficult testimony, namely Susana de Sousa Dias.
