Restored post-war documentary to be screened at QFT

On 17 May, QFT will screen a restored cut of harrowing Holocaust documentary, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. The film is an unflinching examination of the horrors uncovered by Allied forces in the concentration camps and a significant historical record in its own right.

The film was originally commissioned by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and was to comprise footage shot by the British, American and Russian camera crews that had accompanied the troops who liberated hundreds of camps across Europe. The intention was for the film to provide a filmic record of the atrocities that had been committed in the concentration camps and, in the process, act as a document that would both shame the Nazi regime and force the German people to accept the reality of what had happened.

Production of the documentary was begun in 1945 - with input from none other than Alfred Hitchcock - and although, in later years, fragments of the film would emerge, it was never completed. Now some 70 years later, following restoration by the Imperial War Museum, this hugely important film can be seen as the filmmakers intended.

Find out more about the film at the Imperial War Museum.

German Concentration Camps Factual Survey will be screened at QFT on 17 May.