Gesture in Shoah

This essay analyses gesture as embodied history in Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah. It explores how gestures can serve as vital indicators of traumatic experience and also potentially assist in working through traumas. Gestures in Shoah are examined for the referential meaning they hold which can provide insights as valuable as those contained within the oral histories scholars have previously tended to focus on in their readings of the film. Gesture, cannot, however be divorced from those spoken histories. The essay will show that if gesture is accompanied by speech in a film it must be interpreted in tandem with it rather than in isolation from it. The essay concludes by analysing the gestural significance of camerawork employed in Shoah.