In 1956, acclaimed French director Alain Resnais gave cinema one of its first postwar reflections on the Holocaust in his 32-minute film Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard). Using wartime recordings and photographs, as well as footage filmed in 1955 on the grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek and narration written by survivor Jean Cayrol, the film presents a haunting, powerful link between the violence of the Holocaust in the past and its ruins in the present. 70 years after the film’s release, this program will prepare you to watch Night and Fog with a new understanding of its making, distribution, and reception, and of the ways early postwar films like this one still shape how we think about the images, sounds, and spaces of the Holocaust today.

Dr. Melissa Karp joined MCHE as a content specialist in August 2025. She received her Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University, where she wrote her dissertation on World War II memory media in France.