Written & Directed by Ari Libsker
Produced by Barak Heymann

“The insane popularity of this pulp-porn among Israelis makes you wonder: Was this the result of a society searching for catharsis in smut, or the largest case of Stockholm syndrome ever diagnosed? That’s the question that Ari Libsker’s doc on the literary phenomenon asks, as he traces the genre’s history, interviews critics and authors and examines the books’ appeal to a generation once removed from the Holocaust.”
– David Fear, Time Out NY

“A calculated, head-on foray into the minefield of Israeli/Holocaust cultural politics… Libsker makes the transitions between his several subjects deftly, and his interview subjects – ranging from Holocaust survivors to men involved with the porno novels to distinguished cultural critics like Dan Miron (who is working on a book on Feiner-Dinur) and Omer Bartov – push the film along smartly, raising as many questions as they answer… STALAGS is a savvy, if very disturbing piece of social criticism.”
– George Robinson, The Jewish Week News

“A fascinating subject.” – New York Magazine

“Complex and intriguing…serves enough food for thought to satisfy the most historically and critically voracious viewer... Miraculously, (the) film even offers an interview with one of the genre’s progenitors, author Eli Keider. A visit to the ruins of Mr. Keider’s abusive childhood home, accompanied by a reading from one of his books, offers an incredibly vivid cinematic illustration of the formative Freudian blueprints from which both art and pornography are unconsciously assembled.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun. Click here to read entire review

“Entertainingly explores the psychosexual appeal these stories held for Holocaust survivors and, even more so, for the generation that followed. But…the film is more than a titillating diversion. Libsker gradually broadens his scope until the movie becomes a meditation on legitimate Holocaust literature and its claim on truth. If Stalags doesn’t stir controversy at your seder table it won’t be for lack of trying.”
– Benjamin Strong, The L Magazine

"Simply put, this film is a revelation. Like the best investigative journalists, [director Ari] Libsker patiently sifts through each and every contradiction to discover that something that would seem so horrifically paradoxical on its face proves ultimately inevitable beneath the surface. How could Israeli Nazi pornography even exist, let alone be a widespread phenomenon? STALAGS answers, 'How could it not?'"
– Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door. Click here to read entire review

“A rare film that analyzes an inflammatory subject on multiple levels -- personal, familial, social, legal, and cultural – and takes an approach that is both sensitive and boldly insightful. STALAGS is highly revelatory not only as a study of Israeli history, but as a keen investigation into how people cope with and process horrific and incomprehensible events.”
– Elizabeth Bachner, Film-forward.com

“Never less than enthusiastically fascinating… Libsker’s film is short, complex and, every once in awhile, very funny. How Philip Roth hasn't written about this is beyond me.”
– Chris Cabin, filmcritic.com

“It was one of Israel’s dirty little secrets. In the early 1960s, as Israelis were being exposed for the first time to the shocking testimonies of Holocaust survivors at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic pocket books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes, became best sellers throughout the land... The books told perverse tales of captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS officers outfitted with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the male protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing their tormentors... The Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging in the public eye.” – Isabel Kershner, The New York Times (Sept. 6, 07). Ari Libsker, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, explores this phenomenon by interviewing the men who wrote the Stalags, as well as Israeli survivors and cultural critics who consider how fantasy may seep into public consciousness and become indiscernible from the historical record.

Official Website

ISRAEL • 2007 • 63 MINUTES • IN HEBREW WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
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TWO WOMEN AND A MAN

Written & Directed by Roee Rosen

Complementing the film is a work by Israeli avant-garde artist Roee Rosen who plays clever games with questions of gender identity, history and the pornographic imagination.

“An intriguing 16 minutes of trickery that offer a seemingly biographical portrait of a female artist and writer, and is a warm-up exercise in how society perceives indecency. STALAGS carries this line of inquiry forward, cramming an overwhelming amount of information and ideas into its 63 minutes.”
– Larua Kern, The New York Times

“To complicate things further, Film Forum audaciously rounds out its bill with a provocation by Israeli artist Roee Rosen, whose illustrated story ‘Live and die as Eva Braun’ was a scandal within the scandal of the Jewish Museum’s 2002 Mirroring Evil, a show devoted to Nazi imagery in recent art. In essence, Rosen’s documentary about Rosen’s (film) is a nouveau stalag. “
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

ISRAEL • 2005 • 16 MINUTES • IN HEBREW WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
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