Lecture - Daisy Asquith

I attended a lecture held by Daisy Asquith discussing her work and career but also focusing on her latest project, Our Holocaust. Our Holocaust is a historical documentary that will be shown on Channel 4. Channel 4's own website describes the documentary as 'an important historical and visual document' showing 'the strength, determination and character of Holocaust survivors'. Apparently Steven Spielberg is also doing a similar project to this one.

Daisy wanted to show how the survivors were now in the present day, to see if the Holocaust still continued to impact their lives and to hear their own accounts of that dreadful time. Daisy even interviewed their family members to find out their opinion on the impact the Holocaust has had on them by living and growing up with the survivor. 

When filming the documentary Daisy was focused on re-humanising the victims by showing their lives now rather than back then as all other documentaries do. She wanted to avoid showing old photos and footage from the Holocaust itself and focus instead on the present. She set about just filming the everyday and seemingly ordinary behaviour. This approach meant it did become clear where the Holocaust still haunted its victims, for example one victim got annoyed and panicky when his food was not ready at the agreed time. This would then link back to his days in the concentration camps when he would be starving for food and whatever he did get came at the same time everyday, it shows that when it is not on time his brain worries about not getting it.

When a project is based on such a sensitive matter like this Daisy had to be careful not to re-traumatise the victims again by having them retell their stories. Therefore she had to be careful and sensitive about what she was discussing and probing the subjects for. The participants in her documentary are ones who are part of a charity of survivors and were used to talking about their experiences. There are some survivors however who have never told their stories and will be taking them to the grave, there would be no point in Daisy using these silent survivors for her documentary.

You have to remember that the subject is performing for you no matter how you try to remove your influence it will always be there. Like the example I mentioned earlier, the victims wife was only late preparing dinner because of the camera crew being there, if they had not been we may have never known how this affected him. The situation provided good footage and revealed the impact of the Holocaust well but was then again impacted by Daisy's presence. Also when interviewing family members such as their partners and children Daisy would ask questions they had never really faced before, and as the interviews were still with the whole family present it meant some issues were brought up that had never been discussed with the interviewer before.