Film Studies Celebrates 20th Anniversary of the Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Documentary Film

The Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Film is devoted to encouraging the production of film concerned with acts of moral courage, providing role models for youth worldwide. Since 2001 students have produced more than sixty films on issues of human rights and social justice.

The program serves as a resource for student filmmakers who wish to create documentaries that will inspire future generations. The program is named for Jacques Salmanowitz (1884-1966), a Swiss businessman who was instrumental in bringing to safety in Switzerland individuals trapped behind German lines in World War II. The Salmanowitz Program was first established in 2001 through a five-year grant, and has been generously renewed annually thereafter.

Under the leadership of Professor John Michalczyk, Film Studies Director, these various events serve as a tribute to Jacques Salmanowitz:

The students from Professor Michalczyk’s Holocaust and the Arts course have published a 200-page book: Holocaust Film: History from the Ashes. Each student wrote an essay on the historical setting of thirty Holocaust films, presented in the order of the development of anti-Semitism leading to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, the Holocaust.

Students in the Propaganda Film course created an exhibit at the O’Neill Library, Anti-Semitism, A Very Long Hatred. The exhibition was a collaboration of their critical analyses of posters that depicted the rise of anti-Semitism from its Christian origins to its occurrence today. Angelos Bougas, the Teaching Assistant for the course, produced a short film on the exhibit. Kate Canniff wrote a review of the exhibit for The Heights newspaper.

At the Annual Arts Festival, held on May 1, 2021, the Jacques Salmanowitz Program screened several documentaries as part of a retrospect of films produced with the social justice grant. The film program also included Angelos Bougas’s (’21) recent short film Colorblind. Jonathan Ng’s (’21) new Salmanowitz film project, Mauna Kea: A Fight for Indigenous Hawaiians’ Livelihoods, Lands and Rights was also screened.