Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema (International Library of the Moving Image)

Waltzing with Bashir proposes a new paradigm for cinema trauma studies – the trauma of the perpetrator. Recognizing a current shift in interest from the trauma suffered by victims to that suffered by perpetrators, the book seeks to theorize this yet under-theorized field. Taking as a point of departure the distinction between testimony given by the victim and confession made by the perpetrator, this pioneering work ventures to define and analyze perpetrator trauma in scholarly, representational, literary, and societal contexts.

Driven by the emergence of a new wave of Israeli documentary cinema, the book analyzes Israeli post- second-Intifada films and literature. As Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir and other new wave films demonstrate, Israeli cinema, attached on one side to the legacy of the Holocaust and on the other to the Israeli Occupation, is a highly relevant case for probing the limits of both victim and perpetrator traumas.