The Visual Representation of Genocide in Cinema

Abstract

       Genocide is a broad and profound concept whose manifestations can be traced back to the earliest appearance of humankind on Earth. Throughout history, early peoples practiced acts of mass extermination under various pretexts, including religious, racial, ethnic, tribal, cultural, and other forms of discrimination. Such diversity of motives neither conceals the crime nor diminishes its brutality. As a repository of collective memory, cinema serves as a medium through which societies depict the suffering they have endured and the atrocities they have experienced, including the horrors of genocide. Through visual representation, cinema reconstructs these crimes, condemns them, and highlights their inhumanity and devastating consequences.

This study consists of four chapters. The first chapter presents the methodological framework of the research. The second chapter constitutes the theoretical framework and is divided into two sections: the first examines the concept and history of genocide, while the second explores how cinema has drawn upon these concepts and represented them through visual imagery. The third chapter outlines the research procedures. The fourth chapter provides practical applications of the concept of genocide, followed by the findings and conclusions reached by the researcher. The study concludes with a bibliography of sources and references.