Everyday Activist - The Last Laugh (CUFF.Docs 2016)

Posted on Friday, November 18, 2016 at 09:00 AM

The Last Laugh (CUFF.Docs 2016)

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

The Last Laugh talks about the appropriateness of making jokes about the Holocaust. They have interviewed and followed an all Jewish cast of survivors and their families. I have always had a problem with the western portrayal of the Holocaust. The documentary repeats over and over again that 6 million Jews died; however, many more people died including Russians, Ukrainians, homosexuals, gypsies, Poles, Communists, physically and mentally handicapped; the list goes on. To me this is the biggest joke of all. How can we ignore roughly 6 million Ukrainians alone that were killed forget everyone else? A great article I found online titled "Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust", written by Karen Silverstrim. She goes into brilliant details on how and why this oversight happened, even citing works from Debra Lipstadt, a name people may recognize from a movie that played at CIFF this year, Denial, starring Rachel Weisz.

With Romeo Dallaire coming to town on Monday November 21, 2016, to promote his new book “Waiting for First Light”, my thoughts about genocide drift back to high school. We spent a lot of time talking about the Holocaust, even having to watch movies like Schindler’s List and Escape from Sobibor. My problem was this was 1994, when the Rwandan Genocide happened. Because I was an activist even back then, I kept track of events of this Holocaust where 800 000 people were systematically murdered in four months while the world did NOTHING. Even in our classrooms we’d rather talk about the deaths of Jews 50 years past, but not about the current events. To the credit of the “The Last Laugh” people in the film commented about the Rwandan genocide, citing that it was worse in some ways because the volume of people killed within months rather than over the course of years.
The main portion of documentary has a number of comedians making jokes and discussing what is or isn’t in poor taste with clips from various scenes of movies such as “The Producers” or Sarah

Silverman’s comedy. I confess I found some of the jokes funny, though I preferred hearing one woman talk about her best revenge on Hitler was that she lived and had a happy life complete with a big family around her. Despite her age she still tours, talking to people about the Holocaust. Her grit, determination and zest for life demonstrate triumph over adversity.

“The Last Laugh” is the finale film for CUFF.Docs 2016, which will play November 20th, 2016 at the Globe Cinema at 7:30 pm.

Calgary Showtimes: CUFF.Docs 2016 > | The Last Laugh >