Main Cast: Marc Levin, Al Levin, Shaun Walker, Frank Weltner, Abraham Foxman
Release Year: 2004
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Near the dawn of the 20th century, underlings of Czar Nicholas II created a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to be the outline of a master plan created by powerful Jews determined to rule the world. First published in 1903, the essay was a hoax (and was revealed as such for the first time in 1921 by the London Times), but that hasn't prevented it from having a long and troubling life as a widely distributed cornerstone of anti-Semitic hate literature; it's still in print around the world, and was adapted for Egyptian television in the new millennium. When filmmaker Marc Levin was confronted with another widely disseminated bit of anti-Jewish propaganda (the false assertion that no Jews died in the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001), he developed a new curiosity about the Protocols and other "factual" sources of anti-Semitic hatred, and set out to find out more about anti-Jewish propaganda. The result was Protocols of Zion, a documentary which offers a surprising (and surprisingly witty) look at figures from the hate movement in America in elsewhere, ranging from leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (who also sells Aryan Wear footwear) to an anti-Semitic media analyst who announces that Rupert Murdoch is actually a Jew. The film also examines Henry Ford's well-documented hatred of Jews, anti-Semitism among radical African-Americans, and the memories of Levin's father, a self-described "All-American Jew." ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Cast
Marc Levin
Al Levin
Shaun Walker
Frank Weltner
Abraham Foxman
Lionel Ziprin
Credit
Daniel Praid - Associate Producer, Jennifer Tutt - Co-producer, Marc Levin - Director, Ken Eluto - Editor, Sheila Nevins - Executive Producer, Jeff Herr - Executive Producer, John Zorn - Composer (Music Score), Mark Benjamin - Cinematographer, Marc Levin - Producer, Steve Kalafer - Producer, Nancy Abraham - Supervising Producer, Daphne Pinkerson - Supervising Producer
Levin's film draws its inspiration from an encounter he had in a New York taxi not long after 9/11, in which his driver, an Egyptian immigrant, made the claim that the Jews had been warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on the day of the attack. He then said that "it's all written in the book," referring to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 1903 book purporting to disclose the Jews' master plan to rule the world. Discredited as a hoax by The Times of London in 1921,[1]The Protocols provided a crucial influence on Hitler's world views, and had fuelled hatred, violence, and ultimately genocide attempts through the first half of the twentieth century. Ads for the film show two stacks of books, visibly entitled Protocols of Zion, with smoke billowing out of the top portion of the left-hand stack. This looks much like actual pictures of the World Trade Center as the fire raged through it.
The film received fair to good reviews from American film critics. The most common negative criticism was that although it elicited strong emotions, the film lacked focus.[2] The film had an extremely limited theatrical release (four theaters at its widest) and grossed $178,875 domestically.[3]
References
^Forging Protocols by Charles Paul Freund. (Reason magazine) February 2000
