The Aryan Papers Method

For this project begun in the 1970s, Stanley Kubrick collected numerous documents that are now stored in more than sixty box files and of which researcher Ronny Loewy drew up a precise inventory (1): archive pictures of the ghettos and concentration camps, along with documents illustrating the life of Jews in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, photos of the Polish or German population, streets, buildings, cars, everyday objects from the period... For their installation Unfolding the Aryan Papers, visual artists Jane and Louise Wilson also consulted these archives, in which they discovered a box on prams and pushchairs used in the 1930s. (2)

This quest for realistic details was essential for Kubrick: for example, he asked wardrobe mistress Barbara Baum to assemble only original costumes.

To complete this broad iconographic documentation, Stanley Kubrick read historical works, testimonies and fictional works on the Holocaust.

Beginning in 1992, he actively prepared the shooting, sending his assistants to scout for locations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland as well as Denmark and Austria. By this time, he practically never left England anymore, so those photographs were veritable tools, allowing him to select the best settings from afar and begin financial negotiations with local authorities.

Kubrick worked alone on the writing of his film. There is no version completely written of the script in the archives. In his last version, dating from April 1993, some sequences are described quite summarily, whereas others contain complete dialogues. Therefore, despite the accumulated documentation, it is impossible to imagine what this film might have been like.