An old man is kidnapped. His interrogation uncovers the biography of a mass muderer: The 80 years old man was a SS leader and responsible for the killing of thousands of people in Russia. He also "invented" an evil technique of eliminating political prisoners: the manipulated suicide. Thomas Harlan reconstructs the history of a burocratic muderer, he also develops a direct connection between the Nationalsocialism and the treatment of prisoners of the RAF terrorists in the Stuttgart isolation prison. Robert Kramer filmed the shooting of Harlan's Wundkanal: Notre Nazi documents a social experiment in which the children of Nazis and of victims meet a real culprit. The reality seems to be stronger that the fiction in Harlan's film.
The films
Wundkanal - Germany/France 1984 - Directed by: Thomas Harlan - Written by: Yvette Biro, Thomas Harlan - Cinematography by: Henri Alekan - Music by: Bob Wade - With: Alfred Filbert, Robert Kramer, Heike Geschonneck, Rolf Niffuag - Produced by: Quasar Film, Berlin / Reass Films, Paris - Premiere: August 29, 1984 (Mostra Internazionale del Cinema, Venedig)
Notre Nazi - France/Germany 1984 - Directed, written and photographed by: Robert Kramer - Music by: Barre Phillips - With: Alfred Filbert, Thomas Harlan, Hertz Nativ, Ursula Langmann, Henri Alekan, Heike Geschonneck Produced by: Reass Films, Paris / Quasar Film, Berlin - Premiere: August 29, 1984 (Mostra Internazionale del Cinema, Venedig)
About the films
Harlan, son of Third Reich filmmaker Veit Harlan, has got hold of a Nazi war criminal "Alfred F.", released from prison in 1977 and shoved him in front of the camera for a two-hour docudrama interrogation. Playing a thinly fictiona lized version of himself, the cadaver-faced SS veteran keeps tweaking our reluctant sympathy. As the camera probes, the tears start as he recalls his brother, who died in a concentration camp after speaking out against the Führer.At times Alfred FF seems like an unjust ly bullied old codger.... And then we real ize the ghastliness of our own compas sion for a codger who helped to kill 11,000 Jews.... And then we wonder if, even with a man like this, one shouldn't feel compassion. ...And slowly the movie pries open the spectator's ethics.Kramer's film about the filming is, if anything, even more riveting. His two-hour video record throws as harsh a light on Harlan as on Herr F, as it becomes increasingly clear that the director's enthusiasm is not only for unearthing the truth but for exorcising his guilty love for his father, who died an unpunished and well-cushioned death on Capri.
Harlan Kennedy, Film Comment 6/1985
DVD-Features (Doppel-DVD)
DVD 1
- Wundkanal 1984, 107'
- Der Film 'Wundkanal' 2007, 34'
- 16 page booklet with texts byMichael Farin and Thomas Harlan
DVD 2
- Notre Nazi 1984, 116'
- Photos from the shooting
Edited by: Filmmuseum München and Goethe-Institut München
DVD authoring: Ralph Schermbach
DVD supervision: Stefan Drössler
First edition August 2009, Second edition November 2010
Reviews
