Page 221 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

is not the same as the one in Dresden: 'For Monika, that's foreplay for her final scene with Mark,
where she is-rebuilding her lover.' What these comments reveal is that Buttgereit thinks foremost in
pragmatic terms. For instance, he explains that Rob's suicide in Nekromantik was based on the fact
that, 'There are reports of people getting executed and having a hard-on', rather than consciously
aligning himself with the German tradition of having a hero who chooses suicide, as in the films of
Herzog and Fassbinder.
In a sense though, Buttgereit's inspiration for making these films is clearly his way of coming to
terms with death and loss, and the negativity associated with the Nazi past; complex emotions that he
would rather not articulate. This is evident in his short film Mein Papi, an ambiguous homage to his
lather, originally filmed secretly to invite mockery, but later edited with photographs and text which
place unflattering shots of his rather plump father in a different context. It is also significant that his
mother died during the making of Der Todesking (1990). As he comments, 'It's funny that my mother
wanted to live whilst these people wanted to kill themselves', and that Schramm (1993) was made
mainly in a flat that belonged to the mother of the producer, Manfred Jelinski, who had recently died
before shooting commenced.
The overpowering sense of nostalgia is shown by the importance in the film of a strategically
placed painting of Jelinski's aunt and the inclusion of 8mm home footage. (This ironically belonged
to the late actor who played the psychiatrist in Nekromantik who disliked the film.) The apartment
was about to be demolished and Buttgereit adds 'the film is a kind of rememberance. Manfred will
always have the home of his mother in that strange film.' The films have an emotional complexity that
belies the easy exploitation images suggested by the films'video/DVD sleeves.

Marcelle Perks: You don't have much dialogue in the scripts...
Jorg Buttgereit: If something worked for me on a visual level then I was happy with it, but I didn't
find any pictures for it then I wasn't happy. During Nekromantik and Der Todesking we still rewrote
things while we shot the films. But Nekromantik II and Schramm were more professional. So the
script was kind of ready when we were starting shooting. [Rodenkirchen adds to this, 'Jorg thinks very
visually, he was often bored when it came to directing a dialogue sequence.']
As a German, how do you respond to the Nazi period and the concept of Die Unbewaltige Vergangen-
heit (the unresolved past)?
You get this information in history at school when you are not ready for it. And later on you still
have this articifically implanted guilt and you don't know exactly why, because you don't feel you
have done something wrong. And then the punk rock movement came, and when I saw Sid Vicious
running around with a swastika T-shirt it was a relief. This punk attitude to Nazism, for example, I
used in Der Todesking. When I first saw Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974), I was totally amazed by the
possibilities of doing such an unthinkable thing.
You are tall and blonde, quite Aryan looking. It seems interesting that all your male leads are short,
dark and sexually inadequate...
We had another actor we considered for the part of Schramm but he was too handsome, it didn't
feel right to us.
The colour red seems to assume a significance in the Nekromantik films. There are lots of red images!

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