Page 224 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

Hmmm, I think it's the least successful movie we did. In every scene I could tell you how to do
it better.
In the Wednesday suicide, again a man cant have a normal sexual relationship with his wife, why is
sexual failure so important in your films as a theme?
This fear of sexual failure or this fear of not being complete, or as good as someone else, as good
as someone on the movie screen, its approach of being happy as you are doesn't seem to exist for a
lot of people.
Doesn't the Todesking on the poster look a bit like you, aren't you a kind of horror king yourself?
I wasn't skinny enough (he looks like he's dead) and so it is a projectionist. It was a homage to
Joel-Peter Witkin, an American photographer who shoots dead things and if it's still alive it must be
crippled or strange. It's interesting that he has to live in Mexico because his work is censored in the
US.

Buttgereit asks finally, 'Why do you want to do a piece on my films? Aren't they banned in the
UK [apart from Der Todesking}? Isn't it worth pointing out that, officially, people still can't see the
films?'

FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN INTERVIEW

Franz Rodenkirchen trained in Media Science and lectured previously on film analysis at Helsinki
University. Not surprisingly, he is more receptive to Linnie Blake's work: 'I was quite intrigued by the
essay, that it can make such a solid argument and the reasoning is somehow really sound, although
I think this is something that happened unconsciously.' He also quotes film references (many of
which are from classical texts), which shaped the concepts of the films, and explains how memories of
personal dreams and fears were incorporated into the films.
The issue of the unresolved past and Nazi war crimes is particularly poignant for him: 'The points
Blake makes are completely convincing now that I look back at it. I know that Jorg has this strong
fascination with Nazi imagery and the Nazi period, which I think comes from several aspects coming
together. There is of course the punk rock attitude, of the shock value of such things because they
were the forbidden, and to bring it out in the open is a sort of provocation. This fascination is denied
to Germans, of course, and this is what Jorg is constantly addressing.'
In Germany, Nazi paraphernalia is forbidden, even doing a Heil Hitler salute can land you in jail.
UK residents are accustomed to numerous graphic Third Reich documentaries, but in Germany these
are not so obviously in public circulation. The representation of Nazi imagery has become primarily
utilised and controlled by non-German countries, effectively cutting off many Germans from their
emotional past.
The German/French/Greek director Romuald Karmaker is one of the few German-based directots
directly confronting this history in films like Das Himmler Projekt (2001), although he says his mixed
hetitage makes this easier. In a separate interview, he commented on how difficult it is for a German
to comment on national history: 'We have so many blanks in German history. We don't make films
from the perspective of the perpetrators, just the victims.' It is interesting that the Buttgereit films

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