Peter Lilienthal: A Cinema of Exile and Resistance 9781800730922

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Peter Lilienthal

Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context Series Editors: Hans-Michael Bock (CineGraph Hamburg); Tim Bergfelder (University of Southampton); Barbara Mennel (University of Florida) German cinema is normally seen as a distinct form, but this series emphasizes connections, influences, and exchanges of German cinema across national borders, as well as its links with other media and art forms. Individual titles present traditional historical research (archival work, industry studies) as well as new critical approaches in film and media studies (theories of the transnational), with a special emphasis on the continuities associated with popular traditions and local perspectives. Recent volumes: Volume 25 Peter Lilienthal: A Cinema of Exile and Resistance Claudia Sandberg Volume 24 Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema Edited by Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein Volume 23 Sensitive Subjects: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary German and Austrian Cinema Leila Mukhida Volume 22 East German Film and the Holocaust Elizabeth Ward Volume 21 Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe Mariana Ivanova

Volume 20 Screening Art: Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema Seán Allan Volume 19 German Television: Historical and Theoretical Pespectives Edited by Larson Powell and Robert R. Shandley Volume 18 Cinema in Service of the State: Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960 Edited by Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal Volume 17 Imperial Projections: Screening the German Colonies Wolfgang Fuhrmann Volume 16 The Emergence of Film Culture: Knowledge Production, Institution Building, and the Fate of the Avant-Garde in Europe, 1919–1945 Edited by Malte Hagener

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/series/film-europa

PETER LILIENTHAL

A Cinema of Exile and Resistance

Claudia Sandberg

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Claudia Sandberg

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sandberg, Claudia, author. Title: Peter Lilienthal: A Cinema of Exile and Resistance / Claudia Sandberg. Description: New York: Berghahn, 2021. | Series: Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context; volume 25 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021020959 (print) | LCCN 2021020960 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800730915 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800730922 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Lilienthal, Peter, 1929—Criticism and interpretation. | Motion picture producers and directors—Germany (West)— Biography. | Jewish motion picture producers and directors— Germany (West)—Biography. | Jews, German—Latin America— Biography. | Motion pictures—Germany (West)—History—20th century. | Motion pictures—Latin America—History. | Motion pictures—Political aspects. | Motion pictures and transnationalism. | Jewish diaspora. Classification: LCC PN1998.3.L538 S26 2021 (print) | LCC PN1998.3.L538 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/32092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020959 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020960

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-091-5 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-092-2 ebook

To Richard David and Viggo

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgments

x

Introduction. An Uneasy Fit

1

Chapter 1. A Jewish Filmmaker in Postwar Germany

30

Chapter 2. Of Rebels, Soldiers, and Dreamers

60

Chapter 3. Across the Cold War Divide

105

Conclusion. Recovering Lost Pasts

137

Appendix. In Dialogue

154

Conversation with Peter Lilienthal

154

The Adventure of Filmmaking: Interview with Antonio Skármeta

173

Lilienthal’s Filmography

179

Bibliography

186

Index

202

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 0.1. Michael Ballhaus and Peter Lilienthal on the set of Dear Mr. Wonderful.

5

Figure 0.2. Still shot from Malatesta.

7

Figure 0.3. Peter Lilienthal and Fernando Birri at the International Conference for Collaboration with Central America and the Caribbean, 1988.

20

Figure 1.1. Still shot from Der Beginn.

36

Figure 1.2. Peter Lilienthal and young extras on the set of David.

37

Figure 1.3. David (Mario Fischel) and his father (Valter Taub) must separate.

42

Figure 1.4. David on his way to the agricultural training camp.

44

Figure 2.1. Marcela (Paula Moya), main protagonist of La Victoria.

65

Figure 2.2. Socialist Party candidate Carmen Lazo is campaigning.

66

Figure 2.3. Eduardo Duran (Miguel) and Zita Duarte (Cecilia) embrace on the set of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land.

73

Figure 2.4. Poster promotion of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land.

78

Figure 2.5. On the set of Der Aufstand.

85

Figure 2.6. Daniel Galván (Juan José Mosalini) plays a sad tune on his bandoneon.

91

Figure 2.7. Cyclist Santiago Escalante (René Baeza) is a lonely star in Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal.

95

Illustrations

Figure 2.8. Santiago’s father in silly sunglasses at his son’s birthday.

ix

97

Figure 3.1. Peter Lilienthal at an Akademie der Künste Ost event in 1984.

116

Figure 4.1. Residents share their memories from when the cycle race was filmed in their village. Still shots from Por aquí pasaron los ciclistas.

143

Figure 4.2. Peter Lilienthal engages in a talk with local fishermen in Uruguay. Still shot from Ma vie.

148

Figure 5.1. Peter Lilienthal directs a scene for his film David.

166

Figure 5.2. Peter Lilienthal and Antonio Skármeta in West Berlin at the end of the 1970s.

175

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was a long time coming, and a venture that took me around the world. Many generous, kind, and talented people went out of their way to assist me in bringing it to fruition. John Davidson introduced me to Peter Lilienthal’s filmmaking in a master’s course on the New German Cinema at the Ohio State University. John inspired me to write my thesis on this subject, he supported its progress via phone and email, and he encouraged me not to give up. I spent many hours with colleagues and friends on the Avenue Campus at the University of Southampton. I am incredibly grateful for all the support that Tim Bergfelder provided. He took an interest in my idea immediately and read from the first draft of a chapter through to the countless rewrites. We engaged in so many fruitful discussions in between. Tim taught me academic rigor and concise writing. I am indebted to Lucy Mazdon for her academic advice, her warmth, and her compassion. I thank Erica Carter for her unrelenting support. Thanks goes to Jane Lavery, Joachim Schlör, and the late Andrea Reiter for inspirational conversations, and to Kirsten Sontgens for her well-timed empathy. Cecile Renaud, Hilke Engfer, Daniel O’Brien, and Bettina Codrai gave me feedback in the early stages of the project. A PhD research fellowship at University of Southampton made this research possible. Several grants enabled me to visit archives, participate in conferences, interview key people and complete other related research activities in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. The DEFA Library in Amherst took care of expenses for participation in their Summer Film Institute in 2011, and the DEFA Foundation in Berlin provided funds for research activities in Chile and Argentina in 2012 and 2013. I appreciate the assistance of Julianne Haase, Ralf Schenk, Helmut Morsbach, Barton Byg, and Skyler Arndt-Briggs for facilitating DEFA encounters in Germany and in the United States and for welcom-

Acknowledgments

xi

ing me into the DEFA family. Internal grants from The University of Melbourne paid for travel to Israel and Argentina. Throughout the years of work for this book, I have received valuable feedback on conference papers in seminars and talks. I am thankful to have been able to present aspects of my research at the German Studies Association Annual Conference in Portland (2019), the Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf (2011 and 2019), the German Studies Association of Australia International Conference in Wellington (2018), the workshop “Reviewing German Film History from the Margins” at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2018), the Wally Thompson Seminar at Deakin University in Melbourne (2016), the Screen Conference in Glasgow (2010), the Women in German Studies and Women in Spanish Studies Annual Conference in Swansea (2010), the Institut für Künste und Medien of the Universität Potsdam (2010), the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies in Lund (2009), the “Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship” Conference in Salzburg (2008) and the “Projections/ Foreign Reflections” Graduate Student Conference at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (2004). On these occasions, fascinating discussions occurred, among others with Catalina Botez, Heiko Christians, Jan Diestelmeyer, Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Mattias Frey, Rosemarie Galt, Sabine Hake, Lea Wohl von Haselberg, Dietmar Hochhut, Johannes Rhein, and Moshe Zimmermann, which still resonate with me. Andy Räder edited a chapter of mine for the volume DEFA International. Grenzüberschreitende Filmbeziehungen vor und nach dem Mauerbau. Philipp Stiasny provided feedback for my contribution to the journal Filmblatt. Correspondences with Günter Agde were essential to my understanding of Lilienthal in the East German environment. He also invited me to screen David in his film series “Wiederentdeckt.” I discovered many treasures in German archives with many thanks to Renate Goethe of the Pressedokumentation of the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, and to Wolfgang Lux, Torsten Musial and Nicky Rittmeyer from the Archive of the Akademie der Künste at the Robert-Koch Platz in Berlin. I thank the staff at the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Potsdam and the Volkswagen Bibliothek der Universität der Künste in Berlin for their cooperation. The Akademie der Künste and the Kinemathek kindly granted me rights to use photographs from their archives. I am grateful to the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Südwestrundfunk who made digital copies of Lilienthal’s early films, which are so hard to come by. Stefan Siemsen and Wolfgang Ebeling sourced other relevant film materials, and María Teresa Curzio shared her documentary Ma vie with me.

xii

Acknowledgments

My travels to Chile and Argentina were invaluable, enabling me to meet with friends, colleagues, and collaborators and to get a feel for Lilienthal’s work in Latin America. Ever since I got to know Isabel Mardones, director of the Cinemateca of the Goethe-Institut Santiago, we have spent many hours talking about Peter Lilienthal’s films and their importance for Chile. Isabel assisted me with materials, memories, and valuable film expertise. A journalist at heart, she also put me in touch with numerous other people who became instrumental for further research investigations. On various occasions Orlando Lübbert has answered my questions. Silvio Caiozzi was available for a Skype interview about his experiences as a photographer on the set of La Victoria. I fondly remember conversations with Ascanio Cavallo in the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral. He provided a platform in Chile for my research and generously shared his resources with me. I learned a lot about Chilean cinema throughout this process. I am grateful to Antonio Skármeta for recounting his collaboration and friendship with Peter Lilienthal and for his support and good humor. Isidora Gálvez Alfageme granted me an interview and kindly gave me access to her documentary. Luis Weinstein gave me his kind permission to use photos that he made on the set of Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal. I would not have been able to evaluate the value of Lilienthal’s work in Argentina without talking to film critic Paraná Sendros. I would like to thank him and his colleague, the knowledgeable Pablo de Vita for screening Das Autogramm in the film cycle of the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires and for the opportunity to talk to local audiences. Alejandro Areal Vélez supported this endeavour in so many ways—he helped me with the organization of screening events and conducted interviews from afar; the conversations with him were priceless. Our collaborative film project was inspired by a common interest in Peter Lilienthal’s cinema. The University of Melbourne gave me access to their facilities, a great book collection, and an office space with a view over downtown Melbourne. Alison Lewis and Adrian Hearn acted as my mentors. They generously shared their time and expertise; I always found them with an open door and open heart. The multilinguist Judith Abella shouldered the massive task of translating my interview with Peter Lilienthal into English. Laura Weber, Pierre Trioli, and Ruth McHugh-Dillon have carefully edited parts of my text. I would also like to thank Klare Lanson for her great editing work during final manuscript delivery. My friends Katrin Bahr, Samantha Chambers, Frank Congin, David Dennis, Elnor Spearing, Fran-

Acknowledgments

xiii

cisca Javiera Díaz de Valdés, Brian Feltman, Christine Geffers-Browne, Daniela Müller, Veronica Ostertag, and Irene Strodthoff have kept me company, brought me back to earth, and encouraged me in moments of doubt. A big thank you goes to Berghahn Books—Chris Chappell, Mykelin Higham, and Lizzie Martinez—for their generous support, efforts, and expertise in bringing this project to fruition. I am indebted to Elsbeth and Alfred Guenter, who accepted me into their family and raised me under the most difficult of circumstances. They taught me to manage life with kindness and care toward others, and to be persistent with my goals. I would not be here without the love and laughter of my sisters Anita Scherber and Beate Balzuweit. This endeavor has become part of my family. When my sons were born, Lilienthal’s films were already occupying my mind. These amazing individuals have been at my side and in my thoughts throughout this journey and have supported me with their acceptance and love throughout our everyday lives together, in ways that I will be forever grateful for. Richard’s love and affection is my anchor.

INTRODUCTION An Uneasy Fit

It all started with a screening of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (Calm Prevails Over the Country, 1975) in the early 2000s. I had just come back from a six-month stay in Latin America, and this story about a community who, despite their fears, resist an oppressive government gave historical depth to my recent experience. The poetic and powerful images of the film captivated me and woke my curiosity to know more about the director. I met Peter Lilienthal for the first time in 2007, and it was a most gratifying and eye-opening encounter. He was a generous and rebellious interlocutor who challenged my perceptions of German film and history and the misnomer Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). I listened to anecdotes of a history teacher who stood on a table when he lectured his students, of Sunday afternoons spent in a Montevideo makeshift theater watching Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite (Cero for Conduct, 1933), exchanging kisses under Bette Davis’s strange eyes, and about adventures of making television at the Südwestfunk (SWF) in its early days. The conversation lasted for an entire weekend. In these and other talks with Peter Lilienthal that took place over the years emerged the profile of a director whose cinema is political and realized through social intervention, resistance, and solidarity effort. Few have acknowledged the various personal and cultural influences that shaped Lilienthal’s immense cinematic vision. This book will utilize Lilienthal’s German-Jewish-Uruguayan biography as the departure point toward critiquing his films within a transnational framework. It will observe his affiliations with European and non-Western social and political movements and cinematic tendencies. Informal conversations with the artist will be interwoven throughout this study and

2

Peter Lilienthal

reproduced in its entirety at the end of this book. Lilienthal’s memories and broader evaluations assisted in identifying the director’s position within the German film landscape, in locating his concerns as a member of the Jewish diaspora, and in understanding his collaboration with the Latin American avantgarde in Chile, Argentina, and Nicaragua. As part of both the West German auteur filmmaking and its production, distribution, and exhibition networks, Lilienthal’s work can be understood to be closely aligned with diasporic thought and the militant character of New Latin American Cinema. His films ignited discussion within both Eastern and Western European cultural and intellectual circles. The scope, vision, and character of Lilienthal’s filmmaking forms an alternative cinematic memory of the ideological rifts between East and West, North, and South, from the Cold War era to post-9/11. The work of this veteran director stretches over more than five decades. Born in 1929 in Berlin, Lilienthal fled persecution from the Nazis, grew up in Uruguay, and then returned to Germany after World War II. These experiences shaped and defined his filmmaking journey. As German Jewish filmmaker, cultural activist, and television pioneer, Lilienthal was a driving force for the thriving cinematic culture in Germany, whose films provided interesting commentary for the major political events of the twentieth century. In the beginning of his career, Lilienthal’s work drew on experimental drama, such as Picknick im Felde (Picnic on the Battlefield, 1962), an adaptation of a play by Spanish author Fernando Arrabal. With his visionary and aesthetically stimulating practice, he quickly established himself within the West German filmmaking elite. Lilienthal’s work contributes to the genesis and evolution of television from the artifice of the studio system and proximity to the theater stage into its own unique format. He found his voice as politically committed filmmaker in the wake of the drastic political and social changes in and beyond Europe in the late 1960s. The feature film Malatesta (1970), a visionary comment on the violent potential of the West German student movement, was one of the defining works of the late 1960s. Lilienthal became a prominent figure alongside Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders, and Werner Herzog, all of whom set the filmmaking parameters in West Germany for more than a decade. Lilienthal’s work was also an important contribution to German Jewish matters. David (1979) won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. In his widely acclaimed text New German Cinema: A History, Thomas Elsaesser classified Lilienthal as a director who “has one of the most solid reputations and track records as a left-liberal director with an excellent knowledge of Latin American issues.”1 Indeed, his

Introduction

3

spirited engagement in and with Latin America established the heart of Lilienthal’s work. La Victoria (1973) was the first of six films—five feature films and a documentary—that reflect his interest in Latin American progressive cultural and political movements. The scope and eloquence of this German filmmaker’s cinematic engagement with Latin America are unmatched. West German media and film critics evaluated Lilienthal’s work as part of New German Cinema (NGC). While no comprehensive study about the filmmaker exists, scholarship continues to align him with this movement. Paradoxically, scholars and critics also note that the thematic concerns and aesthetic character of Lilienthal’s cinema locates the filmmaker outside of Germany. The films reveal social and political views that are very much situated against the grain and are considered a cinema in which resistance and escape play a major role. Egon Netenjakob mentions having been attracted by the otherness of Lilienthal’s early television work. Netenjakob finds mundane and passive resistance within his cinema: “His interest in individuals in ordinary situations had nothing to do with an escape to an inner self. On the contrary, this is a quiet but persistent fight against social violence and limitations.”2 Further, Hans Günther Pflaum and Hans Helmut Prinzler comment, “La Victoria (1973) and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (1975) are practically the only feature films . . . in the New German Cinema that have taken up current problems and conflicts in the Third World.”3 Bettina Bremme, author of Movie-mientos. Der lateinamerikanische Film. Streiflichter von unterwegs (2000), acknowledges Peter Lilienthal to be one of the European filmmakers whose concern for Latin America is linked to his biography. She finds films such as La Victoria, Der Aufstand (The Uprising, 1980), and Das Autogramm (The Autograph, 1984) to contain imagery that includes timely commentary of political events and social mayhem, during a time in which many Latin American countries were ruled by repressive military regimes.4 Michael Töteberg had written the only book-length publication about the filmmaker to date. In his study entitled Peter Lilienthal. Befragung eines Nomaden (2001), he observes about the ambiguous relationship between the filmmaker and Germany, “In Germany he kept being a stranger. No other German filmmaker is as cosmopolitan as Lilienthal.”5 Töteberg’s book describes the filmmaker as a nomad because of his turbulent life, his affinity to the Jewish diaspora, and his solidarity for Latin American cultural, social, and political matters. Film critics and colleagues describe Lilienthal as a wanderer who is “at home in the margins.”6 Manfred Etten further notes about Lilienthal at his sixtieth birthday:

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Peter Lilienthal

Though at the end of the 1960s he is one of the renowned figures of the “New German Film,” his work is the curious example of an exile cinema in his own country: a transnational cinema that never wants to fit into fixed national, cultural, and aesthetic coordinates, a cinema that is populated by border-crossers, loners, displaced people.7

These and other voices indicate that Lilienthal is an exceptional figure in the landscape of German film, who fits the profile of an outsider “who gains entry yet remains ever cognizant of his or her origins, a somewhat uncanny presence that does and does not belong.”8 His films are of indispensable value to German and international film history. My study sets out to examine why and how.

Peter Lilienthal in German Film Culture This investigation begins by reviewing Lilienthal’s filmmaking career in specific relation to sites, institutions, and agents of German film between the 1950s and early 2000s, reflecting on the activities of the filmmaker and importantly the possibilities and limitations of German film culture to include the views of an outsider. Lilienthal’s foundational work took place in the television industry, which became his institutional home. Having graduated from the Hochschule der Künste (University of the Arts) in West Berlin in 1959, where he had studied plastic art and experimental photography, Lilienthal’s first position was at the television channel SWF in Baden-Baden. He served as assistant director to Ludwig Cremer and worked with Gustav Rudolf Sellner and Heinz Hilpert, who brought their experience in theater and radio to the new medium.9 At the end of the 1950s, television was still in its embryonic stages, a genre not yet institutionalized and one that functioned with creativity and relied on improvisation to make up for the lack of resources. Because there was no proper studio framework at this time, filming often took place in a gym hall. The young artist blossomed in this environment, still independent of viewer ratings and other market pressures. Lilienthal and his colleagues had free rein to experiment and put ideas into practice with minimal interference from artistic directors or directors of programming, who themselves were largely unfamiliar with the demands of television as a technology.10 Michael Ballhaus, who was employed as photographer at the SWF, notes, “We were not working in cinema, but in television. Here, artistic freedom was not just tolerated but it was encouraged and demanded.”11 Lilienthal collaborated with Ballhaus on Die Nachbarskinder (The Neigh-

Introduction

5

Figure 0.1. Michael Ballhaus and Peter Lilienthal on the set of Dear Mr. Wonderful. © Akademie der Künste.

bours’ Children, 1960) and Das Martyrium des Peter O’Hey (Martyrdom of Peter O’Hey, 1964), which established their friendship and long-lasting professional collaboration. Ballhaus would later photograph Lilienthal’s Abschied (Farewell, 1966), Der Aufstand, Dear Mr. Wonderful (Ruby’s Dream, 1982), and Das Autogramm. He would join Lilienthal as professor at the newly founded Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB, German Film and Television Academy). When the SWF became more institutionalized, Lilienthal moved on to the recently launched Sender Freies Berlin (SFB). He worked as a freelance director for the broadcaster until 1968, before changing to the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), marking the beginning of a long and productive relationship with this broadcasting company. At the end of the 1960s, Lilienthal was still known as somewhat eccentric, an “enraged reader of absurd fables and strangely creepy stories,”12 fascinated by aesthetic experiments and altogether out of touch with reality. Film critic Peter W. Jansen wonders if “Lilienthal’s films were able to evade commenting on the contemporaneous social situation and problems.”13 He further notes that Lilienthal’s films would lack any link to the global political calamities that had unfolded over the course of the 1960s: “Anyone who searches for contemporary political references in Lilienthal’s films will find none; there is nothing about

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Peter Lilienthal

Vietnam, nothing about repression, nothing of the troubles that cripple liberal societies.”14 This was about to change. Lilienthal was sucked into the charged political atmosphere of the late 1960s in personal ways that would have a profound impact on his interests and practices. When teaching at the DFFB, an engagement that lasted from 1966 until 1968, Lilienthal was caught up in many battles between students and authorities, among them the prominent radicals and leading members of the West German student movement Holger Meins and Rudi Dutschke. Michael Töteberg notes, “The vicious debates of the Extra Parliamentary Opposition were out of touch with reality. They wanted to reanimate class struggle in West Germany with Marx and Mao slogans. This seemed to him [Lilienthal] to be a thing from the past.”15 The claims and reproaches of the rebellious students prompted Lilienthal, as he comments in an interview, “to rethink, where, when, and under which conditions people have committed themselves to fight for freedom.”16 A year later Lilienthal had made his first feature film, Malatesta, about the Italian anarchist and philosopher Errico Malatesta (played by Eddie Constantine), who spent more than ten years of his life outside of his home country, Italy, and was the leader of an anarchist group in London’s poorest quarters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Malatesta, arguing for peaceful actions to eliminate the government, could not stop his naïve follower Gardstein, who believed that social change could only be achieved with weapons and ended up being shot and killed by the police. Lilienthal has Malatesta say to Gardstein, “You are a rebel, not a revolutionary. A rebel cannot wait for the right moment.” Using footage from old newsreels to document urban London at the beginning of the century, the film is a deliberation about the subject of revolution and ways to achieve social changes. A personal response to Lilienthal’s experiences at the DFFB, Malatesta is a perceptive comment on the radicalism and fanaticism of the members of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition, APO), which eventually spiral out into violence and terrorist activities.17 Malatesta, which won the German Film Award and was nominated for the Golden Palm in Cannes, enabled growing recognition of Lilienthal’s work in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The attention toward Malatesta coincided with the successes of other filmmakers in the international film circuit and a more general awareness of film as a political medium. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht (Not Reconciled, 1965) and Ulrich Schamoni’s Es (It, 1965) were screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1966, where Volker Schlöndorff’s Der

Introduction

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Figure 0.2. Still shot from Malatesta. Source: Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek.

junge Törless (Young Törless, 1966) won the International Critics Award. Later that year, Alexander Kluge’s Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl, 1966) was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Within the stream of socio-critical films that appeared in West Germany in the 1970s, Lilienthal made a number of well-regarded works of his own, among them La Victoria, Hauptlehrer Hofer (Teacher Hofer, 1975), Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, and David, and documentaries such as Start Nr. 9 (Start No. 9, 1972), Shirley Chisholm for President (1972), and Kadir (1977). Like his peers, Lilienthal profited from the frameworks and the unique public funding structures that were set up and enabled socio-critical filmmaking from the mid-1960s onward. His special relationship with television remained unbroken. Affiliated with the public channel ZDF as commissioned filmmaker, he had a carte blanche arrangement that gave him artistic autonomy over his projects while having the guarantee that the finished films were broadcast. As a result of the Film and Television Agreement, which committed both television and cinema to the funding and financing of films,18 La Victoria, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, and Der Aufstand, parallel to airing on television, were also screened in cinemas. The filmmaker worked with nearly all talents who created the look and feel of New German Cinema. He often teamed up with his old

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Peter Lilienthal

friend, photographer Michael Ballhaus, who meanwhile was known for his collaboration with Fassbinder. Heidi Genée, an editor who had worked for nearly all German filmmakers around the group of New German Cinema, edited three of Lilienthal’s films.19 Hanna Schygulla and actor-turned-director Reinhard Hauff acted in Jakob von Gunten (1971), while Hanns Zischler had roles in David and Das Autogramm. Barbara Baum, who was responsible for the costumes used in Lilienthal’s Verbrechen mit Vorbedacht (A Crime Well Planned, 1967), designed dresses for all of Fassbinder’s films.20 Lilienthal also acted in the films of his colleagues. Among other roles, he starred as a thug in Wim Wenders’s Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend, 1977) and appeared as a minister in Aus der Ferne sehe ich dieses Land (I See This Land from Afar, Christian Ziewer, 1978). Lilienthal’s films were official German entries for international film festivals in Eastern and Western Europe, Cuba, the United States, and Australia. This exposure on the international cinematic stage bolstered his recognition as part of this new wave of uncompromising and unpolished films coming from West Germany. The Hollywood trade magazine Variety said about the filmmaker, “Lilienthal can match German Helmers like Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wenders almost at will, given half the chance.”21 Lilienthal occupied a special place in the close-knit community of West German independent film. These young filmmakers, born around 1945 in West Germany, were from a middle-class background and cultivated their reputation around rebellion, personal quirks, and cinephilia. Lilienthal was about ten years older than most of his colleagues, well-traveled, and fluent in English, Spanish, and French. Wenders comments in an interview for Maria Teresa Curzio’s Lilienthal film portrait Ma vie (My Life, 2011), “Peter was the only one among us who had seen Berlin already as a child, and the only one who had experienced this story in a different way than we did.” In Dominik Wessely and Laurens Straub’s Gegenschuss—Aufbruch der Filmemacher (Reverse Angle: Rebellion of the Filmmakers, 2008), a documentary that revisits the ideas and people of the New German Cinema, Straub describes Lilienthal as a respected colleague, whom he looked up to: Then there is Lilienthal. He is a gentleman, an urban gentleman. First of all, he is the pilots’ grandson, and he is Jewish. He is Spanish-German. He is involved in the Latin American conflict. . . . He is a man who can tell you who Fidel Castro is.

In the same documentary, Hark Bohm remembers that the young filmmakers had an enormous respect for Lilienthal because of his Jewish

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9

background: “Lilienthal, who was the only German Jew in our group, had a moral authority. We felt immensely honored that he joined in with us.” While all in their own right grappled with the legacy of Nazism, the differences between Lilienthal and his colleagues could not have been more pronounced. As a child in Nazi Berlin, Lilienthal observed the increasing limitations and injustices that the Jewish community suffered. He had spent his formative years in Latin American exile, among other uprooted and displaced persons. Meanwhile, the Holocaust had wiped out approximately six million Jewish people, including members of his family. As a student in his mid-twenties, Lilienthal returned to post–World War II Germany, the country that had expelled him. Lilienthal had an inclination for anarchist and existential literature and was familiar with Jewish, Spanish, and Latin American authors such as Elias Canetti, Franz Kafka, Raymond Carver, Federico García Lorca, and Jorge Luis Borges. He said: When I arrived in Germany, I had no idea about German literature and art. Everything I knew was Spanish, French, Italian. . . . One can say that I am a German director, because I received my money in Germany. But the themes do not have much to do with what was important for the Fassbinder generation, German history. For the colleagues of the “New German Cinema,” as it was called, I was a stranger, an exotic bird from South America, someone who participated but did not belong.22

These experiences of having grown up as part of an exiled family who was accustomed to European and Latin American cultures would determine a worldview that Lilienthal brought into his work as a filmmaker. In contrast, the preoccupations of this group of filmmakers—known as New German Cinema—originated in a shared cultural formation, alongside memories of a destroyed post–World War II Germany and their self-proclaimed tenuous relation to the generation of their parents. The cinema of Herzog, Wenders, and Fassbinder was associated with the loss of personal and collective history and a recourse to German cinematic and literary traditions that were unspoiled by Nazi thought. As Marc Silberman observes, New German Cinema was “one of the main sites in which this often nostalgic yearning for a lost history was worked through both with seriousness and pathos.”23 Supported by the setup of production and funding possibilities, the filmmakers increasingly responded “to international aesthetic and ideological expectations in remapping political concerns along the reterritorialized axes of cultural identity.”24 John Davidson claims:

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Although any number of reasons account for individual invocations of “the German,” the cumulative effect is to establish and reinforce a circular assumption about the Germanness of German films made by Germans, which becomes the touchstone for recognizing NGC. By the mid-1970s, NGC had been firmly established, which meant that certain expectations had been developed on both the production and the reception sides.25

Lilienthal became absorbed by expectations and pressures vis-à-vis German filmmakers to use their talents and make use of the public money given to them and to choose subjects that would be a contribution to relevant national themes and concerns of the past and present. Robert Fischer and Joe Hembus say in an overview of the Who’s Who in German film in 1980, “It is noticeable that, in contrast to his Latin America trilogy, Lilienthal’s films Malatesta, Hauptlehrer Hofer, and David are all situated in the past. . . . This makes Lilienthal the only politically aware director of the New German Cinema who has not yet examined contemporary German reality.”26 This fascination with “Germanness” on behalf of film critics and scholars neglected a significant number of sites, institutions, filmmakers, themes, and approaches important to the German filmmaking scene of the 1970s and 1980s. Among them, only footnote space was left for a director such as Lilienthal, whose films dealt with violence and political unrest and felt remote from the German present of the 1970s and 1980s. As recourse to Lilienthal, this study contributes to efforts of expanding research on the NGC movement to include sentiments, ideas, and practices that were realized at its fringes. The filmmaker had always pushed against introspective tendencies in German film culture, not only with his own films. Lilienthal was a catalyst for projects to promote collaborative filmmaking that worked independent of state funding and cultural-political influences. In 1971, he cofounded the Filmverlag der Autoren with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Thomas Schamoni to seize the potential for collaboration that the Autorenkino (auteur cinema) presented at that time and to buffer fierce competition between filmmakers for governmental resources. As an established and well-connected filmmaker, Lilienthal used his resources to bring the Global South to the attention of First World audiences and enriched the German filmscape with non-Western narratives and aesthetics. The filmmaker was a reference for Latin American exile cinema and their agents in Europe of the 1970s and 1980s. He worked closely with program director Eckart Stein of Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Little Television Play), a ZDF program that played a significant role toward introducing Latin America films to German screens. Lilienthal had always praised Das kleine Fernsehspiel as an exceptional and diverse space in the West German TV landscape, open to filmmakers

Introduction

11

from within and beyond Germany, that encouraged aesthetic and narrative experiments.27 The first European works of Chilean émigré directors Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento, and Aldo Francia, all three part of a burgeoning progressive filmmaking movement that was cut short by the military coup, were cofinanced, produced, and broadcast by Das kleine Fernsehspiel. The program’s efforts contributed to gestures of solidarity in a situation where Latin America exiled film personnel, in need to reestablish their professional networks in Europe, required a platform for the exhibition of their work.28 The films, dealing with political calamities in Latin American countries as well as narrating experiences of torture, violence, and exile, presented challenging images to German viewers. During his engagement as director of the department for film and media art at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) between 1985 and 1996, Lilienthal founded the European Summer Academy together with media scholar Siegfried Zielinski, philosopher Dietmar Kampner, and the creative mind behind Das kleine Fernsehspiel, Eckhart Stein—an annual event that included interdisciplinary dialogue and art projects. Lilienthal’s ideas around how to celebrate the three-hundred-year anniversary of the Akademie der Künste in 1996 illustrate once more his aim to foster a mobile and open film culture: One can rent such a nice, big, inflatable tent, and set it up at times in Potsdam, at times in Bonn. At times we take it to Paris, do a lecture here, a workshop or a performance there. . . . That is the mobility we need. That is the philosophy of placelessness, modern nomadism. If we tie ourselves down—this is the culture of the past.29

He objected to plans to move the Akademie der Künste to Pariser Platz in Berlin but voted for activities that would move the academy to critically reflect on the last three hundred years, to curate exhibitions about artists who were not admitted to the academy over the centuries, and to rethink the institution’s compliancy with abusive political powers. These ideas once again highlight an activist-filmmaker who was bound up with German national culture in an oppositional way and who used his resources to promote a diverse range of views, images, and ideas from outside the Western world.

Travel, Migration, and Diaspora Since Lilienthal is a member of both German Jewry and the Jewish diaspora, experiences of deterritorialization and homelessness are central to his life story and, as I argue, to his filmmaking approaches. The Jew-

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ish experience can be considered a key historical example of uprooting, synonymous with the idea of ethnic cleansing and displacement throughout its history. Moreover, cultural and political dimensions of migration and displacement establish an important part of this research. My theoretical framework will capture this phenomenon in the tenuous relationship of personal and collective trauma, constructions of national identity, and the transdisciplinary textures of diaspora for cultural studies and film production. Mobility and migration are part of the human experience throughout history. Countless persecution, conflicts, violence, and human rights violation have forced individuals, families, and ethnic and religious groups to abandon their home countries. Since the founding of Israel, Palestinians are victim to Israel’s insatiable appetite for land, inhabit ever-shrinking sites that remain to them, and fight against the ongoing invasion of their territories. Caught up in the ideological feuds during the Cold War, military dictatorships in Central and South America provoked millions of their populations to seek refuge in North America and Europe between the 1960s and 1980s. Warfare in the Balkan regions and in Rwanda caused significant displacements of their ethnic communities. Regional extremist formations threaten populations in the Middle East. Common arguments of national states justifying their existence as imagined communities are based—now and then—on forms of social and cultural nostalgia. As David Morley and Kevin Robbins note: Whether “home” is imagined as the community of Europe or of the national state or of the region, it is drenched in the longing for wholeness, unity and integrity. It is about community centered on shared traditions and memories.30

Populist political parties in power, as well as those aspiring to be, utilize historical events and personalities to evoke what cultural theorist Stuart Hall defines as both “shared cultural codes” and “unchanging and continuous frames of reference of meaning”31 and that have justified a multitude of resources to keep unwanted newcomers out. Undermining such nationalist rhetoric, the success of the capitalist system in its constant drive to expand crucially depends on resources and markets that are outside of its boundaries. The history of Europe, as in its self-proclaimed understanding as motor of modernity, evokes legacies of Western trade and finance that cannot be properly understood without reference to the world it thought to conquer. Exploitative capitalist practices that have been refined over centuries of colonial op-

Introduction

13

pression, illegal and violent modes of land appropriation, and genocide of native populations have always forced global migration movements. Nowadays, transnational activities such as technology, money flow, commodities, and media come disguised as globalization that seek to benefit all.32 Nico Israel notes, “Through proliferating information and communication flows and through mass human migration, [globalization] has progressively eroded territorial frontiers and boundaries and provoked ever more immediate confrontations of culture and identity.”33 These asymmetrical exchanges have promoted old and mapped out new centers of political, economic, and cultural power. Those who are located in the margins remain strapped of resources and are pushed to go on dangerous journeys, which often require crossing borders, in the search for a decent life. The presence of diverse social, cultural, and ethnic groups in the nation constantly questions the hegemonic project and its ethics. Postcolonial scholars, intellectuals, artists, and activists, many of whom were born in former French or British colonies, have been advocating for the acknowledgment, empowerment, and representation of minority groups since the 1960s. Homi Bhabha, in his seminal volume Nation and Narration and other of his publications, stresses the need to re-evaluate the national narrative from the peripheral positions of its minorities.34 Diasporic experiences and cultural minorities upset “genealogies of ‘origin’ that lead to claims for cultural supremacy and historical priority.”35 The British Indian scholar argues that the multiplicity and fluidity of cultural identities make up the nation-state. As a member of the Black diaspora in Jamaica, cultural theorist and activist Stuart Hall is motivated in his work by a personal and collective history of discrimination and displacement. From the onset of early European imperialism, deterritorialization marked Black communities. Ever-new challenges to the social, cultural, and religious integrity of these groups translate to a diaspora identity that is “constantly renewing and reproducing”36 itself, visible in cultural expressions that negotiate conflicts, traumas, and ruptures. In the multisited, multilayered influences and inspirations, cultural hybridity signals survival, strength, and resistance against, beside, and because of imposed Western-based power regimes. Within these articulations, diaspora emerges as an “appropriate and timely cultural paradigm responding to the totaling character of Western thought.”37 As concept, discursive practice, and vision of politics, it challenges conventional assumptions of group membership, affiliations, associations, and attempts to assign places, locations, origins, and iden-

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tities. “Diaspora” is a term that promotes dialogue, interaction, and collaboration on equal ground. Bhabha explains his idea of the in-between in spatial terms: as casual and coincidental meeting on a staircase, a situation that marks performativity, movement, and temporariness.38 On the backdrop of sociological, cultural, and postcolonial studies that emphasize diaspora in the nexus of cultural hybridity, traveling, and border-crossing, Lilienthal’s cinema gains further traction in transnational film studies categories, which traverse these terms. Rosalind Galt notes the benefit of an observation that uses the transnational as magnifying lens: “The transnational asks us to look at cinema in terms of processes and transits, rather than objects and states.”39 The approach to her volume Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories (coedited with Karl Schoonover in 2010) offers a productive example. In embracing art cinema as impure and unstable category—the genre sits between national cinema and world cinema categories, has an uneasy relationship with Hollywood, and is closely linked to notions of authorship—it becomes a traveling object visible in its diverse images and historical shifts, a cinematic language that moves across geopolitical contexts.40 Where national cinema tends to align filmmaking to territorial, imaginative, or ideological agendas of the nation-state, transnational cinema focuses on histories of travel and mobility and directs attention to meeting points between traveler and community. Tim Bergfelder suggests a historiography of European cinema that is based on such a perspective: Rather than focusing exclusively on separate national formations, a history of European Cinema might well begin by exploring the interrelationship between cultural and geographical centres and margins, and by tracing the migratory movements between these poles. In this context, the various waves of migration into and across Europe, motivated by the two world wars, national policies of ethnic exclusion, and the post-war legacy of colonialism and economic discrepancy between Europe and its other, are fundamentally linked to the development of European cinema.41

Bergfelder’s idea contains the mobility of a filmmaking between various cultural and national contexts, meanings, and intentions. The significance of this study as transnational approach aligns to projects that highlight the need to disclose what was marginalized by dominant trends in German and European cinema and its canon-oriented film historiography and that visualize encounters between times, places, and identities in which alternative agents and film formats appear.42 More specifically, I investigate Lilienthal’s filmmaking within notions of cinema that explicitly navigate experiences of exile and emigration.

Introduction

15

Diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial films form part of the thriving field of transnational cinema, challenging the notion of national cinema to be coherent, stable, and ideologically well-defined.43 Drawing on dynamics of exchange and dialogue, diasporic and exilic cinema benefits from notions of world cinema as a voice for historically marginalized groups and communities, including feminist, queer, or subaltern expressions. World cinema criticism, according to Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, seeks to question rigid and binary terms such as center/ periphery, West/non-West, articulating resistance to politics of integration, homogenization, and essentialism.44 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (1994) is generally viewed as groundbreaking work toward a conceptualization of world cinema. The authors criticize Eurocentrism, a network of oppressive relations that Europe engages with its many Others, as a long-standing and unquestioned philosophy of the Western world and instead emphasize filmmaking as political and social practice that empowers formerly marginalized individuals and groups.45 Hamid Naficy’s seminal An Accented Cinema, the most complex study on exilic and diasporic filmmaking to date, understands these films to be marked by noticeable accents: “Visual style, the impact of biographical and sociocultural locations of the filmmakers, and modes of production, distribution, exhibition and reception give the films their accent.”46 Following this study, some scholars are invested with the idea of exile in filmmaking as a site to negotiate identity formations. In the words of Yosefa Loshitzky, immigrant filmmakers make films about displacement and relocation, “from the point of view of the other himself/herself, negotiating whether and how to maintain his/her identity within a dominant culture.”47 However, such binary cultural imaginations can create discursive ghettos. Think of German Turkish filmmakers, for example. In some instances, research is still informed by essentialist notions that view contemporary German Turkish filmmakers as ethnic individuals first and filmmakers second. Their films, however, are no longer confined to oppositions of Turkey as home and Germany as a foreign place but rather acknowledge the importance to cross classes, religions, and languages. Lilienthal’s filmmaking has fluid, multisited cultural and geographical alignments. He is one of those figures who are, according to Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim’s observation, “keenly aware of power relations between centre/margin, insider/outsider, as well as the continual negotiation between the global and local that often extends beyond the host/home binary in transnational or diasporic cinema.”48 The defi-

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nition of a cosmopolitan transnationalism, as Mette Hjort asserts, suggests that experiences of deterritorialization benefit filmmakers in acquiring social and cultural sensibilities that largely inform their artistic approaches and practices: Multiple belongings linked to ethnicity and various trajectories of migration here become the basis for a form of transnationalism that is oriented toward the ideal of film as a medium capable of strengthening certain social imaginaries. The emphasis is on the exploration of issues relevant to particular communities situated in a number of different national or subnational locations to which the cosmopolitan auteur has a certain privileged access.49

Hjort finds that a migratory background and related experience facilitates access to other ethnic, cultural, and social communities in which filmmakers might occupy an insider status. Critical voices warn that this mobility makes them belong to intellectual and social elites whose experiences are championed over those of the majority who are less flexible, less educated, and less affluent.50 Still others claim that diasporic filmmakers use their capacities to mediate between top and bottom hierarchies, linking groups who have political power and those who do not.51 They might even become a trusted spokesperson and/ or use their influence for the benefit of the political and social urgencies of different groups. I will explore how Lilienthal’s Jewish diasporic heritage and his experiences of displacement sparked his connection to artists and communities with similar stories, motivated experimenting with techniques, and enabled him to experiment with his filmmaking style in collaborative projects that indeed acted as a mouthpiece for sociopolitical matters that were important to individuals and communities he worked with. Cultural and political institutions, regulations, and practices had great impact on the modalities under which Lilienthal’s films were produced, distributed, and exhibited, as well as determining their access to and success with audiences. A framework of Lilienthal’s cinema as diasporic film allows a zooming in on these complicated relations of his work in national and international cinema structures. Michael T. Martin and Marilyn Yaquinto note that diasporic cinema “problematizes national identity and the nation as an imagined and bounded territorial space while engaging national cinemas and audiences.”52 Traditionally, the art cinema circuit was a preferred site for diasporic film, which also holds true for Lilienthal’s films. Naficy mentions that a number of outlets of accented cinema are typically associated with

Introduction

17

independent, alternative, and avant-garde film, which was traditionally viewed on television channels such as Channel Four, ARTE, PBS, or the Sundance Film Channel.53 Art cinema networks classify them in well-defined boundaries; high art versus popular genres address a selected, educated, and cinephile cohort of audiences, a national-cultural product that defines itself against the “cultural mesh” and “popular trash” of the Hollywood industry. Other more market-oriented exhibition sites, from film festivals to streaming services, cluster diasporic films under classic genres, auteurs, and national origin. These criteria divert attention away from the primary function of diasporic film as a social and political counter-practice. As Steve Neale argues, “In giving a coherent rationale both to the policies and to the films they produce (they are all instances of ‘self-expression’—hence their eclectic heterogeneity), authorship serves partly as a means by which to avoid coming to terms with the concept of film as social practice.”54 Chapter 3 will address such ambivalent strategies and their effects with regard to Lilienthal’s filmmaking and how his texts were adopted in different national contexts to serve different purposes. For example, the director was seen perfectly suited to promote West Germany’s self-critical identity to audiences in the Global South during the 1970s and 1980s. In this process, his work became recognized as part of Chilean national cinema made in exile. To conclude this section, with a viewpoint of Lilienthal’s films as diasporic film, I investigate thematic choices and diverse cultural and artistic influences in his work tied to their dynamics within German cinema culture, national and international film structures, and audiences. Third Cinema becomes another necessary element in this framework. The term stands for theories and practices of resistance,55 which account for Lilienthal’s identity as a Jewish and Latin American artist, defining his filmmaking philosophy as aligned to Latin American progressive political and cultural ideas both at home and in Europe.

Third Cinema Configurations The enthusiasm for the social and political reforms that happened in Chile under the socialist party Unidad Popular (Popular Unity Party) motivated Lilienthal to get in touch with the Latin American artistic community at the beginning of the 1970s. La Victoria marked Lilienthal’s first cinematic engagement with Chile and generates a long-standing collaboration with Latin American film personnel. Starting with this

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project, Lilienthal’s Latin American films acquired certain features that echo the postcolonial agenda of Third Cinema filmmaking and reflect his concern for Latin American communities. Beyond a strategy of adopting Third Cinema as a narrative and aesthetic framework for Lilienthal’s Latin American film series, his political views were formed, similar to that of artists and intellectuals in Chile, Brazil, and Cuba, as a reaction to the precarious social, political, and cultural conditions on the Latin American continent. His filmmaking is political engagement, an exercise of solidarity and opposition to ubiquitous Western views and cultural discourse. This stance aligns with the Latin American filmmakers close to the Third Cinema movement and philosophy of the 1970s and 1980s. Third Cinema had developed as part of social and political reformation processes that vibrated throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa from the 1950s onward. Prominent intellectuals, political leaders, and activists such as Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro called for revolutionary action to fight dependence on North American and European economic and political interests. In Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, or Cuba, artists, intellectuals, and students joined activities and processes that were established to address problems such as poverty and lack of education and housing, which significant numbers of their populations suffered from. Artists experimented with content, forms, and genres to create modes of filmmaking linked to the social realities within their countries, invested in the project to develop indigenous cinemas and revive local culture traditions.56 Filmmakers and theorists agreed that Latin American film had to find its own identity, separate from what they criticized as the elitist notion of European art cinema and Hollywood’s industrialized and standardized modes of film—a cinema that speaks to indigenous audiences and frees itself from role models that echo the cultural history of domination.57 This movement became theoretically underpinned by various cinematic manifestos that expressed conditions of poverty and scarcity of resources within an aesthetic program. Cuban filmmaker and theorist Julio Garcia Espinosa wrote one of the most influential manifestos in 1969. He argues for an imperfect cinema that should gain strength from its economic, scientific, and technological backwardness: Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in quality or technique. It can be created equally well with a Mitchell or with an 8mm camera, in a studio or in a guerrilla camp in the middle of the jungle. Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in predetermined taste, and much less in “good taste.”58

Introduction

19

The low-budget style of Italian neorealism presented, at least in the beginnings, a viable role model for the Latin American filmmakers.59 Film equipment was scarce, and there was a lack of funding and infrastructure. Shooting on location using portable and flexible film equipment and the use of nonprofessional actors enabled a low-budget mode of filmmaking that, according to Robert Stam, may have been technically poor but was rich in imagination.60 Elsewhere the scholar notes that the filmmakers utilized the abject as cinematic strategy: “By appropriating an existing discourse for their own ends, they deploy the force of the dominant against domination.”61 La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, 1968), made by the Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, is a political-aesthetic vanguard and key representative of the Third Cinema concept—an investigative, experimental documentary that observes, comments on, and harshly criticizes conditions of repression, global capitalism, and colonialism in Argentina.62 The film aims to mobilize spectators to pay attention to power relations within their own environment and to take part in activities to challenge their agents. These social-cinematic experiments were to come to a sudden halt very soon. The vivacity of left-wing movements and its wide-ranging support by populations of lower and middle classes, guided by Cuba as example of a successful revolution and most of all Chile’s elected socialist government, were a worry to the United States. Operation Condor and other US interventions that aimed to prevent the continent tipping the fragile balance toward socialist powers led to the installment and repressive measures of right-wing regimes in Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, and other South and Central American countries. These developments provoked the exodus of progressive filmmaking in these countries. Third Cinema ideas came to reside in Europe and North America in the 1970s when many of its proponents fled repression and persecution. Third Cinema as resistance of Latin American artists and intellectuals to colonial dependency, Western interests, and forced displacement of the movement exercised important influence on Lilienthal’s activities. Having developed remote from metropolitan centers in ideological as well as in linguistic terms, Third Cinema had been of marginal importance in contemporary West Germany of the 1970s and 1980s. Lilienthal’s collaborations with Latin American émigré artists, such as his long-term work with Chilean author Antonio Skármeta, his work with Argentine musicians in The Autogramm, and his engagement to get their films produced and exhibited, sought to promote and encour-

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Figure 0.3. Peter Lilienthal and Fernando Birri at the International Conference for Collaboration with Central America and the Caribbean in the Akademie der Künste Berlin, October 1988. © Akademie der Künste.

age their involvement in a European film industry framework during this difficult time. Hence, an understanding of Lilienthal’s work in a Third Cinema mode of filmmaking as “art that abandons the idea of an artistic avant-garde and submits to being political”63—as stated by Argentine film scholar David Oubiña—highlights his work as driven by an ethos of sharing resources and social intervention. Lilienthal’s filmmaking approach echoes Argentine film pioneer Fernando Birri: “In the last instance, it is a cinema which is generated within the reality, becomes concrete on a screen and from this screen returns to reality, aspiring to transform it.”64 His film projects are motivated by urgent social and political problems, and his filmmaking is a way to reflect on and alleviate such realities. Lilienthal preferred to work with nonprofessional casts. The inclusion of ordinary people enriched the narrative and formal dimensions of his films and further highlighted a cinema in which lived experiences and footage of real social and political events are combined with fictional elements. These were ingredients of many contemporary progressive Latin American films, such as the Cuban masterpiece Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomás Alea Gutiérrez, 1968) or Valparaíso, mi amor (Valparaíso, My Love, Aldo Francia, 1969), the latter

Introduction

21

a story of children who roamed around the port city of Valparaíso and, being without parents, prostituted themselves in order to survive. Third Cinema strategy finds its themes in the people who struggle,65 relying “more on appeal to social and political conflicts as the prime rhetorical strategy and less on the paradigm of oedipal conflict and resolution.”66 In Lilienthal’s films, isolated and apolitical individuals whose lives have been suddenly and severely changed through recent social and political turmoil are pushed to react and subsequently become involved. Notions of diaspora and Third Cinema philosophy account for Lilienthal’s engagement with social realities outside of West Germany and his criticism of dominant cultural and political discourses. This configuration suggests conceptual and ideological differences between Lilienthal’s work and that of fellow (New) German filmmakers. For example, the film Der Aufstand, shot in Nicaragua immediately after dictator Anastasio Somoza had fallen, was motivated by enthusiasm for this victory after a decade of fascist rule in many Latin American countries. Lilienthal collaborated with the Nicaraguan population and adapted his filmmaking style to reflect local cultural traditions in representing the final events of the fight. Meanwhile, Latin America, Africa, or North America in other German films of the time served to map an inner conflict of their mainly white protagonists situated within a foreign landscape. Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten (Ballad of the Little Soldier, 1984), a documentary directed by Werner Herzog and Denis Reichle, made a few years after Der Aufstand, explored the Sandinista victory focusing on the Miskito Indians, a native tribe that took part in the guerrilla activities with the Sandinistas in 1979. Herzog and Reichle’s interest in this endeavor was more to do with German history and culture. They connected Miskito Indians to German soldiers fighting in World War II, contributing to a revisionist discourse of collective German victimhood. Against Herzog’s and other German films that utilize the Global South as imaginary spaces, Lilienthal’s films demonstrate a genuine interest in and knowledge about Latin American politics and cultures. His filmmaking and practices add “another locus of cultural and historical specificity”67 to the coexistent, inward-looking German filmscape, introducing to it a different set of subjectivities, thematic interests, and sociopolitical spaces.

Methodology and Outline Investigating the dynamics between displacement, diaspora, and notions of Third Cinema, this book aims to analyze Lilienthal’s work as a

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transnational filmmaker, paying close attention to Jewish influences, issues such as dislocation, emigration, and mobility within his filmmaking practices. Within the larger effort of de-westernizing film studies, this research demonstrates Saër Maty Bâ and Will Higbee’s aim to “emphasize ways in which non-Western influences, experiences and ways of thinking, theorizing and making film can take their place alongside those from within the West.”68 I study Lilienthal’s filmmaking in relation to the subjects, desires, and anxieties of progressive Latin American cultural discourses, which I argue establish a singular ideological, political, and cultural view in the German filmscape of the 1970s and 1980s. One of my objectives is to investigate how Lilienthal’s work reflects the conditions and augments the acceptance of Third Cinema in the West. Secondly, what can his films contribute toward easing fraught German-Jewish relations post–World War II? And how do the films mirror European cultural-political interests toward Latin America during the Cold War? To answer these questions, I observe Lilienthal’s filmmaking practices, undertake close readings of selected film texts, and integrate reception analysis case studies. These methods are closely linked to the political and cultural environments in which his films were conceived, made, and discussed. This lively journey between Europe and Latin America will take me to a number of places. It begins with an examination of Lilienthal’s appreciation as a Jewish filmmaker, Jewish émigré, and artist in West Germany, before moving on to analyze the Latin American film series that he made with regard to the political and social calamities that occurred in Chile, Argentina, and Nicaragua. Then I will offer insights into the simultaneous reception of the Latin American films in West and East Germany. Finally, I evaluate Lilienthal’s legacy in the twenty-first century, by analyzing cultural activities and research efforts in Argentina, Chile, and Germany. The following section takes a closer look at the contents of the individual chapters. Chapter 1 starts off with a retrospective of Lilienthal’s early television work. Here, the trauma of World War II and the Holocaust as an experience of emigration, death, and loss appears in rather opaque thematic form and hidden behind aesthetic mannerism. The feature David, in contrast, which he made more than fifteen years later, is a confident engagement with German Jewish history, made with an all-Jewish cast. The narrative discusses the conditions and possibility of escape of the Jewish population from Nazi Berlin. The figures of father and son Singer symbolize an older German Jewish population committed to German society and culture, as opposed to the younger generation having grown up in the years after 1933, who were exposed to racism and

Introduction

23

ostracism all of their lives. David’s critical reception in contemporary West Germany, analyzed in this chapter, was framed by a vivid public discussion of the matter that had been inspired by the West German TV broadcast of the American television drama Holocaust (Marvin M. Chomsky, 1978). Critics were uncomfortable with both acknowledging David as a Jewish perspective and accepting the film as a reliable reflection of the Jewish experience during the Nazi era. The reception of David discloses that the contemporaneous discourse on the Holocaust made unheard Jewish voices painfully felt. Chapter 2 analyzes Lilienthal’s Latin American film series in terms of regional cultural and political influences. In the conception and making of these projects, Lilienthal is at his best. The films showcase his humanist ideals and pacifist ideas, testing chances to understand, accept, and reconciliate oppositional political frames of reference and perspectives. They pay homage to an ethos of solidarity and cultural diversity as a basic element of functioning societies. While Lilienthal’s Latin American films have been previously critiqued from within a German cultural context, I will analyze them as part of transcultural film culture of the 1970s. As a key cultural meeting point for European and Latin American progressive filmmaking, Lilienthal’s work echoes many concerns of the European-based communities of Latin American exiled artists, intellectuals, and left-wing partisans. As such, Lilienthal’s film series successfully reflect changing moods and concerns of the New Latin American Cinema movement of the 1970s and 1980s and assist cultural identity formation in both Central and South America. As mentioned previously, La Victoria is Lilienthal’s entry point to agents, aesthetics, and themes of progressive cinema in Allende’s Chile. I study his subsequent project Es herrscht Ruhe im Land as a film that reflects Lilienthal’s support of the international solidarity network. Der Aufstand, made in the feverish atmosphere immediately after the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979, captures the contemporary social and political events in Nicaragua as told by local voices, becoming an important document of this period of upheaval. The film assisted in establish a local filmmaking industry. I will compare Der Aufstand with Camilo, a documentary that Lilienthal made a quarter of a century later. The film visits the same places and contains interviews with Sandinista war veterans, exploring current neocolonial tendencies, such as recruitment strategies on behalf of the United States to encourage young Mexicans or Nicaraguans to serve in the US Army. Das Autogramm and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal (The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, 1988) deal with the depoliticization of public life in Argentina and Chile in the 1980s, respectively. Das

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Autogramm, made in collaboration with a Paris-based group of Argentine émigré artists, criticizes strategies of appropriating popular tango culture to instill a sense of patriotism toward the military leadership. In Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal, the filmmaker explores social ideas around competition, consumer culture, and entertainment as part of a full-blown market economy in the late stages of Pinochet’s dictatorship. These films suggest that in the decade of the 1980s, belief in revolutionary collective action in Latin America had transformed into a painful memory that belonged to an already distant past. Chapter 3 engages with Lilienthal’s Latin American films again, specifically to consider their reception in West and East Germany. In the first part of this chapter, I examine the functions and views of the filmmaker in both countries. In the cultural-political context of West Germany, and due to Lilienthal’s knowledge of the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures, he was seen as an agent to establish links to the cultural vanguard in Latin American countries such as Chile and Argentina. The filmmaker’s insights and tireless dedication to political and social matters of Third World countries—i.e., underdeveloped and newly independent states—also matched the political agenda of East Germany. He was involved in screenings and events that took place at the Akademie der Künste Ost (Academy of Arts East) during the 1980s and became an active member of the academy in 1990. A number of his films, including the Es herrscht Ruhe im Land and Der Aufstand, were screened in East German cinemas and broadcast on the two state television channels. My reception analysis of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land in West and East Germany picks up on issues such as ideological and cultural-political imperatives and the differing function of cinema in East versus West Germany. Above all, the critical reception of the film offers East-West insights and perspectives into the human rights violations that happened under Pinochet’s military regime and captures the highly politicized atmosphere at the end of the 1970s. In West Germany, the film was showered with prizes and acclaimed for its educational value—film critics, reserved about Lilienthal’s unflinching sympathy for the political left, saw the film as belated revolutionary romanticism. East German critical voices, on the other hand, valued the films as an honest portrayal of capitalist power structures. They promoted Lilienthal as an ally to their political ideas. Despite ideological differences, the readings show that Lilienthal’s film had the capacity to connect and enthuse audiences on either side of the border, linking East and West German solidarity efforts for the Chilean cause. The chapter finishes with a reception analysis of Der Aufstand. Lilienthal had always

Introduction

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pushed the boundaries with his uncomfortable political views, ones that defied expectations of German film identity. The critical reception of Der Aufstand makes visible the commotion around his films and how this impacted audiences, critics, and colleagues. Many evaluated this film as an artistic failure, instead housing their views in more established definitions and demarcations of Western auteur/art film. At the end of a long and productive life, the filmmaker has been recognized and honored as a human rights ambassador in Germany on numerous occasions. His films continue to cross national boundaries and find new audiences. The conclusion discusses the relevance of Lilienthal’s work within democratization processes and memory of the dictatorships, its impact on second generations of post–World War II filmmakers, and its intrinsic value for transnational film histories. In Latin America, some of his films have been granted a second life cycle. Forty years after the coup d’état, these works began to play a role in Chile’s collective memory of the Pinochet dictatorship. In initiatives headed by the progressive cultural institutions such as the Santiagobased Museo de la Memoria y de los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights) and the Cineteca Nacional, Lilienthal’s work was included in an audiovisual archive consisting of materials made by foreign filmmakers and Chilean artists in exile. Among the films used for exhibitions, themed screenings, and public seminars, La Victoria and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal stand out as rare documents that successfully captured images of Chile before and during the dictatorship and records the whereabouts of Chilean exiled film personnel who collaborated in his films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In Argentina, where Das Autogramm had never been seen before, a recent screening in Buenos Aires was a gem found by many. Local audiences and critics were delighted by this encounter with a German filmmaker who had an excellent sense of the political and social tragedies that happened in Argentina during the so-called años de plomo (years of lead). The work of younger filmmakers reflect an ongoing interest in Lilienthal’s work. For example, in the documentary Por aqui pasaron los ciclistas (The Cyclists Passed through Here, Isidora Gálvez Alfageme, 2018), a village community involved in the making of Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal could be considered a meta nod to Lilienthal’s influence. Curzio’s aforementioned documentary, Ma vie, is among the materials that I link to final reflections on Lilienthal’s work as a significant contribution toward German Jewish film and to encourage a rethinking of German cinema history from transnational vantage points. The chapter finishes with current events on the occasion of Lilienthal’s ninetieth

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birthday, among which is a project organized by the Deutsche Kinemathek to digitally conserve a selection of Lilienthal’s films so that they could be more easily accessible for cultural and scholarly endeavors.

Notes 1. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (London: BFI, 1989), 113. 2. Egon Netenjakob, “In paradiesischen Zeiten. Interview mit Peter Lilienthal,” in Es geht auch anders, Gespräche über Leben, Film und Fernsehen, ed. Egon Netenjakob (Berlin: Bertz+Fischer, 2006), 99. 3. Hans Günther Pflaum and Hans Helmut Prinzler, Cinema in the Federal Republic of Germany: The New German Film Origins and Present Situation; With a Section on GDR Cinema (Bonn: Internationes, 1993), 94. 4. Bettina Bremme, Movie-mientos: Der lateinamerikanische Film. Streiflichter von unterwegs (Stuttgart: Schmetterling Verlag, 2000), 243–246. 5. Michael Töteberg. Peter Lilienthal: Befragung eines Nomaden (Frankfurt: Verlag der Autoren, 2001), 9. 6. See, for example, Sebastian Feldmann, “Der Sieg des Stillen. Zum 65. Geburtstag des Berliner Filmregisseurs Peter Lilienthal: Kunst und Menschlichkeit,” Rheinische Post, 26 November 1994; or Wilhelm Roth, “Chronist auf Zehenspitzen. Peter Lilienthal, der große Filmemacher und Wanderer zwischen den Kulturen,” Jüdische Allgemeine, 26 November 2004. 7. Manfred Etten, “Praktische Solidarität. Peter Lilienthal zum 60,” Filmdienst 25 (1989). 8. Gerd Gemünden, Continental Strangers: Exile Cinema, 1933–1951 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 9. 9. Volker Pade, “Peter Lilienthal: Reisender Kinozauberer zwischen den Welten,” accessed 29 July 2019, http://www.volker-pade.de/Lilienthal, percent20Peter.pdf. 10. Netenjakob, “In paradiesischen Zeiten,” 108–112. 11. Michael Ballhaus and Claudius Seidl, Bilder im Kopf. Die Geschichte meines Lebens (Munich: btb, 2015), 53. 12. Joachim von Mengershausen, “Lilienthal—Die Faszination des Abgelebten,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 April 1966. 13. Peter W. Jansen, “Negationen des Mediums. Zu den Filmen von Peter Lilienthal,” Neue Züricher Zeitung, 30 May 1970. 14. Jansen, “Negationen des Mediums.” 15. Töteberg, Befragung eines Nomaden, 33. 16. Lilienthal, in Ulla Ziemann,“8 Filme von Peter Lilienthal” (pamphlet printed for 28th Berlin Film Festival, Berlin, 1978). 17. See also Lynne Layton, “Peter Lilienthal: Decisions before Twelve,” in New German Filmmakers: From Oberhausen through the 1970s, ed. Klaus Phillips (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1984), 230–246. 18. Roswitha Müller, “From Public to Private: Television in the Federal Republic of Germany,” New German Critique 50 (1990): 47–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/488210. 19. Heidi Genée was known to be, alongside Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, one of the best two editors of New German Cinema. She was part of the editing team of the omnibus production Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, 1978). See Renate Fischetti,

Introduction

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

27

“Interview with Heidi Genée,” Jump Cut 30 (1985), https://www.ejumpcut.org/ar chive/onlinessays/JC30folder/HeidiGeneeInt.html. “Das Lebenswerk einer Kostümbildnerin,” Frankfurter Wochenblatt, 11 November 2018, https://www.frankfurter-wochenblatt.de/frankfurt/sachsenhaeuser-wochen blatt/frankfurt-sachsenhausen-ausstellung-hautnah-filmmuseum-stellt-lebenswe rk-kostuembildnerin-10410776.html. “Der Aufstand,” Variety 15, 2 July 1980. Lilienthal, in Netenjakob, “In paradiesischen Zeiten,” 112. Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 201. John Davidson, Deterritorializing the New German Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 34. Davidson, Deterritorializing, 24. Robert Fischer and Joe Hembus, Der Neue Deutsche Film 1960–1980 (Munich: Goldmann Verlag, 1981), 114. See Lilienthal in Egon Netenjakob, “Zwei Sendejahre der Redaktion Das kleine Fernsehspiel: 1976 und 1986. Anmerkungen eines Teleasten,” in Das experimentelle Fernsehspiel—“Das kleine Fernsehspiel” im ZDF. Notate und Referate, ed. Thomas Koebner and Egon Netenjakob (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988), 184–185. Netenjakob refers to Lilienthal’s text “Die gute Narrenfreiheit—Bemerkungen zum Produktionssystem,” which was published in Das Fernsehspiel im ZDF, no. 3 (1973/1974). Alongside the ZDF program Das Kleine Fernsehspiel in West Germany; Channel Four in the UK and the Film Board in Canada actively supported Chilean exiled filmmakers whose work could not be produced or distributed in Chile. See Antonio Skármeta, “Europe: An Indispensable Link in the Production and Circulation of Latin American Cinema,” in New Latin American Cinema, vol. 1, Theory, Practices and Transcontinental Articulations, ed. Michael T. Martin (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1997), 265. Lilienthal, in Volker Müller, “Diese Akademie hat ein krankes Herz,” Berliner Zeitung, 5 March 1996. David Morley and Kevin Robins, “No Place Like Heimat: Images of Home(land) in European Culture,” New Formations 12 (1990): 4. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 223. Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader, ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Manur (London: Blackwell, 2003), 25–48. Nico Israel, Outlandish: Writing between Exile and Diaspora (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 13. Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 1–7. Homi K. Bhabha, “Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 307. Hall, “Cultural Identity,” 235. John Durham Peters, “Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the Western Canon,” in Home, Exile, Homeland. Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, ed. Hamid Naficy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 17. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 5–6.

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39. Rosalind Galt, in “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical Roundtable,” led by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith, Frames Cinema Journal, 2019, accessed 2 December 2019, https:// framescinemajournal.com/article/transnational-cinemas-a-critical-roundtable/. 40. Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, introduction to Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, ed. Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 3–30. 41. Tim Bergfelder, “National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema? Rethinking European Film Studies,” Media, Culture & Society 27, no. 3 (2005): 320, https://doi .org/10.1177/0163443705051746. 42. See, for example, Gerd Gemünden, Continental Strangers: Exile Cinema, 1933–1951 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014); Ofer Ashkenazi, Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020). 43. Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim, “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies,” Transnational Cinemas 1, no. 1 (2010): 9–10, https://doi.org/10.1386/trac.1.1.7/1. 44. Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, “Introduction: Situating World Cinema as a Theoretical Problem,” in Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, ed. Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2006), 9. 45. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 3. 46. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 45. 47. Yosefa Loshitzky, Screening Strangers. Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 9; Eva Rueschmann, introduction to Moving Pictures, Migrating Identities, ed. Eva Rueschmann ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), xxi. 48. Higbee and Lim, “Concepts of Transnational Cinema,” 9–10. 49. Mette Hjort, “On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism,” World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, ed. Nataša Ďurovičová and Kathleen Newman (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 20. 50. Tim Bergfelder, “Love Beyond the Nation: Cosmopolitan and Transnational Desire in Cinema,” in Europe and Love in Cinema, ed. Jo Labanyi, Karen Diehl, and Luisa Passerini (Bristol: Intellect, 2011), 62. 51. Rey Chow, Ethics after Idealism: Theory-Culture-Ethnicity-Reading (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), 113. 52. Michael T. Martin and Marilyn Yaquinto, “Framing Diaspora in Diasporic Cinema: Concepts and Thematic Concerns,” Black Camera 22, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2007): 23, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27761689. 53. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 43–44. 54. Steve Neale, “Art Cinema as Institution,” Screen 22, no. 1 (1981): 37, https://doi .org/10.1093/screen/22.1.11. 55. See Anthony R. Guneratne, “Introduction: Rethinking Third Cinema,” in Rethinking Third Cinema, ed. Anthony R. Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 10. 56. John King, Magical Reels: A History of Cinema in Latin America (London: Verso, 1990). 57. Ana M. López, “An ‘Other’ History: The New Latin American Cinema,” in New Latin America Cinema, vol. 1, Theory, Practices and Transcontinental Articulations, ed. Michael T. Martin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 147.

Introduction

29

58. Julio García Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema,” in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Culture, ed. Scott MacKenzie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 341. Espinosa’s essay was first published in Cine Cubano 66/67 (1969): 46–53. It was translated by Julianne Burton and published in Jump Cut, no. 20 (1979): 24–26, https:// www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/ImperfectCinema.html. 59. Mariano Mestman, “From Italian Neorealism to New Latin American Cinema: Ruptures and Continuities during the 1960s,” in Global Neorealism 1930–1970: The Transnational History of a Film Style, ed. Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 163–177. 60. Robert Stam, Film Theory. An Introduction (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 94. 61. Robert Stam, “Beyond Third Cinema. The Aesthetics of Hybridity,” in Rethinking Third Cinema, ed. Anthony R. Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 32. 62. See Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, “El resurgir de la vanguardia política,” in Cine y vanguardia artísticas: conflictos, encuentros, fronteras (Barcelona: Paidós 2004), 228–247. 63. David Oubiña’s lecture at the symposium “La imagen política/La(s) política(s) de la imagen. Diálogo entre Oubiña, Molina y Ardito,” organized by the Faculty of Arts at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), 2 July 2018, Buenos Aires, accessed 17 May 2019, https://hclauba.wordpress.com/6actividades-realizadas/. 64. Fernando Birri was an Argentine Third Cinema pioneer. His documentaries Tire dié (Toss a Dime, 1960) and Los Inundados (Flooded Out, 1961) were early examples of a cinema that depicted and criticized the social realities in Argentina of the 1950s and 1960s. Birri founded the Escuela Documental de Santa Fe in Argentina in 1956. See also Fernando Birri, “The Roots of Documentary Realism,” in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, ed. Julianne Burton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 1–12. 65. Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema,” 228. 66. Teshome H. Gabriel, “Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Films,” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 5, no. 1 (2011): 195, https://doi.org/10.1080/19301944.2011.10781409. 67. Julianne Burton, “Marginal Cinemas and Mainstream Critical Theory,” Screen 26, no. 3–4 (1985): 6, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/26.3-4.2. 68. Saër Maty Bâ and Will Higbee, “Introduction: De-Westernizing Film Studies,” in DeWesternizing Film Studies, ed. Saër Maty Bâ and Will Higbee (New York: Routledge, 2012), 9.

Chapter 1

A JEWISH FILMMAKER IN POSTWAR GERMANY

The Holocaust as the organized and systematic attempt to destroy Jewish life and culture was the ultimate nadir in a century-long history of antisemitism, ostracism, and exclusion. It cost the lives of some six million European Jews, provoked resettlement and re-diasporization on an unprecedented scale, and forged the foundation of the State of Israel. Lilienthal’s cinema was in an ongoing dialogue with these events. Deliberating on Jewish issues, at first in highly stylized forms and using a realist language later on, his films featured recurring symbols and objects, or to borrow Mark Betz’s definition, “a system of motifs, allusions, and devices that the director combines to create a complex world of signs.”1 The inclination for nomadic figures with suitcases—harboring temporary stays, hopeful beginnings, and stories of escape—or school buildings—physical spaces of like-minded spirits outside of conventional norms and values—can be found in nearly all of his films. In Lilienthal’s images, however, there is always a sense of hope that prevails even in the most desperate situations. In reading his 1960s television work, the feature David, and analyzing David’s reception, my observations give visibility to the quandaries of Lilienthal as Jewish filmmaker in West Germany of the post–World War II years. The concept of diaspora that I defined for this study guides the current analysis in highlighting this filmmaker’s work as “accented,” that is, informed by personal experiences of trauma and displacement. Parallel to Naficy’s idea that “accented films are in dialogue with the home and host societies and their respective national cinemas, as well

A Jewish Filmmaker in Postwar Germany

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as with audiences, many of whom are similarly transnational, whose desires, aspirations, and fears they express,”2 Lilienthal’s work ignites and complicates debates on German-Jewish matters, while they talk for and to an absent German Jewish audience. His cinema contributes to a body of Jewish film that “create[s] publicly effective images and extremely controversial aesthetic representation of a debate around the Shoah,”3 serving as intervention into political, social, and cultural debates of postwar Germany. The early works present previously unacknowledged contributions to German Jewish film culture. Critics had appraised Lilienthal as one of the best German directors—next to figures such as Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, or Ulrich Schamoni, although Lilienthal “only” worked for television. Barbe Funk noted, “his work has more to do with film than most of those that were made in Germany.”4 The films were either seen to belong to the German avant-garde or they were criticized as aloof and obscure. They had not been linked to experiences of a young European émigré in Latin America, nor to the observations of an exile returning to a post–World War II Germany who finds the country in moral and physical ruins. In retrospect, it seems obvious that Lilienthal’s preoccupation with death, destruction, and emptiness indicates his processing the Holocaust as a publicly unspoken and incomprehensible catastrophe. Whereas the 1960s’ television films evoke the vacuum that the Jewish community had left in West Germany, David was conceived ten years later and effectively promotes a lively Jewish presence. Jewish actors from all over Europe featured in its cast, highlighting Jewishness within this narrative of survival. The story around a young adult and his family, who never give in to desperation and hopelessness, becomes one of the first self-confident Jewish films in the postwar German filmscape. David, narratively anchored in a father-son relationship, explores the crisis of the German Jewish community as a result of cultural introspection. This critique translates to Lilienthal’s interest in exploring how repressed ethnic and cultural minorities deal with crises that threaten their very existence, if and how they resist state terror. How did West German audiences view this film? The last part of this chapter analyzes the critical reception of David being aligned to the beginnings of sociocultural debates about collective guilt and blame in West Germany. The American TV miniseries Holocaust (Marvin M. Chomsky, 1978), broadcast on German television just prior to David’s release in West German cinemas, cast its shadow and pre-empted the ways in which audiences responded to Lilienthal’s film. Exasperated

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voices claimed the historical memory of the Holocaust as German experience, and many felt appalled by the melodramatic treatment of the subject. These discussions highlighted the need to connect artistic approaches of memorializing the Holocaust with an ethical imperative at the fore. Meanwhile, David turned out not to be the expected “German” response to Holocaust. Although celebrated publicly with the highest national and international awards, it disappointed local critics and audiences because it did not portray Jewish victims or profile German villains. The film would soon be eclipsed by Edgar Reitz’s Heimat series (1980–1984), whereby in deflecting attention from the whereabouts of the German Jewish population, an introspective mode of narrating history and suffering in World War II emerged. Against such tendencies that would become a mainstay in German cinema, Lilienthal’s films offset comfortable and seamless spectacles of victimization and guilt, instead signposting Jewish life beyond Holocaust and Heimat.

Specters of the Past In the 1960s, Lilienthal was known as a director whose work went for “trips into the landscapes of the human soul”5 and, through the use of “nightmarish images,”6 dealt with “submission and resistance in times of terror.”7 At the age of twenty-five, Lilienthal had returned to Germany via France, entering the scarred urban landscape of Berlin that the war had left and from which memories of the German Jewish population had disappeared. German society was forced to face the atrocities committed in World War II: The Nuremberg trials, a series of military tribunals against prominent leaders of Nazi Germany held by the Allied forces, had taken place between 1945 and 1947. The debates in the German Bundestag to prevent Verjährung, the suspension of a limitation period for World War II criminals, and the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem both took place in 1961, heightening German and international attention on the Holocaust as a highly organized crime. The Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt (1963–1965) drew attention to the fact that besides high-ranking SS officers and Nazi party members, ordinary men and women were involved in the planning and execution of the genocide. Despite and because of this public showcasing of German guilt, there was a veil of silence that hid feelings of guilt and shame,8 as well as the collective longing to re-establish a sense of normality. Returning emigrants, whether concentration camp survivors, former prisoners of war, or Jewish rémigrés, were not encouraged to talk about their expe-

A Jewish Filmmaker in Postwar Germany

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riences either. According to Gerd Gemünden, they “were expected to return to the German nation-state, share its burden and responsibility and actively participate in its rebuilding without claiming privileges or even compensation for their suffering, which would have reaffirmed the guilt of those who stayed.”9 Against this “pact” of silence, Lilienthal’s work of the 1960s, like that of other Jewish rémigré directors, was a form of self-examination on the one hand, while an exercise of social criticism on the other. Many of Lilienthal’s films, such as Abschied (Farewell, 1966), depict a West Germany wanting to move forward and forget. Set in post– World War II Berlin, the film revolves around a middle-aged man, Kurt Klinkusch (Max Haufler), grieving for his recently deceased partner while preparing for her burial in an environment devoid of space for mourning and reflection. The streets are filled with people who are busy with their everyday lives. New houses are being erected; cars and shops suggest that the economy had recovered. In the midst of this frantic mobility and urban reconstruction projects, however, the specters of the past assert their presence. Time and again the camera pans over destroyed houses and empty space that scar the urban landscape, reminding spectators of absent bodies and homes. As Claudia Lenssen notes, “Abschied reveals makeshift patterns of life of ‘homeless’ contemporaries and an existential loneliness in an unglamorous West Berlin.”10 Earlier works—Biographie eines Schokoladentages (Biography of a Chocolate Day, 1961), Der 18. Geburtstag (The Eighteenth Birthday, 1962), Stück für Stück (Bit by Bit, 1962), Schule der Geläufigkeit (School of Familiarity, 1962), Guernica—Jede Stunde verletzt und die letzte tötet (Guernica—Each Hour Does Harm and the Last One Kills, 1965)—are populated by lowermiddle-class families who live secluded in spaces that are cluttered with old clothes, objects, and furniture. Previously they had enjoyed a comfortable and sheltered existence, and they cannot let go of their life as it once was. Techniques such as farcical situations, played out in a conventional middle-class milieu that is inhabited by seemingly normal families, are formal features used to convey notions of alienation and displacement. In Das Martyrium des Peter O’Hey (Martyrdom of Peter O’Hey, 1964), Peter O’Hey (Joachim Wichmann) is the breadwinner of a family of four, and one of those lifeless individuals who submits to a fate that is beyond his control, for which he was accidentally chosen but whose legitimacy he does not question. With stoic faces and stiff body language, he and his wife (Angelika Hurwicz) receive the news that a tiger occupies their bathroom. Without any complaint, they accept that

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authorities, researchers, the circus, and entire classrooms invade their apartment to study the animal. They keep to their routines and maintain the format. Strict symmetrically composed shots and extreme camera angles add to this idea of individuals maintaining the façade of an orderly life even when it is about to fall apart. Made a year later, Lilienthal’s first film for the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB), Seraphine oder Die wundersame Geschichte der Tante Flora (Seraphine or Aunt Flora’s Odd Story, 1965) is another surrealist, grotesque fable that exudes melancholy, desire, and sadness. The film follows the story of a tyrannical aunt’s hotel stay in a dreary seaside town alongside the couple Daniel and Dora, who check in with a sea monster in a box, which they plan to set free. Ulrich Gregor found that Seraphine’s protagonists “seem to be introverted, serious, and locked out of the world because of their unfathomable suffering.”11 Funk calls them “old, damaged, and tired of life,” even in a “state of senile infantilism,”12 waiting for their turn to die. Lilienthal had spent his formative years in the community of European Holocaust survivors in Uruguay and was surrounded by sad figures such as Aunt Flora or Peter O’Hey. For the filmmaker’s parents and other Jewish émigrés, their move to Latin America represented a brutal uprooting of their lives. They had lost family members and friends, their home country, culture, and material possessions. While many had enjoyed an affluent lifestyle back in Europe, they occupied a lower social status in their new life, which came as a shock to them.13 Being unable to fathom the human tragedy of the Holocaust that had destroyed their existence, they tried to counterbalance their losses and pain by holding on to old routines, habits, and customs. The early television films can be understood to actively process these sensations of loss and hopelessness in metaphorical and allegorical forms. Others capture moments in which people experience what Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and Hans-Helmut Prinzler call “radical borderline experiences” and feelings of powerlessness and submission to an omnipotent invisible authority.14 The minimalistic and metaphorical Striptease (1963) revisits the situation of German Jews in Nazi Germany who hesitated to believe in the threat directed against them even when they were dismissed from their high-ranking positions and lost their businesses and factories.15 Two businessmen enter what appears to be a bunker and sit down. Though the door is open, they choose not to leave. With the affective sensation of a looming threat, the men talk about the need to keep calm and dignified. They hand over their clothes piece by piece to a gesturally demanding hand reaching through the wall. Eventually, the door closes, transforming the room into a prison

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cell, while they still argue about making a decision, inner freedom, and ways to get out. When the door opens again, they leave the room as prisoners, walking off into a white unknown. The absurd and stilted nature of some if not all of Lilienthal’s films of this period—for example, the previously described use of objects such as tigers and monsters in apartments and hotels—are due to his affinity with surrealism and absurd theater, a short-lived but influential theatrical movement of the 1950s. Absurd theater, a form of experimental drama, is based on the existentialist belief that life itself is an absurd condition. Lilienthal admired and adapted to screen the absurd dramas of Sławomir Mrozek, Fernando Arrabal, and Witold Gombrowicz, European artists of his generation who spent most of their lifetime in exile. Martyrium and Striptease are based on plays by Polish playwright Mrozek; Picknick im Felde (Picnic on the Battlefield, 1962) and Guernica are adaptations by Spanish playwright, novelist, and poet Arrabal. Above all, Lilienthal felt a kinship with novelist Gombrowicz, whose work remained banned in his native Poland for most of his lifetime and who resided in Argentina for over two decades. Verbrechen mit Vorbedacht (A Crime Well Planned, 1967) and Die Sonne angreifen (Attacking the Sun, 1971) are based on Gombrowicz’s novel Pornografía (Pornography, 1960).16 Lilienthal’s films adapted the aesthetics of absurd theater to the televisual, incorporating dream objects, collages of material from weekly newsreels, and film footage from the silent film era. Guernica, for example, quotes Luis Buñuel’s documentary Las Hurdas: Tierra sin Pan (Land without Bread, 1932). Surrealist elements and bizarre animals that appear in later films, such as a character dressed up in a rooster costume walking down an alley in the city of Jerusalem in Das Schweigen des Dichters (The Silence of the Poet, 1986) highlight the precarious and coincidental nature of human existence. But then there is the SDR (Südddeutscher Rundfunk) production Der Beginn (The Beginning, 1966), which captures the impulses of present urban life and current youth culture. With a mobile camera, use of natural light, popular music, and a narrative structured by aimlessness and sexual longing, Der Beginn insinuates the freshness of the French New Wave. Filmed on outside locations in and around Berlin, it casts the handsome young protagonist Rick, who has just arrived from a threemonth stay in Spain. Full of energy and feelings of having the world at his feet, he returns to a stuffy family home. His parents are drowned in the monotony of daily life, which they seek to escape from with weekend parties at their local garden house or in front of the television. Horrified by the idea of succumbing to the same fate, he toys with the idea

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Figure 1.1. Still shot from Der Beginn.

of returning to Spain to work in a hotel. Der Beginn, which contains Lilienthal’s comment of West German reality of the 1960s, forms the profile of the young wanderer with a suitcase, who rebels wholeheartedly against social norms and related customs. This film’s realist approach and youthful energy suggests an end to what could be understood as Lilienthal’s phase of cinematic mourning. During a time of political radicalization and social liberation processes, discussions with film students at the DFFB and the general air of social change and public dialogue support a rejuvenation of his filmmaking. A series of films that Lilienthal made in the 1970s, such as Jakob von Gunten (1971), La Victoria (1973), and Hauptlehrer Hofer (Teacher Hofer, 1975), realize the stories and experiences of a younger generation, emphasizing a tendency to move away from the aestheticism of the early years and the controlled environment of the television studio. Through these transformations, David appears as Lilienthal’s “coming out” as a Jewish filmmaker. It was an enormous responsibility to take on such a project, which would stir up difficult memories and experiences.

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Spaces of Jewish Existence David is a study of German Jewry after 1933, filmed with a Jewish cast and directed by a Jewish director, based on Joel Koenig’s autobiographical novel Den Netzen entronnen. Die Aufzeichnungen des Joel König (Escaped from the Nets: Joel Koenig’s Notes, 1967).17 Jurek Becker, known for his collaboration on the DEFA film Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, Frank Beyer, 1975), initially collaborated with Lilienthal and Ulla Ziemann on the screenplay.18 An ensemble of talented actors and young people from all over Europe were involved in the making of this film. Twenty-yearold Mario Fischel, cast as David, was an economics student in Paris at the time. For actor Dominique Horwitz, who played David’s brother Leon, this was his first film role. Eva Mattes, a renowned theater actress and in the process of becoming one of the faces of New German Cinema, had already worked with Peter Zadek, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Werner Herzog before accepting the role of David’s sister Toni. Croatian poet Irena Vrkljan, who lived in Berlin at the time, was cast as David’s mother. Czech actor and theater director Valter Taub

Figure 1.2. Peter Lilienthal and young extras on the set of David. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

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was honored with the Filmband in Gold award for his role as David’s father, Rabbi Singer. The young extras were recruited from local Jewish communities in Frankfurt, Munich, and the Warsaw Yiddish theater. David’s cast were involved as an affirmation of the ongoing existence of Jewish life in postwar Europe. Focused on the experiences of the young man, David, the film conveys the threats Jewish families in Nazi Germany were exposed to and spotlights their survival strategies. Events begin in Liegnitz, a town near Breslau, in 1933. The Singer family had invited friends to their home when, for the first time, they become aware of public forms of hostility toward them. From their balcony they witness Hitler Youths marching by, shouting, “Jews, out!” David grows up in an increasingly hostile environment. He takes advantage of one of the few educational opportunities still open to him and trains as a sewing machine mechanic in Berlin in 1938. He urges his family to consider leaving Germany. With his hesitant father, a rabbi, they discuss the remaining routes of escape at the local emigration bureau. David takes upon himself the burden of fulfilling the obligation to train in an agricultural camp to procure a family visa to Palestine. However, his father makes the decision to stay in Germany, and David returns from the camp. Eventually, the parents are accosted while using the subway and are rounded up and detained. David and his sister Toni now rely on the solidarity of friends. They find shelter at a former friend of the family’s home, hiding in wardrobes and closets. David even sneaks back into his parents’ looted house. Sometime later, when he is undercover earning money by doing jobs for a manufacturer, he manages to escape Berlin with the help of the factory owner and makes his way to Palestine. Sociologist Avtar Brah notes that the “question of home . . . is intrinsically linked with the way in which processes of inclusion or exclusion operate and are subjectively experienced under given circumstances.”19 Lilienthal’s film provides a compelling account of the ever-shrinking spaces that Jewish people inhabited, a commentary on the social and political process of exclusion in Europe in the 1940s. Open spaces and opulent houses convey the well-being of the Jewish community before the Nazis came to power, suggesting that they enjoyed a respected, middle-class status in Germany. The Singer family owns a big house, equipped with antique furniture and thick carpets. A chandelier lights the dining room, where friends and family sit at the long table eating, laughing, and playing with the children. But then, Jews are not allowed to take part in gentile German life anymore, and they navigate through increasingly smaller living spaces. Soldiers vandalize Jewish shops and

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burn down the synagogue during Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) in 1938. When Singer sits in a café with his sons Leon and David, the waiter ignores them until they finally leave. After David’s arrival in Berlin in 1938, the film shows the family in clandestine locations. After Jewish homes having been taken away and all communal spaces destroyed, these places can grant only temporary shelter. David is one of those young petit bourgeois characters “on the run and on the road” that now populate Lilienthal’s films. They are radical and resilient, have visionary ideas and the courage to brave authorities. Hauptlehrer Hofer, for example, revolves around a teacher who was hired to work in the local village school in Alsace at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hofer (André Watt) insists that children should attend school regularly, instead of having to labor in the fields. As an outsider, he faces opposition and distrust from local villagers and is accused of being a troublemaker: “Those who come from who-knowswhere talk a lot. They understand nothing.” Lilienthal’s coming-of-age protagonists grow and mature in the process of fighting for their ideals. Believable and almost introverted figures such as Hofer, they often fail. In the end, Hofer is fired from his job and expelled from the village. Lilienthal notes about him, “It is not his brilliant intellect, or that he [Hofer] achieves grand results, or stages a big rebellion. It is [to show] the small steps, so that normal people can identify with this figure.”20 Films that deal with Jewish subjects, such as the aforementioned Das Schweigen des Dichters or Angesichts der Wälder (Facing the Forests, 1995), portray characters who appear to succumb to a more comfortable, settled life, pursuing materialist and individualist aims. They fail to understand or care for the larger, political context that they are part of. Angesichts der Wälder draws a bleak picture of Israel’s society as intolerant, neurotic, and deeply scarred by constant warfare. But the retreat into the intimacy of the private realm proves dangerous, as it is a closing of eyes and ears to their surroundings and avoids finding a solution to the ongoing disputes with Palestinians. David examines diaspora as a counter-discourse to a settled existence. The film explores the events that led to the Holocaust as a traumatic and transformative event, which destroyed a middle-class German Jewish intellectual tradition. Paradoxically, this crisis also invites a consideration of reformative and regenerative Jewish diasporic culture. Lilienthal creates David and his father, Rabbi Singer, as characters who are related in spirit and share the commitment to Jewish life and traditions but also as members of disparate generations. Robert Liebman interprets Rabbi Singer’s manner as a role model for his son: “His fa-

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ther taught him that when the authorities forbid you to pray, you can outsmart them by praying to yourself. His father also declared that a swastika on one’s head is insignificant if one is alive to talk about it: ‘I am here, I am here, that’s all that counts.’” Liebman refers to a scene in which Rabbi Singer has returned home from the arrest following the Nazis burning down his synagogue in Kristallnacht. At the dining table surrounded by his worried family, Singer discloses that he had silently recited poems when being forced to stand on his feet for hours, a strategy to survive such humiliation and disgrace. The rabbi cloaks his desperation behind humor and laughter because he is yet to reveal the worst. When he removes his hat, his bald scalp reveals a tattooed swastika, a most powerful image and branding of violence and indignity. The Singer figure exemplifies the emancipated German Jewish citizen who grew up with the German humanist heritage and has a false sense of security that was acquired over a lifetime as a German citizen.21 Ignoring the early signs of the Nazi threat in everyday life, he closes his eyes to what is happening around him. When witnessing members of the Hitler Youth from his window, whose audible shouts “Jews, get out!” catch his and his Jewish friends’ attention, he mishears these shouts as “Youth, get out.” This apparent mistake demonstrates his refusal to understand the political and social processes in Nazi Germany that would be lethal to the Jewish community. As he says, “Antisemitism is a God-given blessing that forces Jews to reflect. Who will still hate us?” Singer’s perception that the increasing menace is a shortlived phenomenon is similar to the carelessness of the businessmen in Striptease, in particular reference to their lack of defense and mobility. The German Jewish middle-class milieu and the unwavering loyalty of German Jews to Germany that led to the demise for many are resonant ideas articulated in Konrad Wolf’s feature Professor Mamlock (1961). Produced by DEFA almost twenty years earlier, the film depicts the Mamlocks’ spacious family home as a physical shelter from the hostile outside world that Germany becomes from 1933 onward. The chief surgeon of the local hospital is a respected member of the local community. Having lived in a Germany that upheld religious tolerance and cultural diversity, he misjudges this country and their citizens to be reasonable and civil and initially dismisses Nazism as a temporary phenomenon. Like Singer, the doctor will eventually experience denigration and humiliation. Nazi officers escort him through the streets of his hometown in his white apron, smeared with the word “Jude.” Singer and Mamlock, the strongest supporters of German culture, are transformed into defenseless victims of fanatic hate and revenge.

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Wolf’s and Lilienthal’s films are aligned in the hope that the younger generation will become the future protagonists of a renovated Jewish existence. Yet the films differ in their vision as to where exactly this would be. Wolf’s films, according to Ofer Ashkenazi, “negotiate the viewpoint of a stranger who strives to integrate.”22 Alternatively, Mamlock’s son Rolf joins the Communist Party, a figure that suggests Wolf’s hope that the social and political structures of East Germany offer spaces to include and accept German Jewry as emancipated citizens. In contrast, the nomadic character of Lilienthal’s protagonist(s) indicates that Jewish life and culture cannot be endured inside of Europe and that ultimately a Jewish Heimat (home) does not exist. Moving between different locations and institutions cultivates David’s ability to adapt and have the energy to find where he is accepted. As a child, he was mesmerized when he saw a street artist perform an escape from chains that were wrapped all around his body, a symbol of the Jewish condition at the time and of the need to have the courage to break one’s chains. David is the image of the emergent diasporic post-Holocaust Jew, a character who has been denied feeling at home in Germany from an early age. His childhood and adolescent years have been overshadowed by experiences of segregation and racism. He first becomes victim to a xenophobic attack when he returns from school one day. Two Hitler Youths round him up, call him a “Jewish pig,” and knock him down. These experiences allow David to comprehend— much better than his father—the magnitude of the current threat to the Jewish community and therefore develop strategies to protect himself. David listens to his Jewish fellows, but he does not share their desperation or self-pity. The older David indeed reveals the aptitude for breaking his chains. His curious and courageous character are necessary ingredients for establishing an autonomous community in Palestine. Unlike his intellectually oriented father, David trains for a technical job; he learns how to repair sewing machines or cultivate plants with enthusiasm. David steers his own fate and that of his family. Becoming a driving force behind efforts to rescue his family, he attempts to convince his father to leave for Palestine and prepares their departure. He takes his father to buy appropriate footwear for the hot climate in the desert, and he takes Singer’s photograph for the visa application. With these activities, he acts as head of the family. Sitting in the emigration office, David is enthusiastic when hearing about the application procedure and of the voyage to Palestine, even when the officer warns them about possible complications when crossing the seas. However, he cannot save his

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family. In their last scene together, David and his father observe friends being arrested from a distance. This medium shot, which frames David and Singer’s upper bodies against the shadows of a wall, is a premonition of their fates. Singer looks to the ground, his scarf carelessly tied around his neck. He will not be able to cope with the tension, stress, and indignity any longer. David, standing upright and a head taller than his father, holds his head high, unbroken and proud (see figure 1.3). He never shows signs of sadness, mourning, or aggression when he realizes that his parents have been arrested. Sitting at the table and resting his forehead on the edge of the table at his parents’ former house, we see a moment of fatigue. Lynne Layton understands the focus on actions and movement, which neglects exploring the emotional state, as a “non-reflexive strategy” that sometimes appears as if characters were uninvolved.23 David’s journey includes moments of hope and relief from the succession of narrow and dark interior spaces. In the hachsharah, an agricultural training camp, he prepares for the challenges that await Jews in building a life in the Middle Eastern desert climate. The scenario at the hachsharah conveys a notion of belonging and situates his run to be

Figure 1.3. David (Mario Fischel) and his father (Valter Taub) must separate. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

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temporarily on hold.24 It is a place that offers a temporary relief—the feeling of security and a sense of being part of a like-minded community enable an escape from the burdens and rules of a society that ostracize them. The camp is housed in a country estate, a mansion with high ceilings, big doors, and windows that leave rooms flooded with light, surroundings reminiscent of David’s parents’ home, suggesting a livable space, in which Jewish traditions and rites can be practiced once again. These scenes imagine an intact Jewish community. After a welcome by an austere camp leader (Hanns Zischler), David is greeted with a much friendlier “Shalom” by young Jewish fellows, returning from work in the fields and curious to meet the newbie. We watch David’s face light up immediately. As in the opening scenes in his parents’ house, a group sits around a long, festively decorated table. In a camera shot that is taken from the head of the table, it is never-ending and plays host to innumerable people, a community that in sharing its food is committed to the project of creating for themselves the kind of life they are denied in the hostile environment of contemporaneous Germany. The hachsharah in David corresponds to ideas of utopia as an “imaginary project of another kind of society, of another reality, another world.”25 Similar places that provide temporary shelter from the attacks and ostracism of main society appear, among others, in Hauptlehrer Hofer, La Victoria, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (Calm Prevails Over the Country, 1975), and Angesichts der Wälder, where Lilienthal reiterates the desire for a place where one does not have to fight, struggle, or resist, but instead can simply be. The filming of these scenes on the outskirts of Berlin was layered with troubling personal memories. Author Joel Koenig, who accompanied the crew on daily trips across the inner German border into Brandenburg, experienced a range of emotions from nostalgia to horror. Having to endure the search routines of the East German border control, he is retraumatized by the atrocities in the concentration camp Oranienburg, while simultaneously the rural landscape acts as reminder of the bond with friends he met at the preparation camp in Steckelsdorf. This landscape we pass sitting in a van stills looks “märkisch-brandenburgisch,” so that I feel taken back by decades. Behind this or that turn in the road the idea shoots in my head that my friends from the Palestinapreparation camp may be waiting behind the pine trees. This idea does not let me be, even if propaganda posters on the side of the road invite to “joyful work efforts for our German Democratic fatherland” and even if there is no doubt that my friends were gassed, perished, or burnt behind German watchtowers.26

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Figure 1.4. David on his way to the agricultural training camp. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

Indeed, the scenes of the peaceful wintry landscape have an eerie quality. David, dressed in a coat and carrying a suitcase, walks along an alley lined with oak and chestnut trees, when suddenly a dilapidated mansion appears. Where private spaces and the urban environment of

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Berlin suggest dissolution of the Jewish community in broad brushstrokes, the images of this landscape capture the complexity of emotions involved: isolation, estrangement, and longing for human interaction and friendship. David contains heightened feelings of optimism and desolation in the final scenes that take place at a busy freight terminal in Berlin, where trains depart and arrive constantly. During and after World War II, the railway was a metaphor for a distorted sense of modernity, mass deportations, and the endpoint of Jewish existence.27 Countless Holocaust films, such as the shocking documentary Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, Alain Resnais, 1955), Wolf’s prize-winning feature Sterne (Stars, 1959), and innumerable other films, have used trains and train tracks to signify the Jewish journey to death, having become a uniform symbol of horror for the collective transnational memory of the Holocaust. Images of dark wooden wagons and guards with barking dogs walking alongside the rails at night are also evocative of fear and danger in David. Yet, the film features the trains as connected to chances of survival and escape. It will end with a close-up of David shot through the back window of a carriage as it slowly rolls out of the depot, an escape to the unknown. The visual epilogue of the film, which feature images of the sea and David in a boat squeezed in with other passengers and suitcases, is embedded in a collage of documentary film footage and old photographs. This moment represents the anticipated arrival to Palestine and affirms a rather happy ending, while signposting a multiplicity of survival stories that maintain a collective vision of Israel as the imaginary homeland. The final images reinforce the theme running throughout the film, being the de-territorialized and regenerative nature of Jewish culture. Elements of persistence and hope continually foster the belief that the strength of the Jewish diaspora results from “processes of repeated removal and regrounding” as well as cultural transformations, which “afford Jewishness the paradoxical power of nakhnu-ma, survival and presence through absence and loss.”28 Paul Ricœur’s thoughts strengthen the view of this final sequence as utopia: The modern utopias of our generation . . . are all challenges to the bureaucratic state. Their claim for radical equality and the complete redistribution of the ways in which decisions are made implies an alternative to the present uses of power in our society.29

The imagery of joyfully dancing people at the seashore may then also signify the beginning of a new journey for the Jewish people and the

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idea that a home is not a physical place, but rather denotes an integrative and egalitarian society that includes Jews as emancipated citizens.

David between Holocaust and Heimat That this film has won a Golden Bear in Berlin should be seen as a timely gesture, a reaction to the shock the TV series Holocaust provoked in Germany, and, therefore, is also a wider acknowledgment of German films which [alongside David] deliver a committed contribution to the taboo subject “Jews in Germany” at a time when, under altered circumstances, the world recalls the annihilation of the Jews during the Third Reich.30

David premiered in the competition of the 1979 Berlin Film Festival and was subsequently awarded the prestigious Golden Bear, given to a German film for the first time since the festival’s founding in 1951. This was a major achievement for Lilienthal that brought attention to the filmmaker in the international art film circuit. However, the two weeks leading up to this decision were tumultuous, overshadowed by the controversy around the competing American film Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1979), an emotionally intense, three-hour drama that dealt with the psychological impact of the Vietnam War on American soldiers. The socialist bloc protested the inclusion of this production in the festival’s program due to the perceived portrayal of this war being unrealistic and enacting the glorification of violence and war more generally. Eastern Europe subsequently withdrew their films and pulled out their delegates. The Czechoslovakian and Hungarian jury members had to go home.31 A reduced jury, among them British actress Julie Christie, announced that the Golden Bear would go to David. Against the opulent violence and “cynical pessimism” of the star-studded feature, Lilienthal’s quiet film was generally admired as a “gentle form of humanism.”32 While the storm around Deer Hunter receded after the end of the festival, it had directed attention away from its actual winner, foreshadowing David to be consumed by the discussions around an American production that took West Germany and indeed the world by storm. When David hit German theaters in March, debates were in full swing about the television film series Holocaust. It is interesting to note that with this active dialogue around Holocaust and Deer Hunter, David may have generated interest in audiences who perhaps would not have normally been interested in art house cinema. The many questions, claims, and controversies in West Germany that Holocaust had created around

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the representation and representability of the Holocaust certainly conditioned David’s critical reception and set expectations of how a German film should deal with this issue. The five-part television series Holocaust was produced by the American TV channel NBC and starred Meryl Streep and James Woods as Jewish couple Inga and Karl Weiss. The melodrama plots the fate of the Weiss family, which starts with Inga and Karl’s marriage in 1935 and ends in 1945 with all but one member of the family murdered in the gas chambers of Eastern Europe. The character of Erik Dorf, son of a befriended family, is an SS-officer and acts as antagonist—partly responsible for what happens to the Weisses. Their fate and his career are entwined, narrated alongside key historical events that would lead to the persecution and murder of some six million Jews, making the series, according to some, a historical lesson.33 The series would ultimately come to present, along with the Eichmann trial and the diary of Anne Frank, the most important mediatized memory of the Holocaust worldwide.34 Holocaust was broadcast on West German television in January 1979 and became the catalyst for one of the liveliest public discourses about the Holocaust in postwar West Germany history. Seen as a “public event of the first order,”35 the series is credited to have brought the atrocities of the Holocaust directly into German living rooms. Over twenty million Germans of almost all classes and ages watched the series. In the months following its broadcast, Holocaust provided countless debates about the common fascist past in talk shows, universities, and classrooms alike.36 Magazines such as Der Spiegel were filled with reports, diaries of concentration camp survivors, and featured essays on the subject of German Jewish relations before and after 1945. Scholarship inside and outside of Germany saw Holocaust as a turning point for the debate about recent history and German Jewish relations. The New German Critique dedicated an entire issue on Holocaust as part of a special edition on Germans and Jews in 1980. To the younger generation, the film came as a shock. Up until then, many had not been able to see films or documentaries about the attempted annihilation of the European Jewry.37 Siegfried Zielinski states that this led students to demand that they visit concentration camps and talk with survivors and members of resistance groups, beyond discussing this subject within formal class learning structures.38 West German literature and theater had certainly engaged with German fascism before.39 A number of dramas were produced in the 1960s aiming to engage audiences to think through their own complicity and

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guilt and provoking public attention and controversy where a lot of scrutiny was given to the depictions of Jewish characters in these texts. Critics felt that they often reflected essentialist notions about Jewishness or appeared as ethnic and religious Other. One of the earliest plays, Max Frisch’s Andorra (1961), staged a fictitious state to be threatened by a neighboring country. A parable about antisemitism and prejudice, it was one of the most successful plays of the postwar era, but spectators could never quite relate to its main protagonist, Andri. Frisch’s “imagined Jew” had scholars uneasy over the question of whether he had reproduced stereotypes.40 Caroline and Frank Schaumann note in their reflection about the drama: The unresolved tension between pattern and particular affects Frisch’s approach to Jewish religion and culture. While the play centers on the murder of a so-called Jew, its message is embedded in familiar Christian symbolism, imagery, and commandments.41

Andorra’s religious overtones connect to Rolf Hochhut’s Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy, 1963), which scrutinizes the role of the churches in the Third Reich.42 Sourced from memoirs, biographies, and diaries, Hochhut’s play accused the Vatican of having been a silent bystander to the persecution of Jews. The text called for international controversy, including from the incumbent pope itself. Its premiere led to the biggest international scandal that West Germany had ever seen. Another play that belongs to the genre of documentary theater, Die Ermittlung (The Investigation, 1965), is a dramatization of documents of the Auschwitz trials. A highly experimental piece that moves between facts, fiction, hallucination, surrealism, and dream, to some it presented a distorted aesthetic representation of the Holocaust and was dismissed as a pamphlet of the radical left wing.43 Author, painter, and filmmaker Peter Weiss, in exposing Auschwitz functionaries who continued to occupy important positions in West German politics and industry, grated on the nerves of others.44 An insistent criticism of this complex drama was that the word “Jew” never appears in the play, the Jewish victims are developed without reference to their national or ethnic identity, and Weiss himself never seems to reflect on his Jewishness. A few years later, Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote the play Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod (Garbage, the City and Death, 1974), which dealt with the intrigues and entanglements of a Frankfurt-based Jewish property speculator. From the very beginning, allegations of antisemitism against Fassbinder prevented its publication as a book and the staging of the play. When it was supposed to be performed at the Schauspiel Frankfurt in 1985, lo-

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cal Jewish communities and associations blocked the stage on the day of its premiere. While none of these plays had seemed correct, satisfying, agreeable, trustworthy, or sufficiently moving, the fate of the Weiss family of the American series engaged all, if briefly. Following a Jewish family from the Nuremberg Laws to the gas chambers and beyond, Holocaust had managed to give the Jewish genocide a human face. Andreas Huyssen notes that “this was the first time that a German mass-audience could identify with the Jews as Jews—like themselves members of a family, united by and conflicting in their emotions, their outlook, their everyday concerns.”45 Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, chief editor of Die Zeit, advocated Holocaust and found that the melodramatic genre was successful in engaging German audiences in affective ways. She claimed, “Emotional identification with the characters had ‘finally’ created a confrontation with the past that had eluded the efforts of scholarship and documentary film.”46 In contrast, left-leaning critics and intellectuals were alarmed by the strong emotional affect and agitation that the series had evoked in German audiences. They objected to the melodramatic representation of the series and dismissed it as a clichéd and trivialized account. Amid warnings that a cheap popularization of complex historical processes could not possibly help Germans overcome the burden of the past, the political left demanded “an objective analysis.”47 Huyssen argues that “the series’ success could and should be used to start a post‘Holocaust’ campaign of rational political enlightenment which would focus on the roots of anti-Semitism and, more importantly, on the social, economic and ideological roots of National Socialism.”48 With discussions in family homes, university panels, and television shows in West Germany, there was a short-lived moment of compassion for the Jewish community and the incredible losses they had suffered. Soon enough, public interest would shift back to analyze Nazi Germany as a society of perpetrators, all somehow guilty of having participated in engineering the Jewish exodus. Regina M. Feldman notes that by means of Holocaust and the ensuing public debate about the German past, the Holocaust became the central negative reference point of German identity.49 Public figures came out about their own Third Reich past. The incumbent SPD chancellor Helmut Schmidt felt compelled to reveal that he had been a member of the Wehrmacht, and Der Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein admitted he had known about the existence of the gas chambers but was concerned with protecting himself and his family. These confessions were met with public sympathy. Hungarian scholar Tamás Kisantal notes that social and cultural representation of

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the Holocaust “maps and forms the historical consciousness of a given culture and society.”50 The legacy of the Jewish genocide in Germany is equal to an obsession with questions of national collective guilt, which would dominate cinematic representations of World War II and the Holocaust in decades to come. Dan Diner notes that “the question of guilt accompanies the discourse on Nazism and the Holocaust in a markedly constant way. Indeed, it becomes an abiding, collectively selfconfirming motif, which has powerful cultural implications.”51 The critical reception of David in West Germany echoes the urge to entertain the Täterperspektive (focus on the perpetrator). Critical voices lamented the absence of German gentiles in David. Audiences, to a lesser degree interested in the Jewish experience, wanted to see and analyze, most of all, themselves. The Frankfurter Rundschau found that a focus on Jewish victims was imbalanced.52 The Münchner Merkur claimed that a portrayal of the German side in a film about the Holocaust was inevitable: One perceives as a major flaw that the opposite side, demonized in Holocaust, is completely absent here. Apart from a few extras in brown shirts, nothing is seen of the Nazi regime. It might be that the victims precisely felt the anonymity of the power which held them at its mercy. However, a film these days does not satisfy with the rabbi’s opinion “God imposes a heavy burden upon us.”53

But David does not contain an Erik Dorf character that could be easily recognized as a perpetrator. Though we see Nazis destroy buildings, smash windows, and force Jews out of houses and into waiting trucks, the long-shot film technique portrays them as an anonymous group. David’s critics were baffled to instead find Germans whose intentions were ambiguous; benefiting from the Jews predicament of the powerless and their need of help, they were nevertheless kind. A shoemaker, an old friend of the family, hides David and his sister in his house but requests valuables and furniture from the Singer family house in return. The owner of a weapons factory gives David a job. Suspecting that he is a Jew in hiding, the man organizes a passport that allows him to escape Germany. Critics found that these characters remained underdeveloped. Because the film did not reveal their motivations, the question of “How could the Holocaust have happened?” remained unanswered.54 Film reviewers wondered: Was it pure philanthropy or friendliness toward Jews? this would be interesting to know in view of the image of Germans that the film promotes, at least indirectly.55

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Why does the shoemaker act in this way? Is greed a motive for behavior that could be punished with the death penalty? What motivates the actions of the factory owner, philanthropy or a first act of reinsurance?56

Then again, Jewish characters, such as Rabbi Singer, who made fun and even laughed in the most terrible moments, challenged German ideas of daily Jewish life in an environment of hate, including the ways in which Jews reacted toward ostracism. Christian Schultz-Gerstein of Der Spiegel is one of the few to recognize the film’s Jewishness as provocative and productive, praising David as going against a Holocaust memory that was guided by German guilt and responsibility. Because the main protagonist does not arrive where one expects him to, because the young David is not being positioned in our required guilt about National Socialism, one is suddenly at a loss in Lilienthal’s film, where until now one had faced the established if scarcely believable details that defy ready comprehension—Auschwitz, gas chambers, six million victims.57

Schultz-Gerstein’s eloquent comment stood isolated. Most critics found this Jewish survivor’s story to be unrealistic and not representative. The Rhein Neckar-Zeitung read David’s successful escape as a desire to repress reality.58 The Saarbrücker Zeitung wrote that this scenario belittled the Jewish fate. David’s successful survival would shed negative light on the Jewish population by blaming them to be responsible for themselves.59 If he could save his life, why could not others do the same? According to the Kölnische Rundschau, this could indicate that German Jews were ignorant, not alert enough, or underestimated the danger they were exposed to.60 At the same time, it was criticized that Lilienthal’s David appeared emotionally uninvolved.61 Even though he was on the run from certain death, he acted in ways that could be construed as “optimistic” and “carefree.”62 Again it was the Kölnische Rundschau that claimed, “One cannot warm up to the figure of David, who is presented like a sample under a microscope.”63 Even Wolfram Schütte of the Frankfurter Rundschau viewed David’s character without “any emotional or mental wounds, which could have an impact on his positive character.”64 Moreover, critics were irritated about what they found to be monotonous editing patterns. These would inhibit giving the film narrative flow and a suspenseful buildup. “One misses the moment when the Jews meet the terror face to face.”65 One wonders if German spectators would rather believe a dramatic and shocking representation and/or Jews to be constructed as passive and sad in order to accept these figures as authentic.

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Kisantal notes that realistic and factual modes, linear narratives that place viewers in space and time, are preferred over experimental styles as more ethical representations of the Third Reich subject.66 In fact, comments for David illustrate general expectations of directors of “Holocaust films” to have moral responsibility of finding a mode of representation that makes it easy for audiences to follow its story. Voices that questioned the film as an authentic representation of the historical events suggest the difficulty of post–World War II society to contemplate and even less so accept Jewish representations of the Holocaust. While German audiences expected a film in which they could identify with characters in both positive and negative ways and find within it an indication of the moral responsibility of German gentiles, this was a film that Lilienthal was never interested in making. It became clear that the filmmaker and spectators occupied divergent perspectives of experience. Fixations on the German self and psyche made the absence of Jewish voices in German culture and society painfully felt: those who could intervene in Holocaust memory culture as political, social, and cultural navel-gazing and speak up against know-it-alls with uninformed, obsessive ideas of Jewishness.67 Between Holocaust as an American version that cast Jews as victims and David as a Jewish perspective, neither offered Germans a meaningful place and shared realm of experience. Edgar Reitz’s epic Heimat series would finally satisfy and fully saturate the desire for an “authentic” German film to examine Third Reich history. What started with Heimat—Eine deutsche Chronik (Homeland: A German Chronicle, 1980–1984) was followed by Die zweite Heimat (The Second Homeland: Chronicle of a Youth, 1988–1992) and Heimat 3—Chronik einer Zeitenwende (The Third Homeland: Chronicle of the Turn of an Era, 2004).68 The film project was indeed motivated by Reitz’s anger toward the American sentimental melodrama that he evaluated as a reductive and market-oriented exploitation of German history.69 Authors worldwide try to gain ownership of their own history and, therefore, the history of the group they belong to. But often they experience that their history is being pulled out of their hands. The most profound process of expropriation that can happen is expropriating the human being of their own history. With Holocaust, the Americans have stolen our history.70

Reitz’s Heimat was conceived as a local story about the Simon family and other inhabitants of the village of Schabbach in the Hunsrück mountains. According to Johannes von Moltke, the epic film series falls

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into a genre that deals with “questions of home and away, tradition and change, belonging and difference, [that are] inscribed in the German term Heimat.”71 Based on the director’s own recollections of growing up in this region and including testimonies by locals and old newspapers of actual historical events, the series combines fictional, biographical, and documentary elements. This emotional mapping of the German everyday man undermines the political correctness of official political statements, later gaining the rank of a cinematic chronicle of German history. Michael Geisler states that, “he [Reitz] suspends the traumatizing question of responsibility in exchange for an unobstructed, personal look at historical continuity.”72 Spectators are invited to identify with a rural population who consider themselves pitiful losers and victims of adverse historical circumstances. Heimat’s rhetoric about Jews reveals rather problematic or, as some would suggest, antisemitic traces.73 Here, as in the majority of films made in the 1970s and 1980s, Jewish characters appeared only sporadically, while the topic of the Holocaust is largely absent or relegated to narrative references.74 Axel Bangert notes that there was resentment among German filmmakers for representing the “Other” because no one wanted to run the risk of being called philosemitic.75 Heimat reveals what would be a trend in the direction in the coming-to-terms debate discussed in German mainstream cinema: “The trauma of burying and repressing the past—the collective amnesia—which had characterized German society for the first three decades after the war, seems to have been lifted only at the price of nostalgia, of a gratifying identification with victims and with oneself as victim, if not of history, then of time itself.”76 In juxtaposition to German Autorenkino as a “space for filmmakers and audiences to converse about their historical experiences,”77 which relied upon commonality and sameness, Lilienthal’s contribution to the German filmscape represented the Jewish counterpart of Holocaust memory. Susan Neiman notes that the best German Jewish artists get the details right: they “describe temptation, complicity, and self-deception, small resolutions and real choices,” yet they often remain unheard in the public.78 David reveals that there are moral ambiguities that connect German and Jewish characters alike. The film promotes recognition of misconceptions and reconciliation to repair burdened German Jewish relations in postwar Germany. Lilienthal himself realized that there was still a long way to go. In an interview with Egon Netenjakob, he reported that making this film was a painful experience. Streets and buildings in Berlin evoked asso-

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ciations, feelings, and images that burdened him.79 The disinterest and ignorance of Berliners who passed by the film set, the haste of pedestrians trying to move away quickly when the film crew shot scenes that staged the roundup of Jewish families, upset him. The director recalls that they were annoyed by the fact that the film-shooting equipment and activities took away parking space for their cars.80 He did not come back to make another film in Germany.

Conclusion Lilienthal’s early television work dealt with a post–World War II West German society that was focused on economic progress and striving to get back to normal. Using surrealist and alienating film techniques, the films engage with themes of isolation, rupture, and death. The implicit way of examining reasons and consequences of the Jewish genocide mirrored the unease around these issues in West Germany, where open debates about recent history had yet to take place. Inspired by the social and cultural renewal processes of the late 1960s, the anxious and emotionally empty protagonists that populate Striptease, Seraphine, or Peter O’Hey make way for proactive and life-affirming characterization. In this transformative process, Lilienthal’s films acquire a lighter tone and bold, realist style. David, about a persecuted Jewish family in Berlin of the 1930s, featured prominently in the vigorous public discourse that had been prompted by the American miniseries Holocaust. The reception analysis within this chapter shows that the film’s portrayal of the German Jewish community and their ways of dealing with discrimination and threats juxtaposes the ideas of critics and artists, who at the time emphasized themes of collective guilt, responsibility, and morality. As a film that draws images of Jewish survivors but does not allow an analysis of bystanders and perpetrators, it failed to satisfy the interest of many. Yet, it is precisely the survivor and émigré David, timid and softspoken, who serves as a blueprint for characters that feature in other films made by Lilienthal. This is a believable, coming-of-age character, one who makes mistakes and picks up insights along the way, inspiring others to use nonviolent forms of resisting authorities and repressive powers. Lilienthal had empathy for the fearful and intimidated ones who perished because they hesitated. Arguably, such protagonists are inspired by questions that had perplexed him all his life: the reluctance of the Jewish population to leave Germany before it was too late.81 As

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we shall see in the following chapter, these figures and their doubts appear in other cultural and political environments. Similarly, utopian spaces that indicate the existence of a lively Jewish community, such as the hachsharah where David enjoys time, return in some way or another as symbols that embody hope for a more inclusive and culturally and ethnically diverse society. Ultimately, Lilienthal’s insights form the basis for a philosophy of filmmaking as a means of solidarity and justice. The director states in an interview about David: Although we were the most terrible victims of history, we were also the most idealistic people about German culture, about being assimilated and accepted. Blinded by this hope, we did not believe in our own identity. . . . This was a strong lesson about what we must do in the future: to be committed to other people’s future, not only our own, because other people’s future will be our future. There’s no Jewish life in the world without social justice.82

His compassion goes above and beyond Jewish matters, extending commitment and awareness to other repressed groups and communities, reflecting what Michael Rothberg describes as the Jewish legacy of the Holocaust: “Our relationship to the past does partially determine who we are in the present, but never straightforwardly and directly, and never without unexpected or even unwanted consequences that bind us to those whom we consider other. When the productive, intercultural dynamic of multidirectional memory is explicitly claimed.”83 Lilienthal was concerned with the political situation that developed in Latin American countries long under the sway of Western political and economic powers, which were at the center of Cold War tensions. He would choose to dedicate his resources toward the support of their populations who were exposed to state violence and terror.

Notes 1. Mark Betz, Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 4. 2. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 6. 3. Frank Stern, “Ein Kino subversiver Widersprüche. Juden im Spielfilm der DEFA,” Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung Apropos (2002): 14. On a related note, the term “Shoah” is a Hebrew word that appears numerous times in the Bible to denote utter destruction. The word “Holocaust,” previously used to signify the sacrifice and organized killing and burning of Jews, re-emerged with the American TV series Holocaust (Marvin M.

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4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

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Chomsky, 1978), to discuss the events that led to the annihilation of European Jewry organized by Nazi Germany. In this study, I use the term “Holocaust” for reasons of consistency, not to signal preference of one term over the other. Barbe Funk, “Die Welt des Peter Lilienthal,” Film 4 (1966): 10. Thomas Schröder, “Das Individuum und die Macht,” Die Welt, 3 February 1968. Norbert Grob, “Film der sechziger Jahre. Abschied von den Eltern,” in Geschichte des deutschen Films, 2nd edition, ed. Wolfgang Jacobsen et al. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004), 239. “Das Wunder der Verständigung. Zum 80. Geburtstag des Regisseurs Peter Lilienthal,” Berliner Zeitung, 27 November 2009. Gudrun Brockhaus, “The Emotional Legacy of the National Socialist Past in PostWar Germany,” in Memory and Political Change, ed. Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 36. Gerd Gemünden, Continental Strangers. German Exile Cinema, 1933–1951 (New York: Columbia University Press 2014), 185. Claudia Lenssen, “Unbehauste Zeitgenossen,” Die Tageszeitung, 12 January 2015, https://taz.de/!240723/. Ulrich Gregor, “Skurriles Märchen Seraphine, “Frankfurter Rundschau, 24 March 1965. Funk, “Die Welt des Peter Lilienthal,” 11. See interview with Peter Lilienthal in the appendix of this book. Grob, “Film der sechziger Jahre.” 243. Based on memoirs, diaries, and interviews, Marion Kaplan’s book discusses reasons why Jews stayed on. She finds that while women/wives suggested emigration early on, men, often better educated, breadwinners, and family heads, hesitated until it was (almost) too late. See “The Emigration Quandary,” in Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 62–73. Ich, Montag—Ich, Dienstag—Ich, Mittwoch—Ich, Donnerstag. Portrait Gombrowicz (1970) is a documentary of the writer that Lilienthal made just weeks after his death, in Venice. For an earlier version of film and reception analysis of the film, see Claudia Sandberg, “Heimatlosigkeit als Überlebensstrategie. Peter Lilienthal’s David (1979),” Filmblatt 51 (2013): 36–46. Stern, Ein Kino subversiver Widersprüche, 14. Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diasporas: Contesting Identities (London: Routledge, 1995), 192. Lilienthal, in Hans C. Blumenberg, “Politik der kleinen Spuren,” Die Zeit, 21 March 1975, https://www.zeit.de/1975/13/politik-der-kleinen-spuren. Günter Herburger’s novel Hauptlehrer Hofer. Ein Fall von Pfingsten. Zwei Erzählungen (1975) established the literary basis for the film. Herburger was not happy with Lilienthal’s version of the protagonist Hofer, not least because the filmmaker translated the literary, radical character into a moderate and progressive one. David Ellenson, After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 144. Ofer Ashkenazi, “The Non-Heimat Heimat: Jewish Filmmakers and German Nationality from Weimar to the GDR,” New German Critique 42, no. 3 (2015): 117, https://doi .org/10.1215/0094033X-3137033. Lynne Layton, “Peter Lilienthal: Decisions before Twelve,” in New German Filmmakers: From Oberhausen through the 1970’s, ed. Klaus Phillips (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984), 243.

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24. For more information on hachsharah camps, see Herbert and Ruth Fiedler, Hachschara. Vorbereitung auf Palästina. Schicksalswege (Teetz: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2010). 25. Paul Ricœur, “Ideology and Utopia as Cultural Imagination, “Philosophic Exchange 7, no. 1 (1976): 24. 26. Joel König, “David—Eindrücke und Gedanken bei der Dreharbeit,” press material for David (Berlin: Filmverlag der Autoren, 1979). 27. Todd S. Presner, Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews, Trains (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 1. 28. Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 11–12. 29. Ricœur, “Ideology and Utopia as Cultural Imagination,” 26. 30. Gottfried Knapp, “Beobachtungen eines Überlebenden,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 March 1979. 31. See Georg Alexander, “Als die Berlinale vor dem Abbruch stand,” Tagesspiegel, 14 February 2009, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/skandalfilm-als-die-berlinalevor-dem-abbruch-stand/1436226.html. 32. “29. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. 20. Februar—03. März 1979,” accessed September 1, 2018, https://www.berlinale.de/de/archiv/jahresarchive/1979/01_ jahresblatt_1979/01_Jahresblatt_1979.html. 33. Jacob S. Eder, Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Germany and American Holocaust Memory since the 1970s (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 32–33. Holocaust touched on most of the historical cornerstones of the mass persecutions of European Jewry, starting with the Nuremberg Laws and including Kristallnacht, the euthanasia program, the Babi Yar massacre, the Wannsee Conference, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the concentration and extermination camps. 34. Aleida Assmann, “The Holocaust—a Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community,” in Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, ed. Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 106. 35. Siegfried Zielinski, “History as Entertainment and Provocation: The TV Series Holocaust in West Germany,” New German Critique 19, no. 1 (1980): 89, https://doi .org/10.2307/487973. 36. “Holocaust: Die Vergangenheit kommt zurück,” Der Spiegel, 29 January 1979. 37. Moishe Postone, “Anti-Semitism and National Socialism: Notes on the German Reaction to “Holocaust,” New German Critique 19, no. 1 (1980): 100–101, https://doi .org/10.2307/487974. 38. Zielinski, “History as Entertainment,” 94. 39. On this subject, see also Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust (New York and London: Routledge, 1999). The author examines German literature from the postwar era until the post-unification period. 40. Caroline Schaumann and Frank Schaumann, “Max Frisch’s Andorra: Balancing Act between Pattern and Particular,” in A Companion to the Works of Max Frisch, ed. Olaf Berwald (Rochester: Camden House, 2013), 58. 41. Schaumann and Schaumann, “Max Frisch’s Andorra,” 67. 42. Jerry Glenn, “Faith, Love, and the Tragic Conflict in Hochhuth’s Der Stellvertreter,” German Studies Review 7, no. 3 (1984): 485, https://doi.org/10.2307/1428886. 43. Robert Cohen, “The Political Aesthetics of Holocaust Literature: Peter Weiss’s The Investigation and Its Critics,” History and Memory 10, no. 2 (1998), 44–46, www.jstor .org/stable/25681027.

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44. Elrud Ibsch, Die Shoah erzählt: Zeugnis und Experimente in der Literatur (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004), 30. 45. Andreas Huyssen, “The Politics of Identification: Holocaust and the West German Drama,” New German Critique 19, no. 1 (1980): 135, https://doi.org/10.2307/487975. 46. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, “Eine deutsche Geschichtsstunde,” Die Zeit, 2 February 1979. 47. Huyssen, “Politics of Identification,” 118. 48. Huyssen, “Politics of Identification,” 117. 49. Regina M. Feldman, “German by Virtue of Others: The Search for Identity in Three Debates,” Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 254, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380320 00071721. 50. Tamás Kisantal, “The Holocaust as a Paradigm for Ethical Thinking and Representation,” in Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies, ed. Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009), 19. 51. Dan Diner, Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 219. 52. Wolfram Schütte, “Die zerstörte Gemeinschaft der Liebenden,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 1 March 1979. 53. “Unauffälliges Leid zwischen den Braunhemden,” Münchner Merkur, 9 March 1979. 54. Michael Beckert, “Wie David Goliath überlebte,” Saarbrücker Zeitung, 24 May 1979. 55. Birte Larsson, “David und der deutsche Goliath. Ein jüdisches Familienschicksal von Peter Lilienthal, “ Der Report, 22 March 1979. 56. “Auf der Leinwand: David,” Weser-Kurier, 2 April 1979. 57. Christian Schultz-Gerstein, “Ende der Berührungsangst,” Der Spiegel, 5 March 1979. 58. Sabine Schultze, “David, der durchkommt,” Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, 29 June 1979. 59. Beckert, “Goliath.” 60. Gert Berghoff, “Einer, der dem Feuersturm entkam, “ Kölnische Rundschau, 24 March 1979. 61. Blumenberg, “Spuren.” 62. See Schultze, “David, der durchkommt”; and Larsson, “David und der deutsche Goliath.” 63. Berghoff, “Feuersturm.” 64. Schütte, “Gemeinschaft.” 65. Berghoff, “Feuersturm.” 66. Kisantal, “Ethical Thinking,” 21. 67. See Michal Bodemann, “‘Öffentliche Körperschaft’ und Authentizität. Zur jüdischen Ikonographie in Deutschland,” Mittelweg 36, no. 5 (1996): 45–56. 68. See Johannes von Moltke’s case study “Heimat (Edgar Reitz, 1984–2013),” in The German Cinema Book, 2nd edition, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: BFI, 2020), 32–33. 69. Chris Wickham, “Representation and Mediation in Reitz’ Heimat,” German Quarterly 64, no. 1 (1991): 36, https://doi.org/10.2307/407303. 70. Edgar Reitz, “Unabhängiger Film nach Holocaust,” in Liebe zum Kino: Utopien und Gedanken zum Autorenfilm 1962–1983, ed. Edgar Reitz (Cologne: Verlag Köln 78, 1983), 102. 71. Johannes von Moltke, No Place like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 3. 72. Michael E Geisler, “‘Heimat’ and the German Left: The Anamnesis of a Trauma,” New German Critique 36 (1985): 28, https://doi.org/10.2307/488301. 73. Gertrud Koch, “Kann man naiv werden? Zum neuen Heimat-Gefühl,” Frauen und Film 38 (1985): 107, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24056050.

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74. In terms of German films produced in the new millennium, Brad Prager finds that “narrating the war is common in German film, narrating the Holocaust is far less so” (introduction to “German Memory and the Holocaust: New Films,” special issue, New German Critique, 41, no. 3 [2014]: 1, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43910630); Sabine von Mering, “Searching for Justice: Jews, German and the Nazi Past in Recent German Cinema,” in Beyond Political Correctness: Remapping German Sensibilities in the 21st Century, ed. Christine Anton and Frank Pilipp (Amsterdam and New York: Brill, 2015): 159–183; Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “German Memory and the Holocaust: New Films,” in Übergänge. Passagen durch eine deutsch-israelische Filmgeschichte (Berlin: Neofilis, 2014). 75. Up until now, German film concerned with the Third Reich continues to exhibit ambivalence about German characters as villains or victims. Representations of the “good German” feature in Aimée & Jaguar (Max Färberböck, 1999) and Rosenstraße (Margarethe von Trotta, 2003). More lately, the Hitler figure is of interest, for example in Der Untergang (Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004). See Axel Bangert, “Facing Dark Heritage: The Legacy of Nazi Perpetrators in German-Language Film,” in Screening European Heritage: Creating and Consuming History on Film, ed. Paul Cooke and Rob Stone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 107–126. 76. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (London: BFI, 1989), 278. 77. Michael Wedel, Filmgeschichte als Krisengeschichte. Schnitte und Spuren durch den deutschen Film (Bielefeld: transcript, 2011), 382. 78. Susan Neiman, “In Defence of Ambiguity,” in Re-emerging Jewish Culture in Germany: Life and Literature since 1989, ed. Sander l. Gilman and Karen Remmler (New York and London: New York University Press, 1994), 260. 79. Egon Netenjakob, “In paradiesischen Zeiten. Interview mit Peter Lilienthal,” Es geht auch anders, Gespräche über Leben, Film und Fernsehen, ed. Egon Netenjakob (Berlin: Bertz+Fischer, 2006), 113. 80. Peter Lilienthal in the documentary Ma vie (My Life, Maria Teresa Curzio, 2011). 81. See the full interview with Lilienthal featured in the appendix of this book. 82. Annette Insdorf, “A Passion for Social Justice: An Interview with Peter Lilienthal,” Cineaste 11 (1982): 36, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41686089. 83. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2009), 5.

Chapter 2

OF REBELS, SOLDIERS, AND DREAMERS

While Peter Lilienthal was concerned with German history and society in Jakob von Gunten (1971), Hauptlehrer Hofer (Teacher Hofer, 1975), and David (1979) throughout the 1970s, his creative energy soon began to shift into film projects that were remote from German language and culture. Lilienthal’s sojourn in Chile at the beginning of the 1970s was a life-altering experience for the filmmaker that had enormous influence on his future activities as an artist: “I changed my life with all consequences. . . . I developed an ever-increasing skepticism toward my own tendency to protect myself with my artificialities. From then on, I let myself be carried by the unexpected and unpredictable.”1 The encounters in Chile of the Allende era motivated Lilienthal to utilize film as political medium. Between 1973 and 2001, he would make five films in and about Latin America. These projects solidify his filmmaking to be a practice of social and cinematic activism in the context of revolutions and counterrevolutions that marked the Cold War reality of this region. The films stand out in Lilienthal’s oeuvre for their dynamic film language, vivacious colors, and complex characters reflecting enthusiasm and commitment to support social and cultural changes in Latin America. La Victoria (1973) observes the popular mobilizations under the Unidad Popular (UP) government in Chile. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (Calm Prevails Over the Country, 1975), made two years later, is an allegory of the early phases of fascist dictatorships in Latin America that utilized violence and brutality in a concerted manner and wanted to paralyze their populations and cleanse their countries of any opposi-

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tion. Der Aufstand (The Uprising, 1980), shot immediately after the Sandinistas triumphed against the Somoza regime, echoes the hopes for the Nicaraguan revolution that autocratic and repressive regimes in the region were about to collapse. Using a more solemn timbre than the earlier films, Das Autogramm (The Autograph, 1984) and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal (The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, 1988) provide commentary on the repercussions of establishing a modern state utilizing methods of terror and fear, which had managed to destroy any collective spirit and left individuals and families deeply traumatized. The only documentary film in the series, Camilo—Der lange Weg zum Ungehorsam (Camilo—The Long Road to Disobedience, 2007), re-evaluates revolutionary ideals and criticizes modes of North American neo-colonialism in Central America at the beginning of the second millennium. Together, the films provide a panorama of moods and concerns, strategies of popular and cultural resistance against colonial domination, and (post–)Cold War fascism. The Latin American film series connects to Lilienthal’s formation between Jewish and Latin American cultures and his intimate knowledge of their traditions, histories, and predicaments. These are collaborations with local actors, scriptwriters, producers, directors, and photographers. I integrate the views, talents, and values that the different participants bring to the films into my readings, which validate the need to engage transnational film theory, guiding me to explore the films as encounters between a traveler-director and the various communities that he visits. Overall, Lilienthal’s Latin American films mirror the imperfect and impure quality of Third Cinema in their various social and political contexts, as a result of work with scarce resources and nonprofessional actors, a collapsing of experience into performance, and the use of film to forge a sense of belonging. They present Latin American’s cultural identity, to use Stuart Hall’s words, as “a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being.’ . . . [linked] to the future as much as to the past.”2 These projects actively supported the Latin American exile community during their years in Europe, from assisting Chilean artists Antonio Skármeta and Raúl Ruiz to get out of Chile directly after the coup d’état, to sharing his networks and resources with other émigré artists in France and Portugal. The films thus became a mouthpiece for motivations and hopes of the Latin American left and are part of a Latin American film culture that operated from their European exile. Nestor Garcia Canclini notes that constant and often unequal exchanges on local, regional, national, and transnational levels establish the hybridity

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of Latin American culture, stating that there is a “maneuvering space from which popular practices can continue to be understood as counterhegemonic, resistant and alternative practices.”3 Lilienthal’s film series encapsulate the Latin American condition in a moment that is marked by deterritorialization, uncertainty, and suffering and where solidarity and friendship acquire vital importance as a form of resistance and strategy of survival.

Allende’s Chile as Social Utopia Lilienthal came to Santiago in 1972 on invitation of the local GoetheInstitut and was one of the first artists from the Western hemisphere to witness Chile in exceptional circumstances. The socialist party UP had won the federal elections in 1970, in a country that previously had one of the world’s highest illiteracy rates and lowest income levels. President Salvador Allende Gossens took on the challenge to develop Chile into a modern state, eliminate its dependency on foreign economic interests, and bring about social change.4 Under protests of the Chilean oligarchy, who were anxious for their rights and properties, and to the dismay of the Western world, which was afraid of the socialist specter, massive social and economic transformations were underway. Education and housing projects aimed to improve the conditions of a large part of Chile’s population living in absolute poverty. The UP government expropriated wealthy landowners and redistributed parts of their land. The financial sector, the mining industry, and other large manufacturing companies became nationalized. The radical economic and social strategies coincided with a thriving and progressive cultural movement that had developed in the 1960s. Artisanal and collective ways of making and using the medium of film had thrived despite scarcity of filmmaking equipment. Works such as Morir un poco (To Die a Little, Álvaro Covacevic, 1966) Testimonio (Testimony, Pedro Chaskel, 1969), and Desnutrición infantil (Undernourishment of Children, Álvaro Ramírez, 1969) documented social inequality in the country, including lack of the most basic resources.5 The filmmaker Aldo Francia was leading efforts to establish a regional network of cineastes from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Cuba who were engaged with similar projects in their respective countries.6 They finally met at the Viña del Mar Film Festival in 1967 to discuss ideas and manifestos for an independent continental cinema and then came together in Viña again two years later to present their first films. The Chilean contribu-

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tions Valparaíso, mi amor (Valparaíso, My Love, Aldo Francia, 1969), Tres Tristes Tigres (Three Sad Tigers, Raúl Ruiz, 1968), and El chacal de Nahueltoro (The Jackal of Nahueltoro, Miguel Littín, 1968), as well as the Cuban feature Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968) and the Argentine epic La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, 1968), were groundbreaking works in a canon of socio-critical texts that was henceforth called New Latin American Cinema.7 With Allende’s presidency, Chilean socio-critical filmmaking received a boost, turning into a revolutionary cinema that was invested in promoting the social and political strategies that his party intended to implement.8 The ongoing protests of conservative groups and upper social classes, the violence used by police forces against left-wing demonstrators, and a failed coup organized by paramilitary groups in June 1973 indicated that Allende faced increasingly powerful enemies locally and internationally. Situations could swing toward violence at any given time. Artist-activists documented the social and political events rigorously, capturing what happened on the streets with their film and photo cameras.9 Alfredo Barria Troncoso notes that “it was so important to give space to the immediate events that the fictional elements had to yield to a montage of still shots and extracts from different sources.”10 Young filmmakers traveled with patched-together films to workers’ groups and farmers in the provinces to inspire discussions about their past and present experiences, expectations for the future, and hopes for this government. Allende’s figure represented utopia in the contemporaneous Chilean political and cultural imaginary.11 These unique circumstances prompted Lilienthal to get in touch with Chilean artists. He established professional and personal ties to filmmakers Helvio Soto, Raúl Ruiz, and Silvio Caiozzi. Ruiz, who would later become an accomplished experimental and avant-garde filmmaker, was an eccentric in his younger years, whose political views often clashed with dominant left-wing thought. Ahora te vamos a llamar hermano (Now We Call You a Brother, 1971), La expropriación (The Expropriation, 1971), and El realismo socialista (Socialist Realism, 1973) all suggest that ideas about progress and enlightenment romanticized the needs of workers and peasants, furthering the intellectual debates that could be understood to have misjudged the realities that were occurring on the ground.12 He had also worked with American poet Nina Serrano, filmmakers Saúl Landau and Bill Jahraus, and writer James Beckett on Qué hacer! (What Is to Be Done?, 1970).13 Helvio Soto, in contrast, was on the extremist side of the left-political spectrum of the UP, whose

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films, such as Caliche sangriento (Bloody Nitrate, 1968), entered the discourse of current Chilean politics from a more historical perspective. A western about the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) fought between Chile and a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance, the film was a classic example of the New Latin American Cinema project that sought to narrate the social and political history of the continent through the perspective of its population.14 Voto+Fusil (Vote and Rifle, 1971) and Metarmorfosis del jefe de la policía política (Metamorphosis of the Chief of the Political Police, 1973) highlighted disagreements within the different factions in the left-political spectrum of the UP government.15 Photographer Caiozzi, having collaborated with both filmmakers, connected Raúl Ruiz’s political aesthetic language with Soto’s militant filmmaking, the only one of the three artists who remained in Chile during Pinochet’s dictatorship.16 However, it was Lilienthal’s meeting with author Antonio Skármeta in which the idea of a collaborative project materialized. Skármeta, novelist and professor of literature at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, had already received the coveted Casa de las Americas prize for a collection of short stories.17 His political views were sharpened by Allende’s left-wing government, which, as he said, “altered his vision of himself as a writer and affected both his choice of themes and techniques.”18 Lilienthal and Skármeta, both from a middle-class background and children of immigrants, discovered a mutual interest in the figure of the wanderer and were intrigued by the subject of social and political cataclysms from familial and generational perspectives.19 Together they drafted a script that was based on a story of Skármeta’s, and the idea of a common project was born. Lilienthal secured funding from the Filmverlag der Autoren and the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), returning to Chile in March of 1973 to work on the film project. Soto managed the local production, and Caiozzi photographed the film. Among a cast of Chilean professional and nonprofessional actors, Ruiz and Skármeta also acted in small roles. La Victoria, like other Chilean films made during the short period of Allende’s presidency, encapsulates hope that the expansive reform projects could create a viable and just model of society and the sense that this was beyond realization. The film focuses on a young woman, Marcela (Paula Moya), taking place in Chile just before the parliamentary elections. Marcela lives with her mother in Currico, in the south of Chile. After finishing her vocational training as a typist, she travels to Santiago to find work there. The young woman arrives in a vivacious

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Figure 2.1. Marcela (Paula Moya), main protagonist of La Victoria. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

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main capital where different groups and political parties have taken to the streets to voice their dissent. Some protest against their living and working conditions. Others march to support the UP and other leftwing initiatives and UP-allied parties. There are banners of the Juventud Socialista de Chile (Socialist Youth of Chile), La Partida Socialista de Chile (Socialist Party of Chile), and the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement). Marcela lives with her uncle and looks for employment in Santiago. She interviews with potential employers in private businesses and government offices. Eventually, her uncle introduces her to Carmen Lazo—here fact and fiction meet—who was a Socialist Party candidate for the UP coalition in the Chilean Congress, and Marcela finds herself impressed by this engaged and motivational speaker.20 Besides her political engagement, Lazo is also a cook, who shares her recipes with a group of female listeners in the shantytown. While we witness the increasing social and political awareness that the fictional Marcela develops through her journey, the film records Lazo’s 1973 election campaign tour through Santiago’s poorer neighborhoods and working-class districts. Marcela is involved in a shantytown community, where Lazo speaks to the locals about their concerns around housing and food shortages.

Figure 2.2. Socialist Party candidate Carmen Lazo is campaigning. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek

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The film opens with a political ceremony that takes place on the grounds of a large sports stadium. Youth march in formations, carrying red flags, cheered on by hundreds of spectators in the stands. In the next scene, people are waiting at the train tracks; among them is Marcela, who expects her uncle, a cook on one of the passenger trains, to pass through. This is the beginning of a film that is less interested in psychological or narrative developments. Instead, it curiously follows its main protagonist into different social and economic spheres, within both public and private environments. Caiozzi’s camera observes busy inner-city shopping districts that are buzzing with people, quiet suburban streets, generous houses of the well-to-do, classrooms, governmental offices, and favelas on the urban fringes of Santiago. In these locations Chile’s population is portrayed as a multitude of social groups and individual faces. Many of the scenes appear to have been made spontaneously. The shots create a sense of proximity and immediacy to the lived experiences of Chile and follow strategies that documentary films often utilize to make meaning. Earlier Chilean films presented Chile’s sharply divided society in contrasting montages. The aforementioned Morir un poco draws images of the hardship of the common man against the pleasures of the high society. The latter can afford to look after their well-being, get lost in sexual fantasies, and busy themselves with lifestyle issues. Morir un poco highlights social contrasts in juxtaposing images of generous urban shopping districts with makeshift houses in the shantytowns, crammed public trains versus fashion shows and leisurely walks, people enjoying time at the beach alongside farmers who work hard on the land. Jacqueline Mouesca and Carlos Orellana note that Morir un poco was one of the first films “that managed to bring an unveiled image of reality to the screen.”21 Venceremos (We Will Win, Pedro Chaskel and Héctor Ríos, 1970) uses a similar aesthetic-didactic approach, one that aims to denounce the wealthy social strata and their incessant attempts to exploit the poor. The short film starts with workers on their way home from their workplaces, who are either on foot, with horse-drawn carriages, or waiting in line at a bus stop, investigating their tired faces in close-ups. In a high-rise neighborhood, there are grand, French-style mansions behind cast-iron gates, which suggest a world of comfort and luxury, replete with TVs, fast cars, designer clothes, American comics, pastries and alcohol, dog races, and boredom. On a street traversed by European and American cars, a man draws a huge carriage. He cannot keep up with the pace. The film, criticizing the unjust distribution of resources, announces an element of rebellion with images of a public demonstration at the film’s end.

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In comparison, La Victoria belongs to a next-generation revolutionary cinema that had cast away a mood of powerlessness and finds political and social reorganization of lower-class communities to be well underway. This is indicated specifically with the film’s title. The name “La Victoria” is a reference to the emblematic neighborhood in the south of Chilean capital. This community came into existence when two thousand people made a concerted effort to occupy an abandoned farmland in the 1950s, at a time when the city was suffering a severe housing crisis. The takeover and subsequent transformation from a “tent city to community” was an almost magical undertaking in the memory of their residents. Janet L Finn notes: Residents tell a celebratory story of solidarity in building La Victoria, with the help of left political parties, religious groups, and universities. Church groups offered immediate concrete support in the form of mattresses, blankets, and basic food supplies. Left political leaders worked with local organizers to facilitate development of basic infrastructure. Faculty and students from Santiago universities—doctors, nurses, engineers, and social workers—joined the squatters as well, bringing their knowledge, technical skills, and physical labor to bear in building community. Together they worked at a Herculean pace mapping the terrain, plotting homesites, setting up first aid centers, and designing the community clinic and school, which opened within months of the land seizure.22

The subsequent semi-autonomous forms of political and social organization of the La Victoria community were a key example for other individuals and groups living in dire conditions at the fringes of the city to self-manage their demands for housing.23 La Victoria’s visual presentation and fluid editing mode contribute to the idea of suturing gaps and gulfs that exist between members of different social classes. In the film, Santiago appears as a public sphere that belongs to a variety of social actors, smaller and larger groups, and communities that meet and express their demands. Moreover, Marcela, a version of Lilienthal’s nomadic figure, personifies the link to individuals and experiences across social, cultural, and political divides. Various scenes support this reading, one of which takes places in the house of a lawyer who hired her for a day job. Marcela’s employer lives with his wife and teenage daughters in a tastefully decorated home surrounded by a lush garden. The nosy, giggly daughters and demanding wife keep disturbing Marcela and the lawyer, while he shouts at them from the landing of his library. Despite what seems to be obnoxious and eccentric behavior of the well-to-do, the couple listen to their employee

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with honest interest and attention. They treat Marcela to a tour through the gardens, and she is invited to lunch with them. These gestures suggest an approximation of individuals from different walks of life. In another scene, Marcela sits with a group of women, acquiring skills and learning methods of teaching reading and writing. The teacher pins an image to the blackboard that is to represent the typical hogar (home). The photo depicts a family of three generations seated around a table. Marcela protests, arguing that home can present different things to different people. The young woman explains that she would live alone with her mother, which is her idea of home. Other women chime in with her and share stories of their living arrangements. Some live with their husband; others are divorced and have to provide for their children on their own, deviating from the ideal of a “complete” family. These passages and dialogues echo Lilienthal’s philosophy that a functioning community is based on a culture of difference, inclusiveness, and respect. With the focus on the experience of women, La Victoria captures Chile’s reality as a deep-rooted patriarchal society, revealing gender inequalities in the family and misogynist and chauvinistic behavior in the workplace. Male supervisors prefer to be surrounded by attractive secretaries as adornment to their offices. They watch younger women and touch them in inappropriate ways. Female office workers must adhere to a set of rules, including a dutiful and subservient attitude. A female superior reprimands Marcela after she has shouted across the room to get the attention of another colleague: Miss Carrasco, this is an office and not a fairground, and you are a secretary and no drayman. A secretary never shouts. And a secretary never forgets herself. A secretary is not extravagant. A secretary should never talk more than necessary.

Other images seem to be caught almost incidentally by the camera. There is the middle-aged female typist in training, whose son, a boy about eleven years old, brings her a cup of coffee. While she is busy listening to the dictate of the teacher, the child places the cup down next to the typewriter with care and sits patiently beside her, an image that suggests great affection and trust. Does she not have any childcare for him? Is she separated or does she not have a family who can take care of the boy? In other scenes, when women talk about their shifts in a strike, it becomes clear that besides demonstrating they still have to cook and make sure that their kids are all right. They can participate

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in road blockades and strikes only when their children are being taken care of. Julie D. Shayne notes that while the female gender was underrepresented in the Allende socialist government, women were at the forefront of social and political activities both for and against his policies.24 Marcela’s uncle’s girlfriend, who deals luxury goods on the black market, is a figure depicted to an almost stereotypical degree as a materialistic and egocentric individual. In one of her dialogues with Marcela, Carmen Lazo also mentions “the rich women, who do not get up early,” referring to cacerolazos, marches of upper-class women who articulated their protest against food shortages during Allende’s times by banging pots and pans.25 La Victoria emphasizes that women should become involved in social and political mobilization processes because they serve their own emancipation. Along with Marcela and other women, who are involved in communal grassroots activities, the film focuses on one of the few female politicians in the current Chilean government, Carmen Lazo. Besides being a motivational speaker, she listens attentively to the problems that women bring to her attention in the shantytowns. Self-confident female characters such as Marcela and Carmen represent the type of citizen and leader needed to build an equal and just society. While the final credits are running, accompanied by Violeta Parra’s famous song “Gracias a la vida” (Thank you to life), the camera is directed toward a colorful makeshift house that is the shantytown school. These last images once again symbolize an ethos of learning and sharing resources, conveying confidence that a new Chile is a project in the making. However, his new Chile would remain an unfinished dream. While the film was waiting to be programmed in ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel, a coup under the commander-in-chief of the Chilean military, Augusto Pinochet, left the incumbent president dead, on 11 September 1973. The news made newspaper headlines around the world. As a result of the recent events, La Victoria was programmed early, to be broadcast on 17 September. A film that was made to celebrate current developments and changes in Allende’s Chile suddenly stood in as epitaph to a monumental social experiment.

Exile and Community Shortly after Allende’s death, the self-appointed military government in Chile was on a mission to eradicate any socialist thought or action.



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They forbid political parties and gatherings and persecuted Allende’s former followers and anyone who was suspected to have been involved in left-wing political activities, for that matter. A considerable number of regime opponents and activists, including intellectuals and artists, fled the country to avoid imprisonment, torture, or, worse, murder. Lilienthal managed to get European visas for his colleagues Ruiz and Skármeta. They left Chile on the same flight only weeks after the coup.26 Over the following years, Lilienthal would use his connections to help a number of Chilean exiled filmmakers to re-establish their professional network in Europe. His home channel ZDF, especially Das kleine Fernsehspiel, became an important public platform for the work of Chilean émigré artists. Therefore, while the era of committed filmmaking in Chile had come to an abrupt halt, many film personnel and cultural institutions in Germany, France, Sweden, Cuba, or Canada supported their émigré colleagues. It was a wave of solidarity that prevented the exodus of Chilean film. Jose Miguel Palacios, who analyzes the various and textured dynamics of Chilean exile cinema between preoccupations of exile and resistance and its rhetoric, notes, “For exiles, and for exile filmmakers, solidarity became a way of being in the world, providing them with a new range of actions with which to act in the political sphere.”27 The support structures in their new countries of residence enabled artists to resume their work astonishingly quickly. They finished projects that they had begun filming in Chile before September 1973 and realized new ones in collaboration with foreign colleagues and funding bodies. Ruiz, who after a sojourn in Germany, where he worked on the ZDF-financed Mensch verstreut und Welt verkehrt (The Scattered Body and the World Upside Down) already in October 1973, moved on to France, where he made Diálogos de exiliados (Dialogues of Exiles, 1975). Patricio Guzman finished his trilogy La batalla de Chile, la lucha de un pueblo sin armas (The Battle of Chile: The Fight of a Country without Arms, 1975–1979) in France, which became a key text of cultural memory of the coup d’état.28 Helvio Soto, who had collaborated on Lilienthal’s La Victoria, settled in Bulgaria in 1973. He brought footage for a project from Chile and managed to finish his documentary Metamorfosis del jefe de la policía política with a German film company in the same year. For his feature Il pleut sur Santiago (Rain Over Santiago, 1975), he united a formidable cast of European actors, including Bibi Andersson, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Annie Girardot. The French Bulgarian coproduction is seen—along with Guzman’s La batalla de Chile—as a foundational text of recent Chilean history made in exile.29 Meanwhile, Orlando Lübbert and Gastón

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Ancelovici completed the documentary Los puños frente al cañón (The Fists in Front of the Cannon, 1975) in West Germany.30 Several women filmmakers emerged in the beginning of the 1970s and made important contributions to the Chilean film movement in exile; cineastes such as Marilú Mallet, Valeria Sarmiento, and Angelina Vázquez produced a number of films during this time. Sarmiento realized her feature film La femme de foyer (The Woman of the Foyer, 1975) in France. Vázquez had emigrated to Finland, where she made Dos años en Finlandia (Two Years in Finland, 1975) and Así nace un desaparecido (Here a Disappeared Person Is Being Born, 1977). Writer Mallet, whose father was the minister of education, had fled to Québec, Canada, where she started her filmmaking career with Il n’y a pas d’oubli (There Is No Mistake, 1975).31 Made by a community of artists who were dispersed into different corners of the world, this body of film was culturally and linguistically diverse. But the filmmakers, slowly coming to terms with their existence in exile, were united in their need to denounce the authority of Pinochet as dictator and raise awareness of human rights violations that the regime directed against its opponents. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land forms part of the Chilean cinema of exile and resistance that was conceived and “produced in the interstices of cultures and cinematic production practices.”32 For Lilienthal it was important to make a film about current conditions in Chile, to shatter the “European comfort of a clean consciousness”33 and provoke West German politicians to protest against the crimes that Pinochet’s military government were committing against their own population. Skármeta, now residing in West Berlin, wanted to make a film “about the ability of an unarmed population to oppose an enemy that is armed to their teeth.”34 Together, Lilienthal and Skármeta scripted a story of a community under siege that opposed repressive actions and state terror, and they convinced the television channels ZDF and the Austrian broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) to finance their venture. But where could the filmmakers realize this project? Most countries of the Southern Cone were ruled by repressive governments at the time. When the artists had started working on the script, their idea was to set the film in Argentina. In the meantime, the political situation had deteriorated there as well. Skármeta said, “The problem was where to shoot a film about the brutal repression of the extreme right in Latin America against its own people. If you looked at a map of Latin America in 1973, there was nowhere to do it.”35 Eventually, the search for a filming location brought Lilienthal and Skármeta to Portugal, which was at that moment experiencing a politi-

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cal transition. The country had recently returned to democracy after a military coup in 1974 defeated the decade-long oppression of the Estado Novo regime. In Setúbal, a port city to the south of Lisbon, Lilienthal and Skármeta received permission to film in the local prison. A unit of the Portuguese army supplied them with military vehicles, uniforms, and weapons, while a group of military officers agreed to participate as extras. Arguably, the generous support of the army for the project was a way to recognize that the Portuguese military had helped to perform repressive measures against their own population. Taking part in this film was an act of reconciliation while showing empathy with Latin American societies that were in the grip of brutal dictators. In fact, there was a group of Latin American émigrés who, as Skármeta had discovered, lived in Setúbal. They agreed to participate as cast and extras. Skármeta, who had established contact with them, recalls, “For all of them, this film was something mythical and now, in the worst moment of their lives, it [the film] came into their reach.”36 Most of the émigrés had witnessed or suffered emotionally and psychologically traumatizing experiences. This film presented an opportu-

Figure 2.3. Eduardo Duran (Miguel) and Zita Duarte (Cecilia) embrace on the set of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

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nity for the political refugees to bring their concerns to the attention of a wider audience. Skármeta notes: Among them we found experienced counselors for the escape of political inmates, an event portrayed in the film. And so it happened that whenever we referred to fiction they provided us with documentary material and acted out of their own reality. Originally meant to be extras, their characters developed and outperformed the script.37

The involvement of the émigré community in the filmmaking process as actors, collaborators, and co-scriptwriters enriched and expanded the project and made it a film with dimensions of shared authorship. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land was a case study into the coercive methods used by military regimes to assert power over civilian populations and secure control. The events take place in a fictional town, Las Piedras. The local inhabitants hear screams during the night and suspect that inmates are being tortured in the local prison that towers above the city. Meanwhile, an older man, Paselli (Luciano Noble), arrives to see his daughter María Angelica (Henriqueta Maya), who is detained in the prison. He resides in a guesthouse managed by a family named Parra. French veteran actor Charles Vanel played the role of the grumbly grandfather, who is not interested in politics and believes that people should mind their own business. Nevertheless, he has empathy with Paselli and helps him to find small jobs so he can pay for his stay. Parra’s grandson Gustavo, who works at the airport, had witnessed a small airplane bringing new prisoners, who were moved into a van and driven away. Through word of mouth, the inhabitants of Las Piedras learn that the prison houses political inmates. Gustavo, the doctor, Cecilia, and lawyer Amaya (Antonio Skármeta) form a local solidarity committee to support the inmates. Among the group of political prisoners is María Angelica and Miguel Neira, Cecilia’s brother. We are shown the circumstances around Miguel Neira’s underground work and his subsequent arrest in flashbacks. Gustavo collects money to buy guns and smuggles them into the prison to enable their escape. When some of the prisoners manage to break out, the other members of the group are mercilessly killed in front of their cells. During the course of events, the local military government declares a state of emergency in Las Piedras and suspends the civil government. Rallied by increasing violence of the regime, the solidarity committee demonstrates their opposition to the repressive measures ever more daringly. They tear down speakers and put posters and banners up that read “Down with the criminal government,” “If this is not the people,

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where is it?,” “Massacre of patriots: Las Piedras’ shame.” In response to sociopolitical activism and public uproar, the military arrests and tortures members of the committee and other suspects. The city becomes gradually void of its citizens; almost all of them are now held captive in a sports stadium. The old Parra is left behind in the house. He decides to join his family in prison and turns himself in. The film ends with a scene in which two of the escapees arrive with a van somewhere in a forest and are welcomed by a friend. The film resembles the style of a docudrama. Fictional scenes are blended with footage taken from newsreels containing disturbing scenarios of street fights between soldiers and civilians. Corpses line the sidewalks, pamphlets fly around, the air is filled with tear gas. Despite its fictional nature, references to locations, events, and people make it an obvious nod to the Chilean case. Lilienthal and Skármeta included allusions to Chilean artists whose work and activities vitally supported and promoted Allende’s progressive politics. The use of the surname “Parra” for the family at the center of the story honors the prolific Chilean family of humble origins, who are known for their many artistactivists. As mentioned, the song “Gracias a la vida” by revered folk singer Violeta Parra had featured in La Victoria’s soundtrack.38 Ángel Parra, son of Violeta, had composed the score for Es herrscht Ruhe im Land. The images of mourners around the coffin of political prisoner Miguel Neira and the gathering of town citizens are poignant reminders of the service for Pablo Neruda. His funeral had drawn a massive crowd despite orders that prohibited making this a public event. Moreover, the detainment of citizens in the sports stadium at the end of the film alludes to Santiago’s National Stadium, where thousands of political opponents were held in 1973. Karsten Witte notes that already the film title, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, suggests a restrained style that places the film at the opposite end of Costa-Gavras’s political thrillers.39 And film critic Wolf Donner finds that the film creates a “climate of vague anxiety, lurking danger, and utmost caution.”40 The composition of characters, camera, and miseen-scène in the initial sequence establishes the idea of everyday life in a local community. The camera observes single protagonists in medium shots. An older man arrives with a taxi in front of a modest hotel. A young man does his work at the airport, and a doctor examines her young patient—ordinary people who go about their daily lives. On first sight, these pictures indicate idleness, even boredom, yet they contain an uncomfortable quality of suspense and ambiguity. The prison roof is patrolled by heavily armed guards. Soldiers watch entrance points

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closely, checking papers and the content of all vehicles that enter the premises. Grandfather Parra and his grandchild walk across the local Plaza de Armas, captured from a distance sufficiently far to stay unnoticed but close enough to overhear their conversation. What had appeared first as a way of innocuously recording the whereabouts of daily life in a small town emulates measures of constant observation and surveillance by an invisible authority. In further scenes, when a state of emergency has been declared, the military rulers blaringly assert their presence. They give orders through speakers that are attached to the roof of buildings and moving cars. In a press conference following the escape of inmates, the high-rank officers openly demonstrate their disrespect for the civil population. Their eyes never meet those of their interlocutors, and they are oblivious to any of their questions. The officers lie blatantly about the cause and circumstances of Miguel’s death, practices to showcase their power and relegate individuals to “national subjects.” The ubiquitous presence of soldiers is a reason for the citizens to adopt a coded way of communication, which creates a “coexistence of loud propaganda hype and meaningful silence” and is a passive way of exercising resistance.41 When María Angelica’s father visits his daughter in her prison cell, the camera captures this scene from the back of the room. María’s responses and gestures are a mismatch to her father’s questions. Spectators find themselves in the position of the watch guard who is not likely to decipher the gist of this apparently meaningless talk. Meanwhile, the prison is a symbol for the political refugees and indicates the condition of confinement that applies to all. This idea is captured visually just before the first encounter between the inmates and the Las Piedras citizens committee takes place. Both groups are still separated by a glass wall. An image of the waiting visitors shot from the perspective of the prisoners on the other side makes the visiting group appear trapped and constrained. The end of the film—when all citizens except for children, old people, and animals are confined in the local stadium—is highly suggestive of the obsession to “cleanse” the state from internal terrorists. In fact, this metaphor of holding an entire society captive alludes to the circumstance that at some point in Chile or Argentina, the number of detainees far exceeded prison capacities and military force units and led to the opening of (clandestine) torture centers.42 Lilienthal’s films normally refrain from displays of violence, so the inclusion of a scene that shows graphic torture and appears to be in-

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formed by authentic experiences heightens the sense of urgency that is attached to this film project. A group of armed soldiers pick up local shop owner Don Cosme, who is suspected of having assisted in the escape of prisoners. The naked man is pushed along a dark and narrow corridor in the military barracks, driven forward by rifle butts. In passing, we see blindfolded, motionless figures seated, lying, and hanging in adjacent rooms. Cosme is tortured with waterboarding and electroshocks. The camera captures the interrogation in close-up, positioned at waist height between torturer and victim. This is followed by images of his head submerged in the water and his bleeding heels, while angry voices of the soldiers shouting out questions echo throughout the building. The staging of this scenario in fragmented images and haunting sounds re-enacts how victims suffering conditions of extreme stress and pain experience such procedures. When Cosme is released, he is a broken man. With his head down, he walks close to the walls of a row of houses back home. As a reference to torture as an organized practice and mundane part of the repressive repertoire, the figure of Cosme represents one of thousands of people who endured similar trials that left them physically and mentally damaged. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land is the first in Lilienthal’s film series to examine dynamics of the authoritarian regimes in Latin America. This includes the military itself as a system that established both new and reinvigorated traditional structures of repression and exploitation. War is a lucrative business and is highly beneficial to the military elites. Lilienthal notes, “Soldiers and officers are members of the privileged classes alongside those who have always managed to exploit the country. They look to earn high incomes for themselves.”43 The dirty work is left to the lower ranks. In Pinochet’s Chile of the 1970s, the armed forces were one of the few employers that guaranteed children from poorer families a wage.44 The film includes an image of the army as the operating system of a repressive regime. While the military is involved in repressive activities against the population, there is also empathy for soldiers of lower ranks as compromised individuals. In the beginning, the military appears as an anonymous group, observed by the camera in medium shots from high or low camera angles. Moving back and forth on the roof of the prison, opening and closing the gates of the premises, they move as if remote-controlled. There is no enthusiasm, haste, or intent involved in their actions. Far from being depicted as evil, soldiers appear rather disinterested and uninvolved, simply fulfilling the job they were instructed to carry out.

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Figure 2.4. Poster promotion of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

As the story progresses, the film begins to follow single characters. Most of the guards in the Las Piedras prison are middle-aged men with stocky figures. Their uniforms resemble an ill-fitted costume. Shirts and trousers press tight into their ample bodies, making them appear ridiculous and out of place. In one instance, Lilienthal portrays a young soldier in moral conflict. A young officer on a house raid recognizes his former teacher among the people to be rounded up. The young man in thick glasses, with the chubby and innocent face of a child, greets her with a respectful “Good day.” His friendly and respectful manners toward his former teacher reveal the soldier to be educated and good-natured. In articulating his command in polite, almost deferential phrasing, he states, “I ask you respectfully, please do me this favor and pack a few clothes!” Here we understand that the soldier occupies the roles of both an obedient pupil who wants to please his beloved teacher and an officer who has to follow orders from above. This figure evokes pity and worry, who by signing up for a military career had involuntarily become an enemy and criminal. Der

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Aufstand and Camilo continue to explore the paradoxical experiences of these young soldiers who are in direct opposition with former neighbors, friends, and families. As the years went by and apart from Pinochet, fascist leaders in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay further consolidated their powers, and energies to resist these regimes dwindled. Skármeta said in an interview: When the dictator does not want to step aside and time goes on, solidarity work becomes a monotone grindstone. There is always another demonstration, another meeting, always the same stalls that sell empanadas for a solidarity price, evenings in the Gedächtniskirche [Memorial Church on Kurfürstendamm] that are attended by eighty-five people, bad news come in day after day. It is a tiring process.45

Palacios notes that a collective art project among Chilean exile artists was also falling apart over time: Here we find the seeds of what was to become another standard narrative: that the history of Chilean exile is also the transit from collectivity to individuality, from a politics expressed in the “we” to one expressed in the “I.” After the political defeat (and the mourning that came in its wake) all that was left was the individual subject. Within this narrative, the idea of the community vanishes in the dispersion of the diaspora.46

Made when public outrage was still strong, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land constituted a project among many other solidarity and resistance campaigns that occurred all over Europe at the time. The film projected hope that authoritarian regimes were just a temporary phenomenon. La Victoria and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land are connected in the belief that left-wing groups and civil society together can win them back political power. La Victoria had documented Chile’s strong social movements that were the catalyst of transformation processes in Allende’s Chile. The depiction of a united citizenry in Es herrscht Ruhe im Land communicates the message that an intact community is grounded in loyalty, respect, and support and has the potential to fight off militaristic structures if recognizing and acting upon their strengths. In view of the obvious brutality used by the regime to eliminate its opponents, this may have been naïve. Nevertheless, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land demonstrates confidence that in the end, the existing social networks would prevail and keep the Chilean spirit alive. Within this moment of crisis, the collective framework would be the driver of an organized resistance movement at a grassroots level.

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All Eyes Are on Nicaragua Der Aufstand was the third collaborative work between Lilienthal and Skármeta and had been a long time coming. The film, inspired by the Nicaraguan revolution, became a film of many voices that assisted in building the identity for socialist Nicaragua. In 1973 Lilienthal had made La Victoria in a vivacious Chile that was bursting with social and cultural activity. Six years later the intellectual and artistic elite of the region lived scattered throughout Europe and North America. They observed the political developments in their home countries with feelings of hope and worry. Skármeta and Lilienthal, based in West Berlin, were members of a close-knit émigré community and involved in artistic projects that originated within this group. Skármeta appeared as a supporting role in Malou (1981), the semi-biographical debut of Argentine German Jewish filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel, who had grown up in Buenos Aires. Christian Ziewer’s Aus der Ferne sehe ich dieses Land (I See This Land From Afar, 1978), based on Skármeta’s novel No pasó nada (Nothing Happened, 1978), is a coming of age story of thirteen-year-old Chilean Lucho, who immigrated with his parents to Germany, a film in which also Lilienthal had a small role.47 Meanwhile, Skármeta’s literary work, starting with Soñé qua la nieve ardía (I Dreamt That the Snow Was Burning, 1975)—his first novel that written in Germany—achieved critical acclaim and gained him a rightful place among the most influential contemporary Latin American writers. After almost a decade of right-wing domination, the Latin American émigré community was in dire need of a success story. Like many others, Skármeta followed events unfolding in Nicaragua. A decadelong power struggle between the Somoza regime and the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinist Front of National Liberation, FSLN), brought about a shifting of control in favor of the guerrillas. Skármeta was familiar with the novel Te Dio miedo la sangre? (Did the Blood Frighten You?, 1976), a fundamental text toward the understanding of the ideas and strategies of Augusto César Sandino. Sandino was known as “General de Hombres Libres” (General of Free Men), the key strategist behind the guerrilla movement that was active in Nicaragua at the beginning of the twentieth century. The novel was translated into fourteen languages and was successful in bringing Nicaragua’s long history of battle against US colonialism to a broad audience of readers around the world. Skármeta got to know its author, renowned Nicaraguan writer and activist Sergio Ramírez, a fellow DAAD scholar in

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West Berlin, on one of his visits to East Germany.48 Ramírez was part of the network of advocates and political emigrants for FSLN, who— along with writer and priest Ernesto Cardenal and guerrillero Enrique Schmidt Cuadra—recruited supporters and sponsors for the guerrilla fight from their European exile. The personal connection to Ramírez had encouraged Skármeta to stay attuned to current events in the country. Somoza’s dictatorship was finally defeated in July 1979, in a concerted effort that included the Sandinista liberation movement alongside oppositional forces from all social groups, including students, Catholic priests, and campesinos (farmworkers). The role that women writers, poets, and artists also played in Nicaragua was unprecedented. The incredible news and circumstances of the victory had single-handedly changed the emotional geography of the Latin American left-wing artistic scene. This achievement re-energized the liberation movement of Central and South America, which demonstrated that resistance against fascist oppressors can be successful when different social and political sectors act collectively.49 Nothing short of a venganza histórica (historical vengeance),50 the Nicaraguan revolution was a setback for the United States, whose government for more than a decade had backed right-wing regimes in the region. Nicaragua had gained its place in the history of Latin American left-wing uprisings—equal to the Bolivian workers revolt in 1952, the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and Allende’s election in 1973. According to Greg Grandin, they all contributed to an accrual of experience and perception that challenged in increasingly focused terms the authority of the United Sates as an ascendant world power . . . as radicalizing transit points where itinerant activists sought sanctuary, applied theory, gained knowledge, and carried the message elsewhere, throughout not just the Americas but the world.51

These events placed Nicaragua on the international map, provoking respect and admiration for a poorly financed group of rebels who overthrew a much better equipped army and ended centuries of colonial oppression. Artists such Harold Pinter and Günther Grass flocked the streets of Managua. Salman Rushdie used Ramirez’s novel as travel companion for his journey through Nicaragua that he undertook at the beginning of the 1980s.52 The most prolific writers of the Latin American left literary scene, such as Mario Benedetti and Eduardo Galeano, published essays and articles about leading figures and thinkers of the Nicaraguan struggle. The Argentine author Julio Cortázar, a friend of Cardenal and Ramírez, who had clandestinely visited the country in

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1976, published a collection of essays, Tan violentamente dulce (Nicaraguan Sketches, 1989), that dealt with the cultural renewal in Nicaragua following the revolution. Like many of their contemporaries, Lilienthal and Skármeta were overcome with excitement about these positive developments, and Skármeta wanted to make a film that honored this epic event. They planned to go to Nicaragua as quickly as possible to capture the enthusiasm about this victory. The artists understood it was important to document the first steps of this country that was physically and mentally scarred by the civil war but nevertheless ready to redefine its future. Skármeta drafted a story that was set in León, which had a symbolic place in Nicaragua’s long history of domination and conflict. The town housed one of the prisons where many were tortured during the four decades of Somoza’s dictatorship. It was one of the last strongholds of Somoza’s National Guard and had witnessed bloody street fights between the regime and the rebels. Lilienthal received support for this project from his home channel ZDF, Independent Film, Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion, and Provobis, and they got in touch with filmmakers and producers in Peru, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua to collaborate on this project. Skármeta, Lilienthal, and Michael Ballhaus, Lilienthal’s trusted colleague, arrived in Managua in October 1979. The Nicaraguan revolutionary project was well underway. It was a mission that aimed to develop the mental and physical infrastructure of an independent Nicaragua, relying on the work of farmers and intellectuals alike, reviving Nicaraguan’s rich cultural heritage, and supporting local artistic production. The newly founded Ministry of Culture, headed by Cardenal, brought to life the Instituto Nicaragüense de Cine (Nicaraguan Institute of Cinema, INCINE).53 Their manifesto states, “Ours will be a Nicaraguan cinema, launched in search of a cinematic language that must arise from our concrete realities and the specific experiences of our culture.”54 This was an ambitious undertaking in a country that had neither an indigenous film tradition nor an established infrastructure of cultural institutions and organizations, and that was critically short of financial resources, technical experience, and filming equipment.55 Most of the newly appointed film personnel had been working the fields only a short while before. Staff at the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (Cuban Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry, ICAIC) were familiar with the situation of conjuring up a national cinema from zero. They supplied INCINE with film stock and filming equipment, offering Nicaraguan colleagues use of Cuban post-

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production facilities and supporting them with training and advice.56 In the following years, East Germany and Czechoslovakia took over training of Nicaraguan film personnel.57 Made in 1980, Der Aufstand was one of the biggest productions that INCINE managed during the first two years of their existence.58 Other artists from the region came on board. The film was coproduced by the newly founded Costa Rican production company Istmo Cine. The creative heads behind Istmo Cine, Antonio Yglesias and Óscar Castillo, served as producer and assistant director to Lilienthal’s film.59 With Alejandro Legaspi, Der Aufstand involved an activist, who fostered filmmaking with and for indigenous communities in Peru. The Uruguayan-born photographer and director had lived in Peruvian exile since 1974 and was a founding member of the Grupo Chaski, a collective and influential filmmaking initiative that fostered collaborations with European filmmakers, television channels, and nongovernmental organizations to make sure that more and more authentic pictures of Latin America appeared on European screens.60 The local community participated as actors and extras in the making of Der Aufstand. Instead of relying on the script, Lilienthal used semi-improvisational techniques and directed them to act out their own version of events around the liberation of León, an approach that activated their pride and joy in having been involved in this significant moment in history. Much of the footage was made on location in the streets of León, an urban landscape still marked by the recent struggles. Many buildings were destroyed, and the noises and odors of war seemed to be still present.61 Ballhaus said, “This was not a film about historical events; this was the living present.”62 The local participants re-enacted and relived frightening, life-changing experiences that were just months old and provoked unexpected scenarios, especially when staging confrontations between guerrillas and military troops.63 Lilienthal reported that on one occasion, extras in uniforms of the FSLN troops were so distressed by seeing other extras dressed in uniforms of the National Guard that they started to fire on them.64 In order to record spontaneous incidents and reactions, including film from positions in the crowd, Ballhaus used a handheld camera. The resulting images are ad hoc, blurry, or badly framed and have poor sound quality; however, there is a visual texture that captures the feverish and affective atmosphere of these encounters perfectly. These scenes document moments of the struggle for a future that was “full of new hopes, energies, and possibilities,”65 contributing to making Der Aufstand a saga about the founding of independent Nicaragua, or what

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the German magazine Journal Film defined as an “insightful didactic play of legend building.”66 Der Aufstand exemplified Nicaragua’s power struggle with a story about a young man caught between two “fathers.” Agustín (Agustín Pereira) is from a proletarian background and dreams of becoming a telecommunications engineer. He had signed up for a job in the army because it was the only way to finance his studies. With his earnings, he also pays the rent of his parents’ house and finances the studies of his siblings. All other members of the family are involved in resistances activities. His sister Eugenia (Vicky Montero) is a guerilla fighter. Agustín’s father, Antonio (Carlos Catania) is active in the underground, while his mother (Maria Lourdes Centano de Zelaya) openly protests the regime. Agustín has a few days off, which he uses to visit his family. At home, his father convinces him to desert the army. When he does not return to his post, Agustín’s boss, Captain Flores (Oscar Castillo), who took a liking to Agustín and treated him as his personal protégé, comes with a group of soldiers to collect him. Heavily armed and protected, Flores demands that Antonio surrender his son. When Antonio refuses, Flores drives neighbors out of their houses and has them lined up against the house walls. Agustín gives in to Flores’s threatening pressure and drives off with him to the barracks. Eventually, Agustín joins his family’s resistance activities. As a consequence of Agustín’s renewed desertion, Antonio and his brother are taken hostage by Flores’s men. They are pushed through the town at gunpoint. In the final combat between the rebels and the military, Flores and Agustín die. Rachel J. Halverson and Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi suggest that Agustín has “to choose between two ‘fathers,’ just as his nation must choose between two governments.”67 This narrative set around a young Nicaraguan who is tempted by either side symbolizes Nicaragua at a crossroads between continuing a path of foreign domination or taking the route of self-determination. Flores represents the regime’s links to the United States and their motivation to finance a regime that served as an anti-communist buffer in Central America. He lives in a luxurious home filled with expensive furniture and has a powerful position in the army. Agustín’s biological father, in contrast, embodies actions and virtues that in the end lead to victory—the prioritizing of collective wellbeing over attaining individual goals and the building of a resistance network. With Agustín’s decision to desert the army and join this community, he comprehends that he had previously betrayed his family and that he must fight on their side, not against them. His death at the end of the film pays homage to the many lives that this long battle had cost.

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Figure 2.5. On the set of Der Aufstand: Actors Maria Lourdes Centano de Zelaya (Agustín’s mother), Agustín Pereira (Agustín), and Carlos Catania (Antonio, Agustin’s father). © Akademie der Künste.

In a documentary made twenty-five years later, Lilienthal revisits the figure of the soldier and examines exploitative recruiting practices in Nicaragua once again. In 2005 Nicaraguan-born Camilo Mejía deserted the US Army during a two-week leave after having been deployed in the Iraq War for six months. This made him the first official deserter of the Iraq War, a story that was of global media interest. Camilo—Der lange Weg zum Ungehorsam is the result of Lilienthal’s research into this story, which included conversations with the young man and his family and following Camilo’s activities as peace activist. He was born during the time of Somoza’s dictatorship. His mother and his father, famous Nicaraguan poet and singer Carlos Mejía Godoy, were Sandinista partisans. After high school, Camilo who had lived with his mother in the United States at the time, took up an offer to serve in the US Army, upon which the government would pay for his college degree. Shortly after he joined the army, Camilo was deployed in Iraq. The so-called peacekeeping operations of the US Army, their ways of treating civilians and employing violence, were an eye-opening and overwhelming experience for him. For example, he reports having raided the houses of civilians, lining them up and helping himself to whatever he found

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in their homes. Eventually the humiliations and human rights violations he was involved in became irreconcilable with his personal beliefs and values. He deserted from the army in 2004 and was convicted to serve a year in prison.68 Attracting young people from humble backgrounds with the promise of an action-filled job and a good salary has long been an approach of the US military. According to a recent study, military recruitment efforts are strategically targeted at Latino youth, taking advantage of the fact that the offspring of the biggest and fastest-growing immigrant community in the country are disadvantaged because of the low socioeconomic status of their parents.69 These young people have a high propensity to serve in the military. Camilo illustrates that these strategies reach far beyond US borders into the homes of families in Central America. Parallel to Camilo’s case, Lilienthal follows the story of Fernando del Solar. The US military kept phoning him in his native Mexico with the offer to pay for the family’s immigrant visas and their son’s tertiary education. When Jesús was twelve years old, the family decided to take up the offer. After he had finished high school, Jesús became a US marine and was one of the first soldiers to serve in the Iraq War. He was killed by friendly fire in 2003. Jesús and two other soldiers who died early in the Iraq War were given posthumous US citizenship. Hector Amaya argues that this bigoted practice camouflages illegal methods of staffing the US armed services.70 Fernando’s account of the farewell from his son establishes the emotional climax of the film. He remembers having sat at his coffin for a long time, undressing him and bearing witness to his grave injuries. Jesús’s face was intact, but one of his feet was cut off, and a wound on his stomach was carelessly stitched up. In this painful moment of a parent viewing the body of the child he nurtured as best as he could, Fernando realized that he had failed to protect Jesús. The guilt and grief over this loss was a life-altering experience that made him also mourn for the lives that were lost on the other side. Fernando went to Iraq, where he visited the site of his son’s death, and learned about more about the alleged enemy. The armed conflict had destroyed Iraq’s urban landscape and infrastructure and traumatized the local population. He met with the families of Iraqi victims to ask for forgiveness. Back in the United States, Fernando regularly talks to Hispanic students in colleges and universities to make them aware not to fall prey to the promises of the military recruitment officers. Camilo evaluates the legacy of the Sandinista movement and the dreams of this generation. Making this film, in which he documented

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what was left of the Nicaraguan revolution, transported Lilienthal back to his young self and the ideals that took him to Nicaragua in the first place. The excitement that Der Aufstand had thrived upon is replaced by feelings of grief, resentment, and sadness over lost opportunities. FSLN members, like Carlos’s parents, exchanged their lives in Nicaragua for an American homeland. Other war veterans who Lilienthal talked to are disabled, without jobs and access to proper medical treatment. Furthermore, the brief appearance of Sergio Ramírez, novelist who served as vice president of the country in the 1980s, pays homage to the figure who had inspired the first film project. Ramírez stands for the bravery and idealism of so many who had collaborated in the turbulent 1970s to help free the country from the economic and political dominion of the United States, only to find themselves up against a CIA-backed right-wing rebellion that hijacked any social project of the Sandinista government. Under these circumstances, the future for which Antonio’s family fought and Agustín had died could never really materialize.

Tangos, Boxing, and Cycling The last section of this chapter analyzes Das Autogramm and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal. Gone are the days of revolutions, uprisings, and demonstrations. The making of these projects coincides with the late phases of the military regimes in Chile and Argentina. Lilienthal’s reflections show fascist regimes in civil attire, a well-run apparatus that disguises itself as compassionate and caring for its population. The prolonged state of repression had crippled Latin American societies and managed to wipe out communal spirit and resistance. Das Autogramm is a story about the friendship of a musician and a boxer. It deals with the exploitation of cultural traditions and sports to forge people’s loyalty for the regime, whereas Der Radfahrer, a film about a talented cyclist, discusses the rise of neoliberalism in Chile. The introduction of radical free-market strategies produced a community of self-centered individuals. Yet light-hearted entertainment and economic success that are supposed to foster the value system of a new and modern Chile cannot completely suppress memory of crimes committed by the regime earlier. These crimes had produced traumas that many were unable to escape from. The German French coproduction Das Autogramm is based on the novella Cuarteles de Invierno (Barracks of Winter, 1980), the tale of a musi-

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cian and a boxer that was written by Argentine author Osvaldo Soriano, who at the time lived as an émigré in Paris. Soriano assisted Lilienthal in the development of this film and connected Lilienthal with other members of the Argentine exile community in France, who would eventually participate in this venture. Renowned bandoneon player Juan José Mosalini starred as the main protagonist and also composed the music for the film. His colleague, composer Gustavo Beytelmann, arranged the score. All of them had left Buenos Aires after the coup d’état of the military junta in 1976, where the climate of hostility and suspicion that the regime directed against them as artists had made their life unbearable. The participation of the Argentine musician as a member of the cast and crew makes this film an important Argentine case study to understand the strategies of cultural repression and the role of popular culture as a means to survive and resist, in which the tango serves as a leitmotif. Lilienthal’s film was again shot in Portugal, where he found a town that with its plazas, narrow streets, colorful facades, and wooden doorways imitates the architecture of colonial Latin America, surrounded by a stretch of land that resembles the vast plains of the Argentine pampa.71 The idea of deceptive tranquility and sleepiness often associated with life in small towns connects the film to Lilienthal’s earlier Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, where images of provincial everyday life veiled criminal activities and a population that exists in agony and fear. Das Autogramm quotes the earlier film by utilizing a short sequence of two watch guards patrolling the roof of the local military headquarters, which indicates “the unchanged situation in South America between 1975 and 1984,” as a German critic notes.72 The short sequence appears after the main character, musician Galván, arrives at the local train station of a friendly town, which greets him in autumn bloom and is decorated with banners announcing upcoming celebrations. The grainy quality of the older footage stands out from an otherwise vivid color scheme and immediately makes the viewer aware of a looming threat above everyone’s head. The image appears in a similar scenario later on that shows the ongoing festivities, with the effect of disrupting the joyful atmosphere. Hence, Das Autogramm could be considered a sequel to Es herrscht Ruhe im Land. Where Lilienthal’s first film had dealt with authoritarian regime structures suddenly breaking into the life of a small town, eight years later he re-examines the devastating impact that a situation of ongoing violence had left on its citizens. Bandoneon player Daniel Galván (Juan José Mosalini) and aging boxing champion Tony Rocha (Ángel Del Villar) arrive in the provincial

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Flores on the same train. They are hired as entertainers for local celebrations and share the same room at a nearby guesthouse. Rocha, strong and tall, is flirtatious and enjoys carnal pleasures. He was appointed to fight in a boxing match to provide entertainment for the masses. The soft-spoken Galván is supposed to play the bandoneon for a selected upper-class audience at the opening ceremony. Though Daniel hates Tony’s “strong-man” attitudes in the beginning, they will support each other through what will become difficult days. In their different ways, Galván and Rocha violate the rules set out for them by the mayor on their arrival and as a consequence become physically threatened. Galván refuses to attend the church service on Sunday morning, and the authorities discover that he has lost his license as freelance musician. The local authorities ban him from giving his performance and request that he leave. Things go bad for Rocha too. The former boxing champion, who has many fans in the town, fights against a military officer, a younger and fitter opponent. In the end, Rocha loses the rigged match, is bruised all over, and falls unconscious. No doctor is available to attend to his injuries at the local hospital. Critics find that Das Autogramm fits into Lilienthal’s Latin American oeuvre, presenting another version of “power and impotence, oppressors and oppressed. It [the film] deals with the conditions of the little man, who cannot do anything or not much against the power of their dictatorial regimes.”73 In fact, the small world of this town encapsulates the image of a society in which the military apparatus has successfully managed to destroy people’s courage to speak up about their conditions and where a collective soul is displaced by doubt and distrust for each other. When Galván and Rocha exit the train station, they walk through deserted streets. They have dinner in a half-empty bar, and the few guests seated at other tables talk in hushed voices or eat in silence, while suspiciously eyeing the strangers. Some characters, such as the mayor, who proudly shows off his elegant and spacious home, have adapted well with the system. The few who refuse to co-operate with the military will become social outcasts. There is Mingo, dispossessed and unkempt; he occupies a shack in the nearby woodlands. He tells Galván about previous crimes and disappearances that he witnessed. At once embodying the memory of the victims and guilty conscience of the many who chose to look away and be silent, Mingo calls the behavior of his fellow citizens “hibernating.”74 The two local guards, who had injured Rocha and raided Galván’s room because of his refusal to give them an autograph set fire to Mingo’s house and burn him alive. His death symbolizes the invisibility of the crime record; it has been erased

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and yet again another voice is muted. Meanwhile, Mingo’s real name— Ignaz Zuckermann—doubly marks him as both Jew and political opponent, embodying the crime record of the twentieth century, spanning from persecutions against Jewish populations in Nazi-occupied Europe to the human rights violations that occurred under the military regimes in the South Cone. There is a sense of suspicion toward Galván and Rocha, as they are considered outsiders who need to be instructed on the appropriate conduct and kept under scrutiny. On the night of their arrival, they have to report to the house of the governor, who lectures them about the importance of “bravery, discipline, and patriotism” and the rules of their stay. With a bandoneon player as lead, Das Autogramm calls attention to severe censorship measures to which artists and intellectuals were subjugated. According to Tulio Halperín Donghi, cultural repression in Argentina was motivated by “an extreme distrust and fear of the subversive potentials of any cultural or ideological project that was not submitted to severe control and a tendency to avoid any moderation to prevent real or imagined dangers.”75 Argentine author Osvaldo Bayer notes that repressive means included assassinations of writers, filmmakers, and journalists (e.g., filmmakers Raymundo Gleyzer, Pablo Szir, and Enrique Juárez). Many artists and intellectuals either were forced to emigrate or left on their own terms, such as Mosalini, the main protagonist of Das Autogramm.76 As Argentine scholar Beatriz Sarlo claims, their absence impoverished the local cultural and intellectual scene, provoked a brain drain in universities, and limited the potential of a democratic opposition.77 The situation in Argentina resonates with that in other countries under military rule, where any spaces of a cultural-political life were brutally destroyed. In Chile, the mass emigration of oppositional artists, censorship of visual and print media, and restrictive measures against those who decided to stay were referred to as apagón cultural—a cultural blackout.78 Mosalini was a well-known and beloved composer and bandoneon player in Argentina, who worked with the most important interpreters and composers of modern tango before he left the country in 1976. His participation in Das Autogramm as the main protagonist produces a rich layering of textual references to and extratextual meaning linked with the subjects of exile, cultural repression, and passive opposition. The tango motif is introduced during the beginning of the film. In a wide-angle take, a flat autumn landscape passes Galván, whose head leans against the window of the train arriving in Flores. His eyes fol-

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low two figures under the huge crown of an old tree who fleetingly come into view. The image that is taken from inside the train is followed by a medium shot that brings us closer to the scene, the surreal and affective nature of which has a dreamlike quality. A boy is situated on a chair and an old man, who stands behind him, rests his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The child starts to play a melancholic tango tune, which from the film’s narrative continues as a non-diegetic soundtrack into the next shot, when Galván wakes up and the train rolls into the station. Galván’s melancholic bandoneon would often announce an affective memory that alludes to stories of loss, torture, and death, such as a flashback he has of a band member who was torn from the stage, kidnapped in front of his eyes, or the images of a woman who is struggling against the grip of soldiers, who carry her into a house. The tango is an important and complex narrative trope in Das Autogramm. For once, it represents the regime’s strategy of utilizing Argentine cultural traditions to prop up nationalist and patriotic sentiments among the population, which evokes the longer history of exploitation and gentrification that this cultural form had been subjected to. When Galván appears to rehearse for the gala concert for which they want him to play a piece on the bandoneon, the conductor instructs

Figure 2.6. Daniel Galván (Juan José Mosalini) plays a sad tune on his bandoneon. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

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him that “art and politics have to be separated. A tango should never be political, you understand?” He then offers a distorted, lifeless rendition of “Mano a mano” (We are even). This song, composed by celebrated tango maestro Carlos Gardel in the 1930s, evokes the origins of the tango in the lower-class districts and cultural melting pots of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Tango was performed and danced in brothels, clubs, and carnivals, spaces “where class, ethnic and race conflicts were clearly displayed in a gendered code that dramatized complex social conflicts in sexual terms.”79 The social elites sold the tango as a national Argentine export to foreign audiences in later years. When it became popular in the salons of Paris, an erotically restrained version that adhered to conservative gender conceptions of the bourgeois classes traveled back to Argentina. Other scenes in Das Autogramm suggest that such appropriation strategies on behalf of the regime could never quite contain the tango’s sexual allure nor keep in check its politically subversive potential. Galván, who in the end did not perform at the gala concert, prefers to play his bandoneon in a bar under the night skies, filled with families, couples, children, and older people, where there is an open fire burning and a lady with tamed doves, a female couple dancing, and Rocha surrounded by beautiful women. If the people appeared to be broken and submissive at the beginning of the film, hearing the seductive tune revives them, reminding them of their passions and desires. A man comes up to Galván and tells him, “It was good that you did not play for the military. Your silence gave us courage,” a comment that transgresses the diegesis to address the artist Mosalini directly. With his decision to leave Argentina, Mosalini had saved his music from becoming instrumentalized by the regime. The figure of beloved musician Galván/Mosalini and his tangos are reminders of the vital role popular music had in Latin America of the 1960s as decolonizing power and to express concerns, moods, and sorrows of ordinary people during the dark times of the regimes. Robert Neustadt notes about Nueva Canción (New Song), arguably the most popular song movement and its genesis from support of democratic forces to regime protest, “It [the Nueva Canción movement] took form as a movement that protested justice at the same time as it supported the establishment of Allende’s government. The new song movement quickly became a Pan-Latin American phenomenon, a call for social justice from the Left.”80 Mara Favoretto and Timothy Wilson note that during times of dictatorship, many rock artists participated in undermining official narratives. Using coded language, metaphors, and al-

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legories, musicians told stories of the committed crimes and the disappearance of persons, which became a way of opposing a culture of repression and oblivion.81 Lilienthal’s film calls attention to the mass appeal of popular sports in Argentina and its use to forge loyalty to the regime across the social spectrum and political factions. This idea is documented in the match between Rocha, who has the sympathies of the common people—they admire him as their Cassius Clay—against the military candidate, Sepúlveda. Rocha competes with an old pair of boxing gloves against a much better equipped and trained partner, who is surrounded by an entourage of trainers and taken care of by his doctors. The match is set up for Rocha’s defeat. Though spectators in the arena are initially cheering for Rocha, the tide turns and they get carried away by Sepúlveda’s aggressive performance and the way he beats up Rocha. Scholars have linked these scenes and the sweeping sense of euphoria in Soriano’s novel and Lilienthal’s film to the soccer world championships in Argentina in 1978.82 The military junta had painstakingly organized and orchestrated this event to exploit the huge popularity of soccer to generate national pride and increase acceptance for the regime as legitimate government.83 Argentinians, irrespective of their social class and political standing, had cheered for the national team and were swept away by its eventual victory. The hype around the military candidate Sepúlveda in this boxing match alludes to such irrational sensations for a strong champion and mass ecstasy that does away with any rational thought. The film ends with Galván pushing his friend on a stretcher to the train station in the early morning hours, and they leave with the train. They might be battered up but are relieved to have survived this hell. The world of sport also acts as metaphor for the omnipotent rule of the market and ruthless competition in Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal. The film is based on Skármeta’s novella El Ciclista del San Cristóbal (The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, 1969). It was Skármeta and Lilienthal’s last collaborative project, and it was filmed on location in Chile under the watchful eyes of the local government. Here, the filmmakers experienced constantly changing instructions, permissions for filming locations that were given and then revoked without any explanation. These complicated production processes made it, according to Lilienthal himself, his worst-ever film.84 During these years at the end of the 1980s, social protests, strikes, and demonstrations had increased. Different social groups had formed and were adamantly meeting in public spaces, demanding to know the

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whereabouts of family members and friends. Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal is among the first films that observed the unhealed wounds in Chilean society. The gray-green colors give the film an eerie quality. Empty rooms and unused suits, damaged social relations and meaningless talk suggest irretrievable losses—a society that lives as soulless puppets in a cloud of haze. Next to the vivaciousness of La Victoria, which Lilienthal and Skármeta had made fifteen years earlier, these images advocate that the filmmakers’ belief in political utopia had given way to resignation and grief. The main protagonist of Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal is the young and talented cyclist Santiago Escalante (René Baeza), who trains as part of a team that is managed by a friend of the family. When their sponsor pulls out, Santiago changes to the team of Bruno Picado (Javier Maldonado). The affluent businessman and director of the cosmetics company Scent of the Andes had enticed Santiago into an attractive deal. He becomes the new face of the company, appearing on posters and in television advertising. Santiago’s situation at home does not correspond with the glitzy television world. His mother is ill, and his father can hardly make ends meet selling shoes at a roadside stall. Santiago is torn between temptations of a luxurious life and being faithful to his family and his ambitions to train and become a winner. Things culminate when he competes in an international cycle race as captain of the Picado team. Santiago is in the lead until he suffers a fall. Miraculously, he comes back to the tour, passes all competing cyclists, and is about to win the race. Fourteen years after the coup d’état, Chile continues to be governed by a military regime. Uniforms have disappeared from public life, and the surveillance and control apparatus has been eased, but the tenets of the fascist ideology re-emerge in the competitive world of sports. Commentators on the radio moderate the race and the cyclists, using terms such as “punishment,” “persecution,” and “prison” as combative language that keeps the repressive measures of the early years well alive. Barbara J. Keys notes, “Competitive and achievement-oriented, sport offered a means of inculcating disciplinary norms and provided physical conditioning that was highly suited to preparing better soldiers and more productive workers.”85 Picado’s fiery and heroic speeches— “From here we start attacking the fortress. Here starts the battle!” and “Total victory!”—are reminiscent of Nazi rhetoric. Using the device of an international sports event, the film signals that competition, achievement, and individualism are values that Chileans should aspire to and live by. Team manager Picado is the caricature of a self-centered and

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Figure 2.7. Cyclist Santiago Escalante (René Baeza) is a lonely star in Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

chauvinist bloke who exemplifies the excesses and aberrations of this system. During the tour over the Andes, he checks in on Santiago and hurries him up with silly commands that expose his lack of knowledge about cycling, instead showing off his money and profit-driven mindset. García Canclini observes that globalization and commercialization “reshape the public space by reducing social participation to the insertion of each individual in the benefits of consumption and financial speculation.”86 Social spaces become increasingly exploited for the exchange of messages and commodities. Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal reveals those developments, through images of a Chile whose urban surface and even rural landscapes are polluted with gigantic ads that announce business opportunities and promote consumer products. Moreover, the presence of television sets, flickering images of talk shows, and commercials that run on the screen indicate that the world of mediated distraction and consumerism also dominate the private sphere of the ordinary citizen. Television in Chile of the dictatorship years was the principal avenue of entertainment and provided for cultural consumption on a massive scale. Eduardo Santa Cruz Achurra

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notes, “Television established itself as means of mass communication, a centralized social institution that imposed homogenized cultural tendencies.”87 With the frenzy around cyclist Santiago, who is marketed as a rising star, Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal parodies the empty and orchestrated spectacle of commercial culture and the entertainment industry. When Santiago, who is invited to speak on a talk show, enters the TV studio for the live recording, things are hectic. A group of women dressed in silver overalls practice their dance routine, and various people run back and forth backstage. Santiago sits down to play the piano, adding another tune to the cacophony. Once the program airs, however, the show is perfect: Appearing on a shiny stage with a prominent Éxito (success) sign overhead is the group of female dancers, each one with a bouquet of flowers in her hand, neatly positioned in the background. A host dressed in a dark suit and pink bow tie announces the talk show guests, who enter the stage and stiffly take their position. The title of the film, Der Radfahrer vom San Cristobal, takes its name from a ludicrous perfume ad that stars Santiago. As the cyclist of San Cristóbal, he rides on a tightrope all the way from the moon down to the statue of the Virgin Mary, a landmark of Santiago de Chile that sits high on the Hill of San Cristóbal. The bright colors and naïve cartoonish style of this commercial entitled “The Scent of the Andes—A scent of the chosen ones,” once again exemplify an aesthetics of consumption that dominated the Chile’s audiovisual landscape, obsessed to be in everyone’s eyes and ears. Chile’s flashy urban surface covers up a history of violence that unsettles the lives of individuals and families. Santiago’s mother (Luz Jiménez) searches for her son Sergio, who had disappeared during the early years of the dictatorship. She spends hours at the graveyard and carries plastic bags with personal belongings of her son. Mentally and physically deteriorating, she appears as a forlorn figure in the cemetery whom no one cares about. Memories appear to her that are presented in flashbacks, a monochrome memory of violence that establishes a contrast to the colorful outer world, exposing its artificial and constructed nature. In one of the rooms in which Santiago’s mother escapes, the door opens to a dream of her son showing her ill on a stretcher. This image dissolves into newsreel footage of police forces arresting people on the street and directing water guns at a group of women and children, who huddle together for protection. The sequence is accompanied by a piercing sound that grows steadily louder, acoustically signifying pain. Sergio’s mother effectively alludes to the memory of the victims, which

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Figure 2.8. Santiago’s father in silly sunglasses at his son’s birthday. © Luis Weinstein.

rests on a few “who carry the weight of a horrific memory on their bodies and lives.”88 Parallel to the ostracized Mingo in Das Autogramm, she appears as abject “in a society that presents itself as healthy.”89 Her refusal to eat is a protest to participate in consumer culture and shows her determination to preserve the memory of her son Sergio, whom everyone else seems to have forgotten about. Appearing ill, frail, but tenacious, this character links to women-led initiatives and movements in Latin America, such as the Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of mothers and grandmothers who have persistently protested the regime and are present in the public sphere to this day. Marjorie Agosin notes, “They [the women] are the repositories of the nation’s memory, which is essentially feminine.”90 Eventually, Santiago begins to comprehend the brutality of a system that pits winners against losers, exploiting him as market product. When he reaches the finishing line of the race, he stops and lets his old teammates pass. With this action, he admits his mistake to have forsaken his team. Meanwhile, Santiago’s mother is released from the local hospital, because she found her appetite again. The film closes with a scenario that shows friends and family members at the entrance of the hospital, who have come to welcome her back. This “happy ending”

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conveys confidence that fragments of a community have survived and might provide a shield against social ills such as selfishness and greed. With the camera slowly moving away from this group, it dissolves into the image of an anonymous, lively group of friends standing in an empty street, recalling La Victoria’s dynamic and colorful street scenes as a faint memory, a seed of hope that Chile’s society might find ways to recover and heal.

Conclusion Lilienthal’s long-lasting and extensive cinematic engagement in Latin America from La Victoria to Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal and Camilo was an exercise of solidarity with Latin American societies and their plight for political, social, and cultural independence from European and US capitalist forces. Lilienthal connected to these communities as an individual with a similar history. His life and that of his family were irreversibly marked and transformed by the Holocaust. The filmmaking activities in Latin America reveal a responsibility toward those who saved themselves by the skin of their teeth and had settled in countries whose customs and language they did not understand, tortured by memories of family members, friends, or colleagues who were killed or had disappeared without having further notice of them. Skármeta said about the efforts of his friend: It is the patient and optimistic human beings who fight for human rights all over the world, who support political utopia with their small resources, who have not yet given up to act against intellectual provincialism in Germany, who are ready to share the suffering of the many thousand exiles, who time and again attend meetings for Chile, Bolivia, and El Salvador, because they are so generous to feel this injustice as their very own suffering.91

Remarkably, Lilienthal’s Latin American film series refer beyond the immediate political and cultural sensibilities in which these productions were realized, to express his belief that in any conflict, antagonistic sides can be reconciled. The films deconstruct ideas of heroism and physical strength, exploring feeble and indecisive characters instead, who might have taken the wrong direction, seduced by false promises and therefore deceiving themselves and others. This starts with the portrayal of young soldiers with childlike faces and middle-aged men who do not fit into the uniforms in affective terms—sons, brothers, or

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fathers. The director himself is torn in his feelings for a character like Agustín or Camilo: “The complicated and interesting aspect of this figure is the skepticism and antipathy one harbors for such a character because he had betrayed so much.”92 Lilienthal gives his figures a second chance, trusting them to recognize and take responsibility for the anguish and grief that they have caused. In Camilo, his last film, the desire for reconciliation comes across most clearly and urgently. Jesús’s mourning father meets with an Iraqi family whose son was also killed in the war, to apologize on behalf of his son. The film documents the need to forge new relationships from experiences of violence and loss, which echoes Judith Butler’s idea written in response to the backlash of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11: “Many people think that grief is privatizing, that it returns us to a solitary situation and is, in that sense, depoliticizing. But I think it furnishes a sense of political community of a complex order.”93 Butler proposes that common experiences of suffering should help to avoid further acts of violence.94 Vulnerability can form a link between cultures as a “social and political form” of resistance. Lilienthal’s films promote a similar idea—they acknowledge vulnerability and fragility of the human body, individual loss, and grief—experiences that form bonds of solidarity across cultural, religious, ethnic, and social frontiers. Susan Sontag said in her famous essay Regarding the Pain of Others that it is a challenge to find a mode of representation through which we as spectators recognize “how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering.”95 Lilienthal’s Latin American films provoked Western audiences to give up disaffected and cynical views and rethink their own safe positions, an issue that will be explored in the following chapter.

Notes 1. Peter Lilienthal in a discussion with artists at the AKO on 20 November 1984 about the film Das Autogramm. 2. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 225. 3. Néstor García Canclini, cited in Abril Trigo, “Shifting Paradigms: From Transculturation to Hybridity: A Theoretical Critique,” in Unforeseeable Americas: Questioning Cultural Hybridity in the Americas, ed. Rita de Grandis and Zilá Bernd (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 96. 4. Jorge Larraín, “Modernity and Identity: Cultural Change in Latin America,” in Latin America Transformed: Globalization and Modernity, ed. Robert N. Gwynne and Kay Cristóbal (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014), 26.

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5. Pedro Chaskel, one of Chile’s most prolific committed filmmakers, had cofounded the Centro de Cine Experimental in 1957 with the motivation to train film professionals and make short films. Chaskel’s films acted as a mouthpiece for concerns and problems of Chilean underprivileged populations, many of them living in rural areas. He often worked with photographer Héctor Ríos. 6. Jaqueline Mouesca, El documental chileno (Santiago: LOM ediciones, 2005), 73. 7. Valentina Raurich and Juan Pablo Silva, “Emergente, dominante y residual. Una mirada sobre la fabricacion de lo popular realizada por el Nuevo Cine Chileno (1958–1973),” Aisthesis, no. 47 (2010): 71, http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-71812 010000100005. 8. Raurich and Silva, “Emergente,” 74. 9. Alfredo Barría Troncoso, El espejo quebrado. Memorias del cine de Allende y la Unidad Popular (Santiago: uqbar editores, 2011), 38–39. 10. Troncoso, El espejo quebrado, 38. 11. Carl Fischer notes that “the multiple representation of the Allende period in art and literature . . . are symptomatic of the shifting temporalities and significations of utopia,” in his monograph Queering the Chilean Way. Cultures of Exceptionalism and Sexual Dissidence, 1965–2015 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 75. 12. See Rodrigo González, “La Unidad Popular según Raúl Ruíz,” La Tercera, 9 May 2020. 13. Troncoso, El espejo quebrado, 35. 14. Luis Horta Canales, “La Historiografía Marxista llevada al cine. Caliche Sangriento como fuente documental,” in La mirada obediente. Historia nacional en el cine chileno, ed. Claudio Salinas Muñoz and Hans Stange Marcus (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2017), 81–82. 15. For Soto’s work during the UP government, see Tomás Cornejo, “Filmar a contrapelo: el cine de Helvio Soto durante la Unidad Popular,” Atenea, no. 508 (2013): 16, http:// dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-04622013000200002. 16. Caiozzi did the camera work for Raúl Ruiz’s Nadie dije nada (No One Says Anything, 1970) and Palomita blanca (Little White Dove, 1973). He worked for Helvio Soto’s Caliche sangriento (Bloody Nitrate, 1968) and Aldo Francia’s Ya no basta con rezar (Enough Praying, 1972). During the years of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Caiozzi had to give up his critical film work and earned his living with making television advertisements instead. He returned as a director with Julio comienza en Julio ( Julio Begins in July, 1977). 17. Skármeta had then already published two collections of short stories, El entusiasmo (Enthusiasm, 1967) and Desnudo en el tejado (Naked on the Roof, 1969). The latter had won the Casa de las Américas prize. 18. Donald L. Shaw, The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 74–75. 19. See interview with Lilienthal in the appendix of this book. 20. Lilienthal recycled and expanded on the idea of documenting the election campaign of a female candidate. In the documentary Shirley Chisholm for President (1972), he had followed the first African American candidate who ran to be elected into the US Congress. 21. Jacqueline Mouesca and Carlos Orellana, Breve historia de cine chileno (Santiago: LOM ediciones, 2010), 102. 22. Janet L. Finn, “La Victoria: Claiming Memory, History, and Justice in a Santiago Población,” Journal of Community Practice 13, no. 3 (2005): 15, https://doi.org/10.1300/ J125v13n03_02.

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23. See Alexis Cortés, “El movimiento de pobladores chilenos y la población La Victoria: ejemplaridad, movimientos sociales y el derecho a la ciudad,” EURE 40, no. 119 (2014): 239–260, http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0250-71612014000100011. 24. Julie D. Shayne, The Revolution Question: Feminism in El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 84–85. 25. For a report in the New York Times on pots and pans demonstrations before the visit of Cuban’s president Fidel Castro to Chile in 1971, see Juan de Onis, “Women Protest Quelled in Chile,” New York Times, 2 December 1971, https://www.nytimes .com/1971/12/02/archives/womens-protest-quelled-in-chile-marchers-assailcastros-visit-and.html. 26. Ruiz and Skármeta landed in Morocco, where Lilienthal prepared for a new film project, “Ikaros. Ich erbaute das Labyrinth” (Ikaros: I built the labyrinth), which eventually fell for lack of finances. Lilienthal supported both artists and made contact with the Das kleine Fernsehspiel to promote their work and help finish Ruiz’s uncut film. This is documented by a letter that Lilienthal wrote to Eckart Stein from his sojourn in Ourzazate, Morocco, on 27 October 1973. 27. José Miguel Palacios: “Resistance vs. Exile: The Political Rhetoric of Chilean Exile Cinema in the 1970s,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 57 (2016), https:// www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc57.2016/-PalaciosChile/index.html. For Chilean exile cinema, see Zuzana M. Pick, “Chilean Cinema: Ten Years of Exile (1973–83),” Jump Cut 32 (1987): 66–70, https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC32folder/ ChileanFilmExile.html. 28. María Luisa Ortega, “La batalla de Chile/The Battle of Chile,” in The Cinema of Latin America, ed. Alberto Elena and Marina Díaz López (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 154. 29. Marivic Wyndham, “Why Did You Abandon Us? The Children of Chilean Revolutionaries Confront Their Parents,” in Seeking Meaning, Seeking Justice in a PostCold War World, ed. Judith Keene and Elizabeth Rechniewski (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 149. For a film analysis of Il pleut sur Santiago (Rain Over Santiago, 1975), see Marcelo Bonnassiolle, “La representación de la represión, el sufrimiento y el dolor del pueblo chileno. Cine, exilio, política e historia: El caso de la película Il pleut sur Santiago,” Historia y Sociedad 27 (2014): 211–224, https://revistas.unal.edu.co/ index.php/hisysoc/article/download/44651/47860. 30. Catherine Grant, “Camera Solidaria,” Screen 38, no. 4 (1997): 328, https://doi.org/ 10.1093/screen/38.4.311. 31. For Chilean female filmmakers in exile, see Elizabeth Ramírez Soto and Catalina Donoso Pinto, Nomadías. El cine de Marilú Mallet, Valeria Sarmiento y Angelina Vázquez (Santiago: Metales Pesados, 2016). 32. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 8. 33. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, press material (1976). 34. Antonio Skármeta, “Filmen in Portugal,” Forum 3 (1976): 14. 35. Skármeta, cited in Silvina Friera, “Letras: Antonio Skármeta, su formación en Buenos Aires, los caminos de exilio y la aventura de escribir,” Pagina 12, no. 192 (2004). 36. Skármeta, “Filmen in Portugal,” 14. 37. Skármeta, “Filmen in Portugal,” 14. 38. See Lorna Dillon, ed., Violeta Parra: Life and Work (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2017). This is the first English-language publication about the Chilean folk singer. 39. Karsten Witte, “Wer beherrscht die Ruhe?,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 5 March 1976.

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40. Wolf Donner, “Gemeint ist Chile,” Die Zeit, 16 January 1976. 41. Bettina Bremme, Movie-Mientos: Der lateinamerikanische Film: Streiflichter von unterwegs (Stuttgart: Schmetterling Verlag, 2000), 246. 42. The Valech Report (The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report), the official record of the abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990, states that approximately 1,170 places, among them civil public buildings, military units, investigation police units, and prisons, were used as detention and torture centers. 43. Lilienthal interview in Es herrscht Ruhe im Land press material, 11. 44. Orlando Lübbert, “Der Film in den Zeiten des Zorns,” in Grenzüberschreitungen. Eine Reise durch die globale Filmlandschaft, ed. Erwin Reiss and Siegfried Zielinski (Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Spiess, 1992), 188. 45. Antonio Skármeta, “Regen über Santiago,” interview by Jochanan Shelliem, Deutschlandfunk, 29 September 2013, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/regen-ueber-san tiago.1184.de.html?dram:article_id=263469. 46. Palacios, “Resistance.” 47. Lilienthal appeared in the role as vicar and friend of Lucho’s family. 48. Francisco Goldman, “Poetry and Power in Nicaragua,” New York Times, 29 March 1987, https://nyti.ms/29sRVz3. 49. Thomas C. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution (New York and London: Praeger, 2001), 166. 50. Fernando Mires, La rebelión permanente: las revoluciones sociales en América Latina (Mexico City and Buenos Aires: siglo xxi editores, 1988), 376. 51. Greg, Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 174. 52. Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (London: Vintage, 2000), 124–131. This is a reprint of the original book that was published by Picador in 1987. 53. For an account of the early days of INCINE, see Emilio Rodríguez Vázquez and Carlos Vicente Ibarra, “Filmmaking in Nicaragua: From Insurrection to INCINE,” interview by Julianne Burton, Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, ed. Julianne Burton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 69–80. 54. Nicaraguan Institute of Cinema, “Declaration of Principles and Goals of the Nicaraguan Institute of Cinema,” in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures, ed. Scott McKenzie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 442. 55. Howard Dratch and Barbara Margolis, “Film and Revolution in Nicaragua: An Interview With INCINE Filmmakers,” Cineaste 15, no. 3 (1987): 28, https://www.jstor .org/stable/41687482. 56. Jonathan Buchsbaum, Cinema and the Sandinista: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 8. 57. Dratch and Margolis, “Film and Revolution,” 28. 58. The second INCINE production was Miguel Littin’s Alsino y el cóndor (Alsino and the Condor, 1982). See also David Whisnant, Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 216. 59. Guadi Calvo, “Una mirada al cine costarricense. Dar voz a quien no la tiene,” Revista Cultural de Nuestra América 19, no. 71 (2011): 42. 60. For Grupo Chaski, see Sophia A. McClennen, “The Theory and Practice of the Peruvian Grupo Chaski,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 50 (2008), http:// www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/Chaski/text.html.

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61. Peter Lilienthal, “Über Konzeption und Erfahrungen bei den Dreharbeiten,” interview by Jürgen Bevers, in Press Information for Der Aufstand, ed. Basis Filmverleih GmbH, 1980, 9. 62. Michael Ballhaus and Claudius Seidl, Bilder im Kopf. Die Geschichte meines Lebens (Munich: btb, 2015), 133. 63. Whisnant, Rascally Signs, 216. 64. See interview with Lilienthal in the appendix of this book. 65. Whisnant, Rascally Signs, 189. 66. Friedrich Frey, “Regisseur-Portrait Peter Lilienthal,” Journal Film 18 (December 1988/ January 1989). 67. Rachel J. Halverson and Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi, “La Insurrección/Der Aufstand: Cultural Synergy, Film and Revolution,” in The Lion and the Eagle: Interdisciplinary Essays on German-Spanish Relations over the Centuries, ed. Conrad Kent, Thomas Wolber, and Cameron M. K. Hewitt (London: Berghahn Books, 2000), 449. 68. Camilo Mejía reflected on his experiences in his biography Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejía (New York: New Press, 2007). 69. Gina Pérez, “JROTC and Latina/o Youth in Neoliberal Cities,” in Rethinking America: The Imperial Homeland in the 21st Century, ed. Jeff Maskovsky and Ida Susser (Abingdon and New York: Routledge 2016), 37. 70. Hector Amaya, “Dying American or the Violence of Citizenship: Latinos in Iraq,” Latino Studies 5, no. 1 (2007): 3–24, https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600240. 71. Soriano’s novel is set in the Argentine town Tandil (located approximately four hundred kilometers south of Buenos Aires), where Lilienthal had originally planned to shoot the film. He later decided to film in Portugal in order not to jeopardize the security of his Argentine crew members or anyone else in Argentina who might have participated in the making of this film. 72. Friedrich Frey, “Der Künstler und der Boxer,” Die Tageszeitung, 30 July 1990, https:// taz.de/!1757961/. 73. Anne Frederiksen, Als lauerten überall Spitzel, ” Die Zeit, 26 October 1984, https:// www.zeit.de/1984/44/als-lauerten-ueberall-spitzel. 74. Sabine Schlickers, “De la novela al cine: análisis narratológico-comparativo de ‘Cuarteles de invierno’ de Osvaldo Soriano; ‘Das Autogramm’ de Peter Lilienthal y ‘Boquitas pintadas’ de Manuel Puig y de Leopoldo Torre Nilsson,” Iberoamericana 19, no. 4 (1995): 41, www.jstor.org/stable/41671515. 75. Tulio Halperín Donghi, “Estilos nacionales de institucionalización de la cultura y el impacto de la represión: Argentina y Chile,” in Represión y reconstrucción de una cultura: El caso argentino, ed. Saul Sosnowski (Buenos Aires: Eudeba 2014), 48. 76. Osvaldo Bayer, “Pequeño recordario para un país sin memoria,” in Represión y reconstrucción de una cultura: El caso argentino, ed. Saul Sosnowski (Buenos Aires: Eudeba 2014), 275. 77. Beatriz Sarlo, “El campo intelectual: un espacio doblemente fracturado,” in Represión y reconstrucción de una cultura: El caso argentino, ed. Saul Sosnowski (Buenos Aires: Eudeba 2014), 147. 78. Karen Donoso Fritz, “El ‘Apagón Cultural’ en Chile: políticas culturales y censura en la dictadura de Pinochet 1973–1983, Outros Tempos 10, no. 16 (2013): 108, https://doi .org/10.18817/ot.v10i16.285. 79. Marta E. Savigliano, “Whiny Ruffians and Rebellious Broads: Tango as a Spectacle of Eroticized Social Tension,” Theatre Journal 47, no. 1 (1995): 84, https://doi:10 .2307/3208807.

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80. Robert Neustadt, “Music as Memory and Torture: Sounds of Repression and Protest in Chile and Argentina,” Chasqui 33, no. 1 (2004): 128, https://doi:10.2307/29741848. 81. Timothy Wilson and Mara Favoretto, “Making the ‘Disappeared’ Visible in Argentine Rock,” Lied und populäre Kultur 60/61 (2015/2016): 97–110, https://doi:10.2307/ 26538873. 82. See Adriana Spahr, La sonrisa de la amargura: 1973 – 1983, la historia argentina a través de tres novelas de Osvaldo Soriano (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2006); Mónica Marcela Padilla Gómez, “Soriano y el cine: un viaje de ida y vuelta” (master’s thesis, Universidad Tecnológica de Preira, 2011). 83. Bill L. Smith, “The Argentinian Junta and the Press in the Run-Up to the 1978 World Cup,” Soccer & Society 3, no. 1 (2002): 69, https://doi.org/10.1080/714004869. 84. See interview with Lilienthal in the appendix of this book. 85. Barbara J. Keys, Globalizing Sport: National Rivalry and International Community in the 1930s (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 4. 86. Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 211. 87. Eduardo Santa Cruz Achurra, “Derrotero histórico, tendencias y perspectivas de la televisión chilena,” Comunicación y Medios 35 (2017): 12, https://doi.org/10 .5354/0719-1529.2017.45906. 88. Walescka Pino-Ojeda, “Latent Image: Chilean Cinema and the Abject,” Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 5 (2009): 135, https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X09341980. 89. Pino-Ojeda, “Latent Image,” 136. 90. Marjorie Agosin, “Patchwork of Memory,” NACLA Report on the Americas 27, no. 6 (1994): 14, https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.1994.11722980. 91. Antonio Skármeta, “Verteidigung des Aufstandes. Das verunglückte Comeback von Gaston Salvatore in seiner Kritik von Peter Lilienthals Nicaragua-Film,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 22 November 1980. 92. Peter Lilienthal, “Anarchismus, eine Philosophie des Friedens,” interview by Bernd Drücke, in Ja! Anarchismus. Gelebte Utopie im 21. Jahrhundert. Interviews und Gespräche (Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag, 2006), 26. 93. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and New York: Verso, 2004), 22. 94. Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance,” in Vulnerability in Resistance, ed. Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 25. 95. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin Books 2003), 92.

Chapter 3

ACROSS THE COLD WAR DIVIDE

When a film goes into international circulation, it meets different kinds of audiences and undergoes vital transformations. Tim Bergfelder finds that “once filmic texts enter the context of transnational transfer and distribution, they become subject to significant variations, translations and cultural adaptation processes.”1 Stuart Hall and other scholars claim that audiences tend to read film texts based on politicalideological structures that surround them and, depending on cultural and political discourses they participate in, link them to their “maps of social reality.”2 With his Latin American film series, Peter Lilienthal brought images of fear, repression, resistance, and resilience to European screens. This was committed cinema, part of a Latin American progressive cultural movement that operated within and beyond the geographical, cultural, or political limits of the non-Western world and made in a style that presented a “a denial of and an alternative to dominant practice.”3 Due to the culturally hybrid and activist nature of Lilienthal films, they held great appeal to spectators from socially and politically diverse communities and groups. His films screened in film festivals, film series, and cultural events in cities such as Berlin, Cannes, Tashkent, Buenos Aires, and Havana, providing a multitude of meeting points with audiences on both sides of the Iron Curtain. A conceptualization of Lilienthal’s films as a diasporic cinema that contests hegemonic practices, nevertheless, has to take into consideration their ambiguous relationship to national film. Thomas Elsaesser defines national film as “a complex negotiation of cultural meanings, of ideological interventions, and the struggle of who speaks to whom, and on whose behalf.”4 With Elsaesser’s idea in mind, this chapter ob-

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serves exhibition sites and reception patterns around Lilienthal’s films to see how they matched different national cinema concepts. I focus on the cultural-political contexts of East and West Germany and geographically located in the heart of the Cold War. While financed mostly with West German money and honored with many awards and prizes, Lilienthal’s films were confronting for West German spectators due to sometimes feeling uncomfortably close to social struggles, political conflicts, and Latin American film aesthetics. In the 1980s, the Akademie der Künste Ost (Academy of Arts East, AKO) invited Lilienthal to show and discuss his films. This academy was an umbrella organization of East German artists and one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). During this period, it screened Der Aufstand (The Uprising, 1980), Dear Mr. Wonderful (Ruby’s Dream, 1982), and Das Autogramm (The Autograph, 1984) in events to which fellow artists and the public were invited. The East German state television even broadcasted Der Aufstand and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (Calm Prevails Over the Country, 1975). Arguably, Lilienthal’s films could achieve what East German filmmakers did not: “to make films that would be as popular as Hollywood productions, but that would at the same time support the state’s political agenda and be of considerable artistic merit.”5 This chapter seeks to understand how Lilienthal’s Latin American films were ascribed to perceived social realities in East and West Germany, if and how they were aligned, and where they collided with official narratives, perceived aesthetic norms, and artistic selfunderstandings in both countries. First, I will investigate ways in which cultural background, sensibilities, and visions of the filmmaker coincided with the political strategies and cultural policies in West and East Germany. These were two film cultures enlisted in rebuilding their national identities post–World War II within a socialist versus capitalist framework. By establishing relations with developing countries that did not yet belong to either the socialist or capitalist camp, both countries saw themselves as the true and legitimate German nation.6 For West Germany, Lilienthal’s work in Latin America supported its democratic self-understanding and awareness of and compassion for current geopolitical conflicts. The appreciation of Lilienthal’s work in East Germany was based on his solidarity with the socialist movements in Chile and Nicaragua and were heralded as examples in efforts to revitalize socialist-cultural life at home. The analysis of Lilienthal and his work within West and East German cultural-political contexts provides insight into the political climate and ideological landscapes of East and West Germany. The recep-

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tion studies of two of the most important and controversial films of his Latin American cycle, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land and Der Aufstand, add further dimension and texture to this effort. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land deals with repressive measures directed against the Chilean population in the wake of the 1973 military coup d’état, a key event in the global Cold War that shifted the power balance in favor of the Western nations. Unsurprisingly, West and East film critics were divided in their opinion about ideas of collective resistance, revolutionary action, and utopia that the film advanced. However, my analysis suggests that beyond and below official discourses and rhetoric, the sudden and violent swing to the right in Chile had triggered latent social and collective anxieties, hopes, and disillusionment that were shared by both sides in Cold War Europe. The West German reception of Der Aufstand, arguably farthest removed from Western filmmaking approaches and imaginaries, presents another interesting scenario. Hector Amaya notes that readings of Third Cinema in the First World are frequently framed by Cold War hermeneutics or Western cinema aesthetics.7 Critics often evaluate Third Cinema formal characters as jarring or even primitive, which the scholar finds to reflect “an aesthetic and political parochialism.”8 A closer examination into the critical readings of the film, which will conclude this chapter, offers an example of this phenomenon: The film initiated heated discussions on Lilienthal’s responsibility as auteur and whether to accept this film as part of the West German film canon. Effectively, critics assign this Lilienthal film the position of an “Other” German film, a trope that, if to a lesser degree, runs through the critical reception of all aforementioned films, in both West and East Germany.

Lilienthal’s Latin America, West German Cultural Politics, and the Third World Lilienthal’s filmmaking in Latin America was enabled by and became part of a film culture that assisted with the promotion of West Germany as a democratic and pacifist state, extending cultural, political, and economic alliances into the South. During the first two decades of their existence and with limited sovereignty, the two German states raced to establish political and economic relations with countries of the Third World.9 West Germany, which was economically much stronger than East Germany, assisted developing nations with economic aid and offered them trade partnerships, politically enforcing their actions with

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the Hallstein Doctrine.10 From early on, culture was used as soft power and came to play its part in the political recognition and restoration processes. According to John Davidson, cinema was employed as a means to project the social and political reality of West Germany as the German “original.”11 With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and throughout the 1960s, the governing parties of West Germany, the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union of Germany, CDU) and later the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD), supported the establishment of an indigenous film culture. West German cultural politics used film as an ambassador for their national cultural identity at home and abroad. As laid out in a 1960s SPD conference, culture acquired important functions in the Cold War struggle—for West Germany to find its proper place among the Western countries, to be influential in the Eastern bloc, and to act as a cultural collaborator in the political self-determination process of developing nations.12 Film became one of the media that aimed to restore the country’s place among other Kulturnationen, a “unified collective of those Western nations which were economically at odds with each other, yet united in imperialism against the ‘non-West.’”13 National film productions were supposed to fend off any effects that socialist propaganda in East German productions might have had on Western audiences and present a positive image of West Germany to the developing nations. These cultural-political strategies resulted in establishing generous funding, distribution, and exhibition infrastructures and encouraged projects that evaluated the economic and political reality of the Western world. Working as a commissioned filmmaker for television, Lilienthal was able to make use of arrangements that put television in the forefront as the key medium where a critical film culture could thrive. The Film and Television Agreement—signed by the channels Allgemeiner Rundfunk Deutschlands (Joint Organization of Public Service Broadcasters, first German public broadcast TV channel, ARD) and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (second German public broadcast TV channel, ZDF) and the Film Subsidies Board in 1974—committed television in the funding and financing of feature film production.14 According to Elsaesser, “Bringing television into film-making had diversified considerably both the products and the markets, the audiences and the forms of reception.”15 Program heads favored commissioned work over shows and projects produced in-house, resulting in a television program that promoted alternative viewpoints. As Roswitha Müller notes, “Since the ideology that stresses the director’s work largely

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tolerates if not fosters idiosyncratic and personal/individual points of view in relation to social and cultural questions, a broad spectrum of partisan opinions was encouraged as an alternative to the anxious avoidance of any partisanship at all.”16 In a creative climate conducive even to radical ideas, Lilienthal’s engagement with the Latin American left and his critical perspective on US foreign politics were more than just tolerated opinions and augmented the dialogue occurring around various political issues. Arguably, the ZDF program Das kleine Fernsehspiel was the prototype of a democratic film culture. Operating with state funds and independent of market considerations, it was a medium that sought “to avoid an elitist cultural ghetto” and presented an alternative to the normative Konsumfilm (consumer film), a space for first-time filmmakers and experimental, feminist, and avant-garde productions.17 Das kleine Fernsehspiel elevated the careers of Lilienthal and other “misfits” whose works were thematically and aesthetically challenging but deemed unsuitable for commercial distribution.18 Productions from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary Poland, Greece, Israel, or Iran provided perspectives and imagery of people, cultures, and social and political issues in these countries.19 Arguably, a Lilienthal project such as La Victoria (1973), with its unapologetic sympathy for the socialist Unidad in Chile, could not have been realized in a program other than Das kleine Fernsehspiel (nor in the politically more conservative times that were to come). And while on the one hand, Das kleine Fensehspiel’s late-night spot tended to attract niche audiences, arrangements under the Film and Television Agreement meant that films that received funding under this scheme reached large audience numbers because they screened in German theaters and abroad and acted as official German entries in international film festivals. The numerous prizes issued by the West German state that Lilienthal’s films garnered over the years suggest that they possessed significant educational and cultural value. Lilienthal received the Bundesfilmpreis multiple times, a prize annually awarded by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, which recognized outstanding contributions to social and cultural discourses deemed important in West Germany. Lilienthal was awarded the Fernsehpreis der Deutschen Akademie für Darstellende Künste for La Victoria in 1974 and the Goldene Schale for Es herrscht Ruhe im Land in 1976. Der Aufstand and Das Autogramm also received German film prizes. The Filmbewertungsstelle, an institution that identifies high-quality indigenous and foreign productions and whose rating system guides educational and cultural institutions to

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select films for their venues, gave almost all of Lilienthal’s films highscore ratings.20 Lilienthal’s films were also considered vehicles to establish channels of communication with and about the Third World, and the filmmaker himself, due to his connections to Latin American cultures and societies, was an excellent ambassador to strengthen ties to countries of Central and South America. In the 1970s and 1980s, Lilienthal frequently took part in cultural events in Latin American countries. The Goethe-Institut in Montevideo, Uruguay, Santiago, Chile, and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, had organized screenings, retrospectives, and workshops with him over the years.21 Lilienthal toured Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay with Das Autogramm. Screenings of the films took place in settings such as universities, schools, and churches. Such venues benefitted both parties. For Lilienthal, they presented a chance to renew his ties to Latin America, get in touch with its cultural scene, and build relations with local artists. For the Goethe-Institut, with their mission to promote interest in German language and culture, it was a way to forge a cultural network in the region. While West Germany had outrun East Germany economically in the 1970s, there was ongoing anxiety that nonaligned Third World states would become too friendly with the Eastern bloc. In the 1970s and early 1980s, one of Argentina’s most important trading partners was the Soviet Union.22 Hence, cultural activities continued to play a crucial role in nurturing a conducive climate for further economic investments and alliances with Latin American countries—in 1984, more than 45 percent of the budget for foreign cultural activities in the Third World was allocated to Latin America.23 The Goethe-Institut was founded to support West German foreign cultural policy operating on a global scale and was a key player in aims to strengthen the influence of the Western bloc in Third World countries. This strategy centered on “legitimization of the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] as a culture state in a changing world and communication of a realistic and self-critical image of life and thinking in the FRG.”24 In Latin America, as elsewhere in the world, the Goethe-Institut offered language courses, literature competitions, and theater plays; events with young and upcoming German filmmakers; and screenings and practical workshops, which proved to be highly popular with students, artists, and the general public. A close relationship existed between Lilienthal and the GoetheInstitut in Chile. They invited Lilienthal to Chile for the first time in 1972 and introduced him to Antonio Skármeta. As examined in chapter 2,

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this encounter started a long-lasting friendship and productive collaboration between the Chilean author and the German filmmaker and was a key reason that Lilienthal continued to return to Chile and assist in events with the Goethe-Institut. In fact, he supported the local Goethe-Institut with activities during the difficult years of the dictatorship when, despite severe restrictions that concerned all matters of public life, members of their staff organized exhibitions, workshops, and talks, clandestinely hosting intellectuals, artists, and scholars who belonged to oppositional groups. These meetings took place on their premises during curfew hours and helped to maintain some form of creative activity and socio-critical thought.25 Lilienthal reports of a clandestine screening of La Victoria, where he met with the father of the film’s leading actress, Paula Moya, who had taken her own life shortly after the film had finished. Hence, it is not surprising that Lilienthal’s films continued to be used as part of film series and retrospectives that the Goethe-Institut initiated in the re-democratization phase in the early 1990s. Antonio Skármeta, back in Chile after his decade-long exile in West Germany, organized literary competitions, film events, and script workshops in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, for which he showcased his and Lilienthal’s work. They became part of Chilean memory culture from the very beginning. A 1992 retrospective of David (1979), Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal (The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, 1988), and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land was one of the first efforts in forging a public discussion about the human rights violations committed by the Pinochet regime in the transitional years.26

In East Germany of Precarious Times Lilienthal’s films entered East Germany when socialist idealism was fractured and had produced a deep schism between artists, intellectuals, and the wider population with the East German government. The interest in his work in the years between the late 1970s and early 1980s was bound to social and cultural repair mechanisms on behalf of the cultural leadership, such as attempts to safeguard socialist values and renew bonds of solidarity with allied socialist countries. The artistic elite was enthusiastic toward involving Lilienthal in projects to create a meaningful, participative socialist film culture. The popular magazine Filmspiegel published an article about Lilienthal that positioned him against the worldview and practices of his West German colleagues:

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“His work and his artistic intentions interlink with two elements that make him a particularly valuable ally: his honest antifascism and his passionate partisanship with the popular uprisings in Latin America.”27 There was the promise to have found in the West German director a like-minded fellow whose work earnestly and selflessly contributed to the socialist project when its days were already numbered. Lilienthal’s films Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, Der Aufstand, and Das Autogramm screened in East German cinemas and were broadcast on television.28 It was common practice to bring in feature films from Western countries to fill the TV programs and keep cinemas running, alongside homemade productions and coproductions with other socialist countries. Imports from “capitalist countries,” the majority of which came from the United States, France, Italy, and West Germany, were handled by DEFA Außenhandel (DEFA International Trade) and constituted one-third of all new releases in East Germany.29 West German films accounted for almost a quarter of all Western imports in the 1970s and 1980s.30 The license for Western films had to be paid in hard currency, which was well invested because they drew large audiences and made great revenues at the box office.31 The imports went through a lengthy approval process, however, so they often arrived at cinemas with considerable delay. Up until the end of the 1970s, films that were potentially suitable for distribution in East Germany were closely scrutinized for compliance using ideological-aesthetic guidelines with East German rhetoric about the capitalist system. The Hauptverwaltung Film (Central Film Administration) set the following guidelines in 1973: Film purchases from capitalist countries should be aimed at acquiring socially critical films that reveal the class division in imperialist society and show their symptoms of decline. Entertainment films from capitalist countries should only be selected to fill the gaps not covered by films from socialist countries.32

West German productions such as Lina Braake (1975), Die verlorene Ehe der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975), or 40 Quadratmeter Deutschland (Forty Square Meters of Germany, Tevfik Başer, 1986) included an imagery of a repressed West German society and of purposeless, drifting existences and dealt with themes such as drug addiction, unemployment, the intrusion of the media in individuals’ lives, and women who were granted only limited freedom. They were all welcome to further socialist rhetoric.33

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Around the end of the 1970s, the cultural leadership all but gave up the strict political policies that had previously steered film selection. Gerd Horten speaks of a “surrender of GDR film control” due to economic constraints that the Eastern European film industries, among them the East German DEFA, suffered from. The lack of demand for their own productions and competition with the programming of West German television led to an influx of even more Western pictures into East Germany without much consideration of their ideological compatibility.34 Travel limitations and lack of contact with foreigners fed a yearning in the East German population to see and experience lifestyle, cultures, and landscapes outside of East Germany and Eastern Europe. Cinema could satisfy this desire to a degree, and the attraction to West Germany and all things foreign was now willingly accepted and economically exploited.35 The lighthearted entertainment that began to flood the GDR were observed with worry by the intellectual and artistic elites, concerned that they would eventually replace a critical East German film culture. Eminent East German director Konrad Wolf wrote in a correspondence to Peter Weiss in 1981, “Stupidity and sheer foolishness echo in the world.”36 In contrast to these tendencies, Lilienthal’s politically engaged films were imports of high quality that foregrounded values such as friendship, self-sacrifice, and commitment on which socialist society was founded. Their pacifist character resonated with DEFA’s own antifascist tradition. Film in East Germany was to imagine socialist reality based on notions of antifascism, the key concept of East German selfunderstanding as a socialist state. Productions such as Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are among Us, Wolfgang Staudte, 1946) and Ehe im Schatten (Marriage in the Shadows, 1947), were the first in a large corpus of antifascist films that established an important and prolific genre.37 In the early films, made before the two German states were founded, guilt about World War II and the Holocaust was approached as something that all Germans had brought upon themselves, were traumatized by, and were responsible for. After 1949, the approach to the Nazi past in DEFA films changed in accordance with the hegemonic narrative of the East German state. Christiane Mückenberger notes that in antifascist films, guilt became placed onto individual characters complicit in war crimes.38 In Frank Beyer’s feature Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1963), arguably the prototype of the East German founding myth, a group of male concentration camp inmates and Communist Party prisoners stand by one another and against self-centered, greedy, and cowardly Nazi officers. The corpus of antifascist film included war

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narratives such as Fünf Patronenhülsen (Five Cartridges, Frank Beyer, 1960), Der Fall Gleiwitz (The Gleiwitz Case, Gerhard Klein, 1961), and Ich war neunzehn (I Was Nineteen, Konrad Wolf, 1969). Other antifascist pictures negotiated relationships between Jewish victims and gentile perpetrators, such as in Wolf’s Stars (1959), Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, Frank Beyer, 1975), and Die Schauspielerin (The Actress, Siegfried Kühn, 1988). The antifascist past resonated in the DEFA filmscape throughout its existence, but approaches and perspectives shifted and changed over time before eventually fading out. Mückenberger notes, “The ideal image of anti-fascist behavior that had been propagated for decades had now become something so remote that it was no longer adequate to the needs of a new generation.”39 With ideas in relation to revolution and utopia, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land and Der Aufstand could be seen to blend in with the antifascist credo of Frank Beyer or Konrad Wolf. The films presented an updated version by highlighting the socialist struggle of the day that took place in countries of the Third World. The stories of a fascist repression in Chile that had trampled a peaceful socialist project and of Nicaragua’s successful overthrow of a decade-long oppressive system demonstrated that Cold War frontiers were as sharply demarcated as ever. Hence, the films could be used as reminder of East Germany’s “dialogical (or dialectical) relationship between fascism and antifascism.”40 Through Cold War rhetoric and alliances to selected countries in the Third World, the East German government had always sought to showcase the pacifist, humanist, and moral character of socialism to its own population.41 Support for Chile and Nicaragua was intended to create the sense of a shared identity between socialist states against their common imperialist enemy, which in turn would promote the mission of socialism as a humanist concern.42 However, by the 1980s, the East German public was tired of such rhetoric dressed in the same old terminology that they had been exposed to all their lives. Lilienthal’s films provided a fresh vision with which to rethink the urgency of antifascist struggle, and his standing as a well-respected and internationally known filmmaker increased the possibility of awakening critical awareness among the eastern spectators. East German film personnel traveled with their films to festivals in Berlin, Moscow, and Tashkent, which was an effective way to stay in touch with the international film scene and network with fellow filmmakers from East and West. On one such occasion, Günter Agde, film critic and research assistant at the Akademie der Künste Ost (AKO), met Lilienthal, who showed great interest in an exchange with his East Ger-

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man colleagues. Agde introduced Lilienthal to Heiner Carow, which would result in a thriving friendship between the filmmakers.43 In August 1982, Lilienthal invited both Agde and Carow to a private screening of Dear Mr. Wonderful in his apartment located at Stuttgarter Platz in West Berlin, alongside his producer Joachim von Vietinghoff. 44 Carow understood that Lilienthal would be an asset for the cultural scene in East Germany. One of the most influential East German directors and vice president of the AKO, Carow wanted to integrate Lilienthal more closely into their work and planned activities. Carow pushed for this collaboration with the vision to shift direction and find a way out of the deep crisis that had hit East German culture and society at large. In 1976 East German authorities had expelled singer Wolfgang Biermann. In the wake of this action, several artists—among them highprofile film personnel, such as director Egon Günther and popular actors Armin Mueller Stahl, Manfred Krug, and Angelica Domröse— emigrated to West Germany, because they were disillusioned with the restricted artistic freedom and lack of creative opportunities in the East German state. Not only did this bereave the cultural sector of muchneed talent and artistic experience. These alarming developments within artistic circles were aggravated by growing fissures between the East German government and the population in the 1980s. In a state with ossified political structures—governed by a group of old men unyielding or unaware of the problems, wishes, and desires of their population—young generations were excluded from participating in cultural and social leadership, which left them increasingly frustrated.45 In one of many efforts to address this problem and save and/or reestablish a critical film culture, AKO’s section Darstellende Kunst had laid out new ideas in the work planned for the decade of the 1980s, which included promoting creative tendencies outside of the canon, supporting young artists, and forging connections to the international artistic scene, to recover bonds with East German audience.46 This paper reads like a manifesto: How can we make partners in our country and beyond its borders? Is it always the case that the one who has created the greatest piece of art is our potential ally? Don’t we have allies who have not yet had the biggest successes but who need our support?47

The section planned public activities, such as film retrospectives, exhibitions, screenings, and workshops, in collaboration with artists from inside and outside of the county, events that espoused strategies for a profound renovation of socialist culture. Where previously, as scholar

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Horst Claus claims, “for GDR cultural functionaries and theoreticians the idea of spectators arriving at their own conclusions was anathema,” then such projects sought to challenge this dictum and encourage important dialogue between artists and audiences.48 Guided by a spirit of reform, the AKO would regularly host activities with West German artists, such as directors Bernhard Wicki and Margarethe von Trotta. Lilienthal visited twice to present his films. In 1982 the AKO organized an event around Der Aufstand and Dear Mr. Wonderful—the latter a film that never came into East German cinemas and was promoted as American counterpart to Solo Sunny (Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, 1980). Lilienthal and Ballhaus participated in the film projection and conversed about the films with East German audiences, an event that Heiner Carow moderated.49 In 1984, Lilienthal returned for a screening of his feature Das Autogramm, which he had made the same year and was organized for members of the AKO. Günter Agde remembers that the encounters of the West German filmmaker and the East German public were most stimulating.50 The transcripts and audio recordings of the events confirm this. Audiences raised questions about politics and society in Nicaragua and the challenges of establishing a socialist state and social inequalities in the United States. These events with Lilienthal were an occasion to express their discontent, offering local East Germans an indirect way to address

Figure 3.1. Peter Lilienthal at an Akademie der Künste Ost event in 1984. To the right of the filmmaker: Günter Agde, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Heiner Carow, and Michael Gaißmayer. © Akademie der Künste.

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social ills that the GDR suffered from and that in turn affected their personal lives. Some responses to Dear Mr. Wonderful, a film about a hapless and isolated bowling alley owner in New York City, with Joe Pesci in the main role, point to this issue. While spectators said that Pesci’s figure motivated them and provided for moral strength in seeking happiness “in the small things” and finding one’s own place in the world, this comment also contains disappointment about the current state of affairs in the GDR.51 Another spectator said succinctly, “The film negotiates our situation.” East German artists at the AKO—among them directors Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Gerhard Scheumann, Jürgen Foth, singer Gisela May, and film critic Rosemarie Rehan, who discussed Lilienthal’s Das Autogramm—were even more forthcoming. Their remarks barely hid criticism about authoritarian structures in the East German state: Isn’t it interesting that power always chooses sports and the arts to adorn itself with? And when the autograph is not being granted . . . one is hit with a stick, so to say. This is a pattern, I think, which is not only valid for Latin America.52

The broad spectrum of views that East German audiences expressed reveal that the crisis in the GDR had affected every part of their lives and that there was an enormous demand for public debate. Agde notes in his article that in “an increasingly fractured, contradictory, objectively ever-more degraded environment,” Lilienthal was “an important ally . . . a welcome and daring challenge. A provocateur who helps us to advance.”53 The opportunity of a dialogue with the filmmaker, and about his films, motivated East Germans to open up about individual issues, desires, and social changes that were long overdue.

Revolutionary Romanticism and Disillusionment Following the discussion of the filmmaker’s work with cultural-political strategies in East and West Germany, this section shall compare the critical responses to the film Es herrscht Ruhe im Land. Film critics—intellectuals, cultural workers, journalists, and even academics—critique moving images against relevant or comparable national and international film productions, theoretical conceptions, or their own thematic and aesthetic preferences. A range of ideas, theories, and practices inform the critical reception of a given film text. Janet Stagier notes:

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When considered from the perspective of reception studies, a number of traditional approaches to film and television studies take on new life. Specifically, notions such as auteurism, national cinemas, genres, modes, styles, and fiction versus nonfiction become significant historical reading strategies.54

Hector Amaya notes that film criticism as part and parcel of national, cultural, and political modalities is “bound by institutional conventions, templates of professionalism, and an array of cultural, economic, social, and political expectations.”55 Certainly, GDR critics were expected to examine moving images for their ideological merit and the appropriate artistic implementation of the socialist value system. As Sabine Hake notes, “The pressure on film criticism and scholarship to participate in the advancement of socialist culture and its changing strategies of self-legitimization prevented more extensive and historical investigations.”56 Film critics in the West, who may appear less restricted in articulating their views, were still bound by the political leaning of the paper they were writing for and not immune to ideological interpretations themselves. Considering the committed and radical character of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land and the politicized atmosphere in West and East Germany, dominant political discourses and prevailing aesthetic and cultural codes affected the readings of the film. In West Germany, amid shock and sorrow about Allende’s death, there was nevertheless relief that the military coup had prevented the spread of communist “evil.” A US-backed government in Chile safeguarded Western political and economic interests and was another step toward weakening the socialist bloc. Articles and essays published in the West German media contemplated whether the Chilean case allowed conclusions to be drawn about the future of the socialist system closer to home: The commentators were interested in the question of whether one could learn a lesson from the case of Chile that could be relevant for the political landscape in Europe or Germany. In particular, there was the question whether the Unidad Popular [Popular Unity, UP] experiment would have been doomed in other countries as well. . . . In other words: Was Allende’s governmental crisis a homemade Chilean affair or the product of an inexorable process, which concerned socialist politics in Europe too?57

Nevertheless, reports of terror, torture, and murder required the Federal Republic—as a liberal democracy rejecting measures of violence— to adopt an ethical position. Friedrich Paul Heller finds:

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The military coup had an ambivalent effect on the bilateral relations: it brought Chile back into the safe haven of “the West,” but it installed a dictatorship that was incompatible with a nation governed by the rule of law and was rejected by the majority of the West German population.58

The repressive measures that the Pinochet regime used against their alleged enemies polarized the political parties. The left wing of the SPD and the Interparliamentary Left criticized the hesitant position of the German Embassy in Chile, which overly scrutinized asylum seekers before accepting them.59 The CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU (Christian Social Union of Bavaria), on the other hand, welcomed the changes and took up diplomatic relations with the Chilean state under Pinochet. CSU head Franz Josef Strauß defended the new government with the justification that the country was safely transitioning to democracy under Pinochet’s leadership.60 The fact that approximately two thousand Chileans were granted asylum in West Germany—the first time that the country was obliged to accept refugees from a socialist state—was met with considerable resistance in some of the CDU-led federal states. Local governments created bureaucratic hurdles such as admission criteria, because they feared that left-wing extremists would come into West Germany, and rejected entry to some prominent politicians who had served in Allende’s government.61 In a move that was highly criticized by the political left and in wider West German society, Strauß, in his role as foreign minister, traveled to Chile in 1977 to meet with Pinochet and visited the infamous community Colonia Dignidad, a place that was then already known to be a torture site and military arms depot. Against the backdrop of a wide range of positions that divided the political parties in West Germany over the issue of Chile, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land arrived in West German cinemas. The film had premiered at the Hofer Internationale Filmtage in November 1975 and from January 1976 onward was screened in cinemas in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Munich. Reviews for the film appeared in nationally circulating newspapers and magazines such as the left-liberal Frankfurter Rundschau, the center-left papers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, the liberal Tagesspiegel, the conservative center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel. Local papers including the Stuttgarter Zeitung and Schwäbische Zeitung also reviewed the film. Film critics were quite aware of the explosive quality of this film as an indictment of the Pinochet regime. Some dressed their discussions of

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Es herrscht Ruhe im Land as sheer analogy for violence and aggression, without mentioning Chile or other actual political matters that were going on at the time in Latin America, such as increasing violence and unstable political conditions in Argentina and Uruguay. Rather, reviewers found this film symbolic of a Latin American coup d’état and said that it was “communicating compassion,”62 “shunning disinterest,”63 and “evoking solidarity.”64 Among the few who dared to speak their mind, Karsten Witte observed that this film, which openly proclaims its sympathy for Chile, was a mixed blessing in the West German mediascape: “The film claims a fictional status that in reality it does not have but that it maintains in the distribution system of [our] culture in order to be broadcast.”65 Wolf Donner, writing for Die Zeit, entitled his review “Gemeint ist Chile” (This is Chile).66 In fact, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land so unmistakably criticized the human rights violations that happened under the current Chilean government that the German embassy in Canada canceled a screening of the film at the Goethe-Institut in Montreal. Since Canada entertained foreign relations with Chile, it did not wish to interfere with Chile’s political affairs.67 The reviewers avoided discussing Es herrscht Ruhe im Land as directly linked to the political panorama in order to sidestep a political statement that could have been read as buying into communist ideology. After all, this picture was made by a director who was politically outspoken and whose earlier film La Victoria had defended Allende’s socialist reform projects. Journalist Hanns-Georg Rodek recounts the dilemmas that Lilienthal presented in the West German political landscape: These films were located far from here. Yet, there was a home front, where the right government lobbied for the wrong regime and vice versa: Franz-Josef Strauß fawned over Pinochet, and Erich Honecker offered asylum to the victims of Pinochet’s regime.68

Lilienthal’s film proved to be problematic in light of the East-West conflict. It criticized the West German democratic government and congratulated East Germany’s human rights activism. Arguably, its revolutionary pathos was too close to socialist rhetoric. Ideas of revolution, collective resistance, and politically subversive activity in Es herrscht Ruhe im Land were ridiculed and dismissed. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that the contemporary reality of a besieged Chile did not correlate with the film’s last sequences, which show escaped prisoners reunited and suggest that resistance is not dead: “The fiction has to resolve something for which the political reality offers no direction whatsoever. The end, if one takes it at face value,

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is as touching as it is far from reality.”69 This pessimistic, sometimes even cynical tenor also suspected Lilienthal to be wanting to revive the spirit of the 1968 movements and its views of the Third World whose moment had long passed. For Western European and US students, intellectuals, and artists then, the battle of countries such as Vietnam or Algeria, which at the time fought against their former colonizers, would be the catalyst to initiate a worldwide social transformation according to a neo-Marxist philosophy.70 Cuba’s 1959 revolution had proved that this was possible, reason enough to assume that the masses in Latin America, longtime victims of the global forces of colonialism, would be turning the power balance around. Gustav Siebenmann claims: For the 1968 youth and many left-wing intellectuals in Europe, the images of Latin America become sharply narrowed into one simplified macro image of a victimized continent, where the disenfranchised, hoping for a social utopia, strike back violently and successfully.71

At the beginning of the 1970s, leftist groups had viewed the situation in Chile with increasing interest. For Western European communist parties and radical leftists, the UP and Allende became an icon for democracy and socialism in the uneven relationship between the rich North and underdeveloped South.72 According to Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Magaly Rodríguez García, “Some radical leftists cultivated Allende as a warrior of socialism, projecting their hopes for radical change on a mythologized hero of armed struggle not found in Europe.”73 At first, European solidarity groups saw the military coup as a temporary phenomenon and overemphasized the strength of popular resistance. Over the years, however, the faith in eventual social change in Europe brought on by a revolution in Latin America became exhausted and affected the energies of a Western solidarity movement.74 Moreover, the public interest in the matter had declined sharply. When Es herrscht Ruhe im Land was released, news about political violence and violation of human rights in Chile was already overshadowed by cataclysmic events in other parts of the world. As one critic notes, “Two and a half years after the violent removal of Allende’s democratically elected government, Angola, Lebanon, Portugal, and other burning global issues pushed the subject of Chile from the front pages of the newspapers.”75 The Süddeutsche Zeitung found the film to be an “amusing dream of class struggle that verges on the grotesque.”76 Discussions about the viability of collective ideals and solidarity had ended. The coexistent political radicalism and terrorist activities

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in Western Europe that were the fanatic tail end of the student movement gave way to what Wendy Brown calls a “left melancholy” and a politically regressive climate.77 The militancy of the Red Army Faction, actions such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and bomb attacks, and the readiness to use violence for political means became cause for a serious debate. Work of fellow German filmmakers deplored the depressing state of things. Films such as Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, Helma Sanders-Brahms’s Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand (Under the Pavement Lies the Strand, 1975), and the omnibus production Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, Rainer Werner Fassbinder et al., 1977), which appeared around the same time, dealt with the consequences of political radicalization and reckless intrusions of the state into the private sphere of individuals and their inability to fight back, comparisons that can make the vibrancy of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land seem a belated, exoticized contribution to this topic. Meanwhile in East Germany, the film arrived in a phase of political restoration and efforts on behalf of the Eastern bloc to uphold the vision of socialism as a believable and worthwhile project. The military coup in Chile presented a severe setback for the socialist front. The GDR had established relations with Chile and other Latin American and African countries, assisting them with financial aid and trade deals. East German engineers and doctors helped with infrastructure projects in Mozambique and trained experts from Nicaragua and Angola in medical, technical, and artistic professions.78 Foreign relations with Chile were particularly strong. East Germany was thankful for the support of the country in its efforts to be acknowledged as a sovereign state in the international community. Salvador Allende, in his role as senator, had visited the GDR as early as 1966. The UP government strengthened political and cultural ties between the countries and voted in favor of the GDR’s UN member application.79 The coup ended diplomatic relations with Chile abruptly but started a chapter in East German–Chilean relations that was intensive and dynamic.80 The East German government granted visas to about fifteen hundred opponents of the Pinochet regime and generously provided the newly arrived refugees with housing and jobs. They had free access to health care and started or continued their degrees at East German educational institutions. The support of victims of the coup was an effective way for the GDR government to showcase their active stance against imperialist forces. In fact, the Chilean cause was one of the few instances in East German history that united members of the

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government and the population of all strata, classes, and ages. Artists and intellectuals enthusiastically and compassionately participated in solidarity activities. They could relate to the fate that Chileans suffered because many of them had themselves been victim to Nazi oppression and were part of the resistance groups in World War II and/or had lived as exiles in Latin American countries. Several East German politicians had also fought in the International Brigades against Franco during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.81 Young Easterners loved Chilean music, listened to the songs of Violeta Parra and Victor Jara, and went to concerts of bands such as Inti-Illimani, Aparcoa, and Quilapayún. Solidarity posters for Chile featuring the clenched fist and the Chilean flag decorated East German student accommodations. Chilean art became an intrinsic part of East German youth culture. The GDR cultural industry took great efforts to maintain Chilean culture in exile and make it available to East German audiences. The work of Chilean artists and intellectuals was translated into German and published in prominent and popular magazines. DEFA produced several shorts, animations, documentaries, and feature films in collaboration with Chilean actors, scriptwriters, musicians, and directors. The East German film company benefited from the insider perspectives of the artists that promised to give the films authenticity and foreign flair. For Chileans, being able to participate in media productions was an effective way to call attention to the repressive conditions in Chile and mobilize resistance against the dictatorship, whatever form it would take.82 Not bound by travel restrictions, Chilean artists were involved in projects on both sides of the German border. Actor Aníbal Reyna, for example, was cast in Christian Ziewer’s Aus der Ferne sehe ich dieses Land (I See This Land from Afar, 1978) and had the main role in Orlando Lübbert’s DEFA-produced feature, Der Übergang (The Passage, 1978). Moreover, author Antonio Skármeta was held in high esteem in the GDR. His books were published by the East German AufbauVerlag, and he wrote a screenplay for Joachim Kunert’s television film Die Spur des Vermißten (Trace of the Disappeared, 1980). Skármeta acted as a mouthpiece for Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, supporting this production and collaboration with his friend Lilienthal that was true to the tenets of solidarity and antifascism.83 The interest in screening Es herrscht Ruhe im Land in East German cinemas and television relied on the argument that the film would show a fascist invasion to be a real existing threat to the accomplishments of socialism. Progress Filmverleih oversaw film programming, marketing, and public relations, providing guidelines for official evaluations and

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discussions of the film. Progress argued for its acquisition because it would denounce Pinochet’s ultraright-wing government as a vehicle for capitalist and colonialist practices and present “a valuable contribution with an anti-imperialist subject.” East German audiences were particularly interested to see how a West German filmmaker would deal with this topic, one that had occupied the public sphere so prominently. Hence, a decision on the purchase of the film was reached quickly. DEFA-Außenhandel acquired distribution rights to the film six months after its premiere in West German cinemas, in June 1976. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land premiered in East German cinemas in April 1977 and was broadcast only three months later, having been waved through East German institutional channels in record time. The rank and file of East German culture pushed for a television screening soon after its premier in East German cinemas. Hans Joachim Seidowsky, DFF program director, contacted the current director of Progress Filmverleih, Wolfgang Harkenthal, with regard to an early broadcast date. Harkenthal agreed to this request after consulting with the vice minister of culture, Horst Pehnert. The film ran on DFF 1 (Deutscher Fernsehfunk, Channel 1) in a prime-time spot on 12 July 1977. Following the cinema and television screenings of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, reviews that appeared in East German newspapers and magazines utilized the film to deliberate on the collapse of Allende’s socialist project and its lessons for the socialist world. James Mark and Bálint Tolmár note that Eastern Europe political leaders viewed bourgeois groups and interests, which had been allowed to enter the political field in Chile, as having produced a destabilizing effect on the Chilean government.84 The failure of the Chilean path “was used to assert the necessity of a strong, centralized communist power that could hold its own against imperialism from abroad, and would not be undermined by allowing inappropriate space to its ideological critics domestically.”85 As if underlining this logic, critics reinforced in their evaluation of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land the narrative of an ongoing struggle between fascist oppressors and an all-resisting and united working class. Their rhetoric reflects the dictum of socialist art that requires film to depict socialist reality “in its revolutionary evolution and continuous change”86 and underlines the meaning of the socialist struggle as fighting for a better future—though both socialist realism and that belief in its triumphant future had been overcome by the end of the 1970s. DFF 1 announced the film as a “cinematic historical document that illustrates the cruel deeds of the fascist military dictatorship in Chile but also signifies the revolutionary will to liberate the Chilean population.” Prog-

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ress underlines the film’s virtue in portraying the repressive climate in South American countries and the political awakening of a previously apolitical population and in drawing attention to acts of solidarity with the imprisoned revolutionaries. Jutta Voigt, in an article that appeared in the cultural-political newspaper Sonntag, summarizes Es herrscht Ruhe im Land in the following way: “The film talks about the process of developing political awareness in apolitical people, of a growing antifascist popular front; it shows the different phases of political consciousness in different individuals.”87 Reviews published in other regionally and nationally circulating newspapers, such as the Bauernecho and Neue Zeit, reiterate these ideas, even using a similar phrasing.88 The critics appreciate the hopeful ending of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land. In this scene, two of the escaped prisoners arrive with a van somewhere in a countryside and walk toward a white house with a pointed roof, in front of which an old man is sitting together with a young child. A man steps out of the house and embraces the friends. In contrast to West German fellow critics who rejected this utopia, East German reviewers read this finale within socialism as a formative stage in a process that will eventually end in a triumph over imperialist and fascist evil.89 Scholar Daniela Berghahn defines this idea “revolutionary romanticism,” to denote its utopian character.90 Nevertheless, some of the film’s aesthetics and symbolism were seen to be out of touch with East German socialist reality. The strict and dogmatic eye of those reviewers seeking to reinforce the principles of a conservative socialism and to reaffirm the working classes as only credible revolutionary power found faults in Lilienthal’s interpretations. The aforementioned Progress text noted that the film depicted power relations between imperialist aggressors and socialist forces inaccurately, while other newspapers found that it did not grasp the essence of antagonistic power and class struggles.91 Neue Zeit, Der Morgen, Filmspiegel, and Leipziger Volkszeitung criticized the film’s lack of comment on the agenda of the fascists and failure to identify the revolutionaries as communists.92 The Neue Zeit also mentioned that through its focus on members of the bourgeoisie, the film did not accurately capture social and political actualities.93 Film und Fernsehen suggested that Lilienthal had made a film from the “viewpoint of someone who is merely observing,” raising the point that the film lacks compassion about its subject, a fact that would inhibit spectators from becoming emotionally engaged with the characters.94 These shortcomings are partly explained on grounds of its origin. A West German bourgeois and intellectual di-

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rector such as Lilienthal could not be expected to fully grasp the tenets of socialist philosophy.95 The East German critical reception of Es herrscht Ruhe im Land indicates that the political events in Chile had caused ideological damage that resulted in renewed conservatism and a demarcation of Cold War frontiers. While Lilienthal’s film was rushed through the process to enter East German theaters and television, as it presented a valuable contribution to a relevant subject, film critics made viewers aware that this was a Western contribution to a socialist cause that presented interesting aspects but was necessarily imperfect.

Frustrating Views of Reality Lilienthal’s Latin American films had always frustrated West German critics, who claimed that German spectators should be briefed on political and economic interests of the antagonists in the revolutionary struggle. Film critic and director of the Berlin Film Festival 1976–1979, Wolf Donner, maintained that Lilienthal’s first Latin American film, La Victoria, had already failed to cater for a West German audience: Lilienthal excludes the context to all political events, activities, and dialogues as rigorously as ever, as if in this case the film was not produced by the Filmverlag der Autoren but solely by and for Chileans with the necessary knowledge and insight.96

Der Aufstand, an ad hoc film project that was realized in the maze and trauma of postrevolutionary Nicaragua and shot based on the local population’s accounts, left viewers alienated, annoyed, or puzzled. Rachel J. Halverson and Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi speculate that this film would speak to German viewers, given Germany’s national socialist past; taking a position to “condemn the excesses of a dictatorial regime . . . would resonate with the insurgents’ political awareness.”97 But viewers were reluctant to make sense of Der Aufstand in this way. Following its premiere in West German cinemas, many critics pondered the question: What does this film have to do with us? A comment in the Berliner Morgenpost even disputed the “German identity” of this film: “It is a joke that Der Aufstand, a Spanish-language film about the upheaval in Nicaragua, partakes in the Biennale in Venice as the official contribution of the Federal Republic of Germany.”98 The discussion of Der Aufstand in the West German press presents myriad voices who

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express their indignation at how Peter Lilienthal, a renowned German director, could have made a film so oblivious to its West German social, political, or cultural framework and spectatorship. Thomas Elsaesser notes that West German audiences “responded very much in direct proportion to recognizing themselves on the screen.99 Critics viewed Nicaragua as a geographically remote place that was marginal to the interests of Western Europe. A Western European audience, so they said, could hardly be expected to be familiar with the political and social particularities of this region. Films concerned with Third World themes that circulated in the Western World needed a format that facilitated their access and interest in the matter. Carla Rhode of the Tagesspiegel predicted her colleagues’ criticism of Der Aufstand: “A chronicle of events linked to an account of the full background, added by precise analysis, and all this in a preferably perfect artistic format.”100 Hollywood productions such as Missing (Costa Gavras, 1982), Under Fire (Roger Spottiswoode, 1983), and Salvador (Oliver Stone, 1985), made by renowned directors about the current political conflicts in Central and South America, would include Western viewers: By structuring the journalistic narrative around the familiar, sympathetic, and neutral figure of the gringo photojournalist, the film narrative is meant to perform a kind of mediating function. The Central American situation is represented to us in “terms we can understand” and “identify with.”101

In contrast, Der Aufstand was a production that addressed the people of Nicaragua. Instead of explaining why foreign powers such as the United States played in the conflict, the film was euphoric about the 1979 revolution, deemed as long-awaited news for liberation forces operating in Latin America and their support network in Europe—leftwing activists and exiled Latin American artists and intellectuals and aligned grassroots solidarity groups.102 This enthusiasm could not be shared by ordinary West German spectators, who complained about its incoherent narrative and were uneasy about the film’s open alignment with the radical political left. Lilienthal’s political sympathies were perceived to have damaged the film’s artistic integrity. The Süddeutsche Zeitung put it this way: The bad thing is that with political enthusiasm he [Peter Lilienthal] has surrendered any artistic objectivity. The passion of a people with whom he sympathizes openly, because he grew up there, is not described analytically, but is enthusiastically shared.103

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Another scorching critique of Der Aufstand, published in Der Spiegel, dismissed the film as an “artistic disaster” that reached neither a European nor a Nicaraguan audience.104 Lilienthal’s celebration of the Sandinistas, according to the West German–based Chilean author and dramaturg Gastón Salvatore, produced an analysis based on a simple good-guys-versus-bad-guys dichotomy. He accused Lilienthal of having relinquished aesthetic, political, intellectual, and moral control over his own film.105 It is curious that Salvatore, a flamboyant figure of the West German student movement who took part in the street battles of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition, APO) alongside Rudi Dutschke and in his work emphatically demanding the end of tyranny and despotism, should not have sympathies for Lilienthal’s euphoria about the Sandinista victory. Instead he was concerned about adverse ideological effects that the film would produce. Arguably, Salvatore’s anger was also due to a personal feud with fellow Chilean author and scriptwriter of Der Aufstand Antonio Skármeta, who would go on to defend the film in an open letter to Salvatore in the Frankfurter Rundschau.106 Skármeta discredited Salvatore’s interpretation of Der Aufstand, arguing that Salvatore chose to isolate the film from its political and aesthetic context. The reservations that Salvatore and other reviewers articulated, and that I briefly analyze here, can be understood as protectionist measures seeking to defend aesthetic norms and practices of Western art cinema. Irritation that was expressed about a film that originated in non-Western cultural traditions and Third Cinema filmmaking practices reveal critics defending the “cultural and ethnic fortress Europe” that, as Tim Bergfelder notes, is a culturally homogenized and elitist practice.107 Vietnamese filmmaker and theorist Trinh T. Min-ha observes that claims for a neutral and objective presentation of film hide “an intolerance for any language other than the one approved by the dominant ideology” and dismisses other approaches as incoherent.”108 Filmmakers should be dispassionate toward their subject in order to give the impression of being unbiased and objective vis-à-vis their subject: Almost never is there any question of challenging rational communication with its normalized film codes and prevailing objectivist, deterministic-scientific discourse; only a relentless unfolding of pros and cons, and of “facts” delivered with a sense of urgency, which present themselves as liberal but imperative; neutral and value-free; objective or universal.109

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Der Aufstand had violated the rules of Western art filmmaking and denied German spectators their privileged position. As Teshome Gabriel finds: The difficulty of Third World films of radical social comment to Western interpretation is the result, a) of the film’s resistance to the dominant conventions of cinema, and b) of the consequence of the Western viewers’ loss of being the privileged decoders and ultimate interpreters of meaning.110

This case study discloses prevailing stereotypes and preconceptions that circulated about Third Cinema in the Western hemisphere and once more underlines the complicated position of Lilienthal’s work in the German national filmscape.

Conclusion Lilienthal’s Latin American projects would present an entry to an East West German film history that is yet to be written. The films successfully crossed ideological boundaries and became excellent texts that communicated democratic and humanist values in and beyond the boundaries of both Germanies. In the West, the films received accolades for their educational and cultural value, subsequently utilized in aims to showcase West Germany’s pacifist identity, attention to humanitarian crises, and interest in using culture as a tool to establish relations to Third World countries. Lilienthal, an artist with considerable insight into the politics, societies, and independence and re-democratization movements of the Southern Cone, served as mediator to establish and maintain cultural ties to Latin American countries. The filmmaker and some of his work latched on to DEFA’s antifascist film genre, and Lilienthal was involved in strategies driven by East German artists and cultural functionaries at the end of the 1970s to strengthen bonds with filmmakers from Western countries and facilitate dialogues between artists and the population. Lilienthal’s films met with a critical public, often confronting viewers and providing them different perspectives on their own realities. Es herrscht Ruhe im Land appeared on German screens in the mid1970s, a film that was enthusiastically received in the East and discussed with reservation in the West. The film called renewed attention to the Chilean coup d’état that had happened three years earlier. The West

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German press commented on the film in a vague manner that reflects the controversy surrounding the Pinochet regime in West Germany: between Cold War victory—reintegrating Chile into the Western economic system—and ethical qualms about the brutal and authoritarian measures used to implement these changes. The sarcastic tone of some of the articles and their mocking of Lilienthal’s revolutionary “fantasies” echo the disappointment of the West German experience, where the ideas of revolution and social change of 1968 had turned into leftwing terrorism. While Es herrscht Ruhe im Land was seen to have come late to the party, it fitted with an East German zeitgeist. The film aligns with the GDR’s solidarity activities with Chilean victims as a form of resistance to Pinochet’s imperialist invasion. It was a reminder of the ubiquitous imperialist threat and a welcome opportunity to revitalize the narrative of the working class’s struggle of liberation and the eventual demise of the capitalist system. Unsurprisingly, critics would find flaws in Lilienthal’s depiction of socialist reality and utopia. The film, as they noted, presented an admirable exercise of solidarity. However, it was made by a bourgeois West German filmmaker; the authority over authentic socialist film would have to remain within the boundaries of East Germany and the socialist world. The results of these examinations of Lilienthal’s cinema in the West and East German contexts reinforce its ambivalent belonging. On the one hand, the transcultural and transnational character of the films enabled their migration and adoption to serve hegemonic ideas on each side. On the other, West and East film critics evaluated some of Lilienthal’s ideas as irrelevant to contemporaneous political and cultural debates. The West German reception of Der Aufstand highlights this disconnect. The film did not adhere to Western cultural and aesthetic norms, and critics found the viewing experience frustrating and confusing, complaining that it was not made for a German audience. Aside from Eurocentric ideas that swing in the debate about Der Aufstand, this example also highlights that West Germans were not the primary audience for Lilienthal’s films. It should always have been the people the director worked with and to whose ideas and dreams he lent his voice, be it the second generation of Holocaust survivors in David, the Chilean left wing in La Victoria, or Latin American émigrés and artists in Es herrscht Ruhe im Land and Das Autogramm. Yet the films circulated primarily in European distribution and exhibition networks, where they rarely met these spectators—few German Jewish communities were left in post–World War II Germany, a critical film culture was suspended in Chile after 1973, and Latin American exiles lived scattered across Europe.

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What is the situation now? Have Lilienthal’s films found their audiences belatedly? Where can we see them, and do these works still make sense in in the post–Cold War era? The following chapter will reexamine the legacy of Lilienthal’s films in united Germany, Chile, and Argentina, where authoritarian regimes finally gave way to a democratic political system.

Notes 1. Tim Bergfelder, “Reframing European Cinema: Concepts and Agendas for the Historiography of European Film,” Lähikuva 4 (1998): 12. 2. Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 169; Janet Staiger, Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 34. 3. Julianne Burton, “Marginal Cinemas and Mainstream Critical Theory,” Screen 26, no. 3–4 (1985): 11, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/26.3-4.2. 4. Thomas Elsaesser, “Holland to Hollywood and Back or: Do We Need a National Cinema?,” in De onmacht van het grote: Cultuur in Europa, ed. Joep Leerssen, J.C.H. Blom and Piet de Rooy (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1993), 84. 5. Daniela Berghahn, Hollywood Behind the Wall (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005), 23. 6. Frank Möller, “Der Kampf um ‘Frieden’ und ‘Freiheit’ in der Systemrivalität des Kalten Krieges. Ein Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Tübingen,” in Abgrenzung und Verflechtung. Das geteilte Deutschland in der zeithistorischen Debatte, ed. Frank Möller and Ulrich Mählert (Berlin: Metropol Verlag 2008), 33. 7. Hector Amaya, Screening Cuba: Film Criticism as Political Performance during the Cold War (Urbanan: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 154–155. 8. Amaya, Screening Cuba, 117. 9. I will utilize the term “Third World” to mark the geopolitical context of the Cold War that frames the discussions in this chapter. Third World countries, based on the original definition, accommodated newly established nations, which were yet unaligned with either the capitalist nations and allies of the United States—known as First World/the West—or the socialist countries and satellite states of the Soviet Union—the so-called Eastern Bloc/Second World. 10. The Hallstein Doctrine regulated the hostile relationship between the two German states during the first two decades of their existence. West Germany, aiming to isolate East Germany politically, threatened to break off diplomatic and economic relations with any country that recognized its eastern neighbor as sovereign state. See Thomas P. M. Barnett, Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992). 11. John Davidson, Deterritorializing the New German Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 40–45. 12. Heinz Kühn, “Kulturpolitik im Ausland,” in Kultur und Politik in unserer Zeit: Dokumentation des Kongresses der SPD am 28. und 29. Oktober 1960 in Wiesbaden, ed. Parteivorstand der SPD (Hannover: J. H. W. Dietz, 1960), 96, qtd. in Davidson, Deterritorializing, 42.

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13. John Davidson, “Hegemony and Cinematic Strategy,” in Perspectives on German Cinema, ed. Terri Ginsberg and Kirsten Moana Thompson (London: Prentice Hall International, 1996), 55. 14. The Film and Television Agreement replaced the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film. 15. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (London: BFI, 1989), 34. 16. Roswitha Müller, “From Public to Private: Television in the Federal Republic of Germany,” New German Critique 50 (1990): 47, https://doi.org/10.2307/488210. 17. Egon Netenjakob, “Zwei Sendejahre der Redaktion Das kleine Fernsehspiel: 1976 and 1986. Anmerkungen eines Teleasten,” in Das experimentelle Fernsehspiel—“Das kleine Fernsehspiel” im ZDF. Notate und Referate, ed. Thomas Koebner and Egon Netenjakob (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988), 185–186. 18. One of those misfits was Werner Schroeter. See Michelle Langford, Allegorical Images: Tableau, Time and Gestures in the Cinema of Werner Schroeter (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2006), 34. For a short history of the program, see Claudia Sandberg, “Das kleine Fernsehspiel,” in The German Cinema Book, 2nd edtion, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: BFI, 2020), 331–333. 19. Rupert Neudecks, “Das kleine und das große Fernsehspiel: Wo bliebt die Dritte Welt?,” in Das experimentelle Fernsehspiel—“Das kleine Fernsehspiel” im ZDF. Notate und Referate, ed. Thomas Koebner and Egon Netenjakob (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988), 213–221. 20. Horst von Hartlieb, “Der wertvolle Film und die Filmwirtschaft,” in Filmförderung oder Zensur? Von der Dritte Mann bis Otto—Der Film; Gedanken zum Film, zur Filmbewertung und zur Filmförderung. 35 Jahre Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden (FBW) (1951– 1986), ed. Steffen Wolf (Ebersberg: Edition Achteinhalb Lothar Just, 1986), 44–45. 21. Email correspondence with Goethe-Institut in Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil in September 2008. 22. Theodore Shabad, “Argentine-Russian Trade Is Surging as Soviet Takes 77 percent of Crop Exports,” New York Times, 18 April 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/ 1982/04/18/world/argentine-russian-trade-is-surging-as-soviet-takes-77-of-cropexports.html. 23. Anna Kaitinnis, Botschafter der Demokratie. Das Goethe-Institut während der Demokratisierungsprozesse in Argentinien und Chile (Wiesbaden: Springer Verlag, 2018), 67. 24. Kaitinnis, Botschafter der Demokratie, 51. 25. In the 1980s, the Christian Democratic government changed direction on what they saw as useful foreign cultural work. Cultural officials in Bonn disapproved of the political nature of some of the cultural programs in Chile and Argentina. See Kaitinnis, Botschafter der Demokratie, 55–60. 26. See also the conclusion in this book for the role of Lilienthal’s films in contributing to Chilean cinematic memory after 2000. 27. Günter Agde, “Ein Beunruhiger,” Filmspiegel 3 (1983): 30. 28. In the following, I concentrate on Es herrscht Ruhe im Land and Der Aufstand. Das Autogramm was screened on 3 January 1990, falling into the turbulent post–Berlin Wall and pre-unification time, in which a coherent cultural political strategy did not exist anymore. 29. The Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) was the East German state-owned film production company (1946–1992). 30. DEFA-Außenhandel was responsible for all economic, financial, and legal issues of film imports and exports in the GDR. Telephone conversation with Progress Film Press Office in September 2010. See also www.defa-stiftung.de/cms/DesktopDe

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31. 32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

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fault.aspx?TabID=1022. For information about the GDR film industry structures, see Günter Jordan, Film in der DDR: Daten Fakten Strukturen (Potsdam: Brandenburgisches Ministerium Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, 2009). Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 139. Hauptverwaltung Film, “Maßnahmen zur Entwicklung und effektiven Leitung des Filmwesens der DDR” (DDR Filmschaffen, 1972–1975), qtd. in Rosemary Stott, Crossing the Wall: The Western Feature Film Import in East Germany (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), 46. Rosemarie Stott, “Entertained by the Class Enemy: Cinema Programming Policy in the German Democratic Republic,” in 100 Years of European Cinema, eds. Diana Holmes and Alison Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 30. Gerd Horten, “The Impact of Hollywood Film Imports in East Germany and the Cultural Surrender of the GDR Film Control in the 1970s and 1980s,” German History 34, no. 1 (2016): 82, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghv067. Stott, “Entertained by the Class Enemy,” 27. Qtd. in Detlef Kannapin, “Der sozialistische Regisseur,” Leuchtkraft. Das Journal der DEFA-Stiftung, no. 1 (2018): 32. Sabine Hake, “Political Affects: Antifascism and the Second World War in Frank Beyer and Konrad Wolf,” in Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering, ed. Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman (Rochester: Camden House, 2010), 103. Christiane Mückenberger, “The Anti-Fascist Past in DEFA Films,” in DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946–1992, ed. Seán Allan and John Sandford (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 66. Mückenberger, “The Anti-Fascist Past,” 75. Hake, “Political Affects,” 103. Bill Niven, “The Sideways Gaze: The Cold War and Memory of the Nazi Past, 1949– 1970,” in Divided but Not Disconnected: German Experiences of the Cold War (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), 51. Hans-Joachim Döring, Es geht um unsere Existenz. Die Politik der DDR gegenüber der Dritten Welt am Beispiel von Mosambik und Äthiopien (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 1999), 9. Telephone conversation with Günter Agde in December 2010. Agde was a driving force behind efforts to collaborate with Lilienthal. He had to report about this meeting with Lilienthal in his West Berlin apartment to Heinz Schnabel, general director of the section Darstellende Kunst, in a letter that was issued on 23 August 1982. See Jeannette Z. Madarász, Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1971–1989: A Precarious Stability (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Madarász’s book deals with social groups, alternative lifestyles and cultures, and their tensions and conflicts with the East German regime, among other aspects. Matthias Braun noted that in the 1980s, the AKO, which reported directly to the Abteilung Kultur (Cultural Ministry) of the Zentralkomittee (ZK), drove a strategy of crisis management and damage control. See Matthias Braun, Kulturinsel und Machtapparat. Die Akademie der Künste, die Partei und die Staatssicherheit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 18. Akademie der Känste, Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgruppe Darstellende Künste, “Für die Tätigkeit von Sektion und Sektionsbereich in den 80er Jahren,” 1 June 1981, 6–7. Horst Claus, “DEFA-State, Studio, Style, Identity,” in The German Cinema Book, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk (London: BFI, 2002), 142.

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49. “Akademie der Künste zeigte Lilienthal-Filme,” Neues Deutschland, 30 September 1982. 50. Telephone conversation with Günter Agde in December 2010. 51. I consulted an audio recording of the discussion about Dear Mr. Wonderful and Der Aufstand that took place with Peter Lilienthal, Michael Ballhaus, and the general public at the AKO in Berlin in September 1982. Archived in Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 52. Transcript of event around Das Autogramm with members of AKO, Berlin, on 15 November 1984. 53. Agde, “Ein Beunruhiger,” 31. 54. Staiger, Interpreting Films, 47. 55. Amaya, Screening Cuba, xvi. 56. Hake, German National Cinema, 131–132; see on this subject also Dorothea Becker, Zwischen Ideologie und Autonomie: Die DDR-Forschung und die deutsche Filmgeschichte (Münster: LIT, 1999). 57. Michael Stolle, “Inbegriff des Unrechtsstaates. Zur Wahrnehmung der chilenischen Diktatur in der deutschsprachigen Presse zwischen 1973 und 1989,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 51, no. 9 (2003): 793–813. 58. Friedrich Paul Heller, “Die Bonner Regierung, Konzerninteressen und das Pinochet-Regime in Chile,” amerika21. Nachrichten und Analysen aus Lateinamerika, 3 November 2013, accessed 18 December 2018, https://amerika21.de/analyse/90157/ brd-chile-pinochet-heller-buch. 59. Georg J. Dufner, Partner im Kalten Krieg. Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Chile (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2014), 283. 60. “Arbeiten lernen,” Spiegel, 28 November 1977, http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/ print/d-40680412.html. 61. Irmtrud Wojak and Pedro Holz, “Chilenische Exilanten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1973-1989),” in Exile im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Claus-Dieter Krohn et al. (Munich: edition text + kritik, 2000), 174. 62. Inge Bongers, “Helden-gibt’s die?,” Der Abend, 16 January 1976. 63. Gunther Dahinten, “Eine Parabel der Unterdrückung,” Schwäbische Zeitung, 17 December 1976. 64. Günther Kriewitz, “Terror in Uniform,” Stuttgarter Zeitung, 13 February 1976. 65. Karsten Witte, “Wer beherrscht die Ruhe?,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 5 March 1976. 66. Wolf Donner, “Gemeint ist Chile,” Die Zeit, 16 January 1976. 67. “Botschaftsveto gegen Chile-Film,” Der Spiegel, 2 May 1977. 68. Hanns-Georg Rodek, “Der Regisseur Peter Lilienthal wird 80,” Die Welt, 29 November 2009. 69. Michael Schwarze, “Es herrscht Ruhe im Land,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 March 1976. 70. Frank Möller, “Mentalitätsumbruch und Wertewandel in Ost- und Westdeutschland während der 60er- und 70er-Jahre. Ein Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Edgar Wolfrum, Heidelberg,” in Abgrenzung und Verflechtung. Das geteilte Deutschland in der zeithistorischen Debatte, ed. Frank Möller and Ulrich Mählert (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2008), 52. 71. Gustav Siebenmann, “Spiegelungen 1: Zum Lateinamerikabild der Europäer,” in Suchbild Lateinamerika. Essays über interkulturelle Wahrnehmung. Zu seinem 80. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Rössner (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003), 64. 72. Kim Christiaens, Magaly Rodríguez García, and Idesbald Goddeeris, “A Global Perspective on the European Mobilization for Chile (1970s–1980s),” in European Solidar-

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73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

81.

82.

83.

84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

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ity with Chile, 1970s–1980s, ed. Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Magaly Rodríguez García (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 21. Christiaens, Goddeeris, and Rodríguez García, “A Global Perspective,” 24. Georg Dufner, “West Germany: Professions of Political Faith, the Solidarity Movement and New Left Imaginaries,” in European Solidarity with Chile, 1970s–1980s, ed. Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Magaly Rodríguez García (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 170. Kriewitz, “Terror in Uniform.” Thomas Petz, “Dem Leben nicht mehr entwendet,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 January 1976. Wendy Brown, “Resisting Left Melancholy,” boundary 2 26, no. 3 (1999): 19–27, https://www.jstor.org/stable/303736. See Amit Dasgupta, “Ulbricht am Nil. Die deutsch-deutsche Rivalität in der Dritten Welt,” in Das doppelte Deutschland. 40 Jahre Systemkonkurrenz, ed. Udo Wengst and Hermann Wentker (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2008), 111–134. Sebastian Koch, Zufluchtsort DDR? Chilenische Flüchtlinge und die Ausländerpolitik der SED (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2016), 49–55. Raimund Krämer, “Die DDR und Chile. Die ganz andere Beziehung,” in Chile Heute. Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur, ed. Peter Imbusch, Dirk Messner and Detlef Nolte (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2004), 813. See Wolfgang Kießling’s comprehensive work Exil in Latinamerica, vol. 4 of Kunst und Literatur im antifaschistischen Exil 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Verlag, 1981). Claudia Sandberg, “‘Not Like the Stories I Am Used to’: East German Film as Cinematic Memory in Contemporary Chile,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 26, no. 4 (2017): 553–569, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2017.1384368; Claudia Sandberg, “Das Theater des Lebens. Blonder Tango (1986) und das chilenische Filmexil in der DDR,” Filmblatt 21, no. 60 (2016): 41–52. Antonio Skármeta, “Gegen die Ruhe im Land. Der chilenische Autor Antonio Skarmeta über seinen antifaschistischen Film Es herrscht Ruhe im Land,” interview by Monika Walter, Sonntag, 15 March 1977. James Mark and Bálint Tolmár, “Hungary: Connecting the ‘Responsible Roads to Socialism’? The Rise and Fall of a Culture of Chilean Solidarity, 1965–89,” European Solidarity with Chile, 1970s–1980s, ed. Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Magaly Rodríguez García (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 308. Mark and Tolmár, “Hungary,” 307. “Sozialistischer Realismus,” in Kulturpolitisches Wörterbuch, 2nd edition, ed. Manfred Berger et al. (Berlin Ost: Dietz Verlag 1978), 593. Jutta Voigt, “Es herrscht Ruhe im Land,” Sonntag, 1 May 1977. Heiner Grienitz, “Auch Mut kann anstecken,” Bauernecho, 14 July 1977; “Die trügerische Ruhe,” Neue Zeit, 21 April 1977. See, for example, Manfred Haedler, “Aktuelles Gleichnis,” Der Morgen, 3 April 1977. Berghahn, Hollywood Behind the Wall, 35. Progress Film Verleih information document (no. 42/77) for Calm Prevails Over the Country. “Die trügerische Ruhe,” Neue Zeit; Haedler, “Aktuelles Gleichnis;” “Von politischer Brisanz,” Filmspiegel 10, 1977; “Gefängnisrevolte, Liebestragödie und ein unbequemer Lehrer,” Leipziger Volkszeitung, 3 April 1977. “Die trügerische Ruhe,” Neue Zeit.

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94. Wolfgang Lange, “Es herrscht Ruhe im Land,” Film und Fernsehen, no. 8 (1977): 12–13. 95. “Gefängnisrevolte, Liebestragödie und ein unbequemer Lehrer,” Leipziger Volkszeitung. 96. Wolf Donner, “Allendes und Marcelas Sieg,” Die Zeit, 21 September 1973. 97. Rachel J. Halverson and Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi, “La Insurrección/Der Aufstand. Cultural Synergy, Film and Revolution,” in The Lion and the Eagle: Interdsiciplinary Essays on German-Spanish Relations over the Centuries, ed. Conrad Kent, Thomas Wolber, and Cameron M. K. Hewitt (London: Berghahn Books, 2000), 451–452. 98. “Einfältiges zur Geschichte,” Berliner Morgenpost, 25 October 1980. 99. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, 152. 100. Carla Rhode, “Menschen in der Masse,” Der Tagesspiegel, 23 October 1980. 101. Neil Larsen, Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture, and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 42. 102. For the West German solidarity network of revolutionary Nicaragua, see Christian Helm, “Booming Solidarity: Sandinista Nicaragua and the West German Solidarity Movement in the 1980s,” European Review of History 21, no. 4 (2014): 597–615, https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2014.933179; Klaus Hess and Barbara Lucas, “Die bundesdeutsche Solidaritätsbewegung,” in Die Revolution ist ein Buch und ein freier Mensch. Die politischen Plakate des befreiten Nicaragua 1979–1990 und der internationalen Solidaritätsbewegung, ed. Otker Bujard and Ulrich Wirper (Cologne: PapyRossa, 2007), 306–317. 103. Peter Buchka, “Wenn Atmosphäre die Handlung ersetzt,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 September 1980. 104. Gastón Salvatore, “Das Heldenlied des Sandinismus,” Spiegel 41 (1980). 105. Hans Magnus Enzensberger once said that Salvatore “was the most German of all foreigners.” See Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Wir waren unzertrennlich,” Die Zeit, 17 December 2015, https://www.zeit.de/2015/51/nachruf-gaston-salvatore-hansmagnus-enzensberger. For references to Salvatore and the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction, RAF), see Wolfgang Kraushaar, Karin Wieland, and and Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Rudi Dutschke, Andreas Baader and the RAF (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition HIS, 2012); and Susanne Kailitz, Von den Worten zu den Waffen? Frankfurter Schule, Studentenbewegung, RAF und die Gewaltfrage (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für die Sozialwissenschaften, 2012). 106. Antonio Skármeta, “Verteidigung des Aufstandes. Das verunglückte Comeback von Gaston Salvatore in seiner Kritik von Peter Lilienthals Nicaragua-Film,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 22 November 1980. 107. Tim Bergfelder, “National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema? Rethinking European Film Studies,” Media, Culture & Society 27, no. 2 (2005): 317, https://doi .org/10.1177/0163443705051746. 108. Trinh T. Min-ha, “All-Owning Spectatorship,” in Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged, ed. Hamid Naficy and Teshome H. Gabriel (Chur: Harwood Academic, 1993), 191. 109. Min-ha, “All-Owning Spectatorship,” 193. 110. Teshome H. Gabriel, “Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Films,” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 5, no. 1 (2011): 194, https://doi.org/10.1080/19301944.2011.10781409.

CONCLUSION Recovering Lost Pasts

For more than half a century, Peter Lilienthal has documented people’s lived reality: from Holocaust survivors in Berlin to secretaries engaged in the alphabetization process in Allende’s Chile and revolutionary fathers in Sandinista Nicaragua. His cinema is populated with likable, overlooked, and determined characters with big ideas and infeasible projects. Dispersed over languages and places, classes and cultures, Lilienthal’s films belong to a diasporic culture that troubles “notions of cultural dominance, location and identity.”1 As a transcultural artist and peace activist, the director belonged to a generation whose work, to use Laura Mulvey’s words, was “an important cultural site for liberation struggle and left politics during the decolonization period and its aftermath.”2 He gave his resources and talents to support individuals and communities who otherwise went unheard. The stylistic variety, spontaneous, surrealist, or experimental nature of Lilienthal’s texts sought to illuminate structures of privilege and inequality linked to twentieth-century dictatorial regimes. They chronicled the geopolitical and social upheavals, developments, and traumas connected to his own lived experiences as a member of European Jewry. This chapter will examine Lilienthal’s legacy. Lilienthal’s films apply to what Martin David-Jones defines as cinema that preserves customs, places, and peoples exterminated, forgotten, repressed, or censored, and sacrificed.3 David-Jones’s notion of an “encounter with a lost past” brings to the fore that an engagement with ethical filmmaking is important to counter ever more aggressive tendencies of dominance and exploitation:

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Films offer a way to consider who “we” are in relation to each other and indicate the need to ensure inclusion and a more equally distributive flow to global wealth before the continued coloniality of neoliberalism (at home as much as abroad) ferments the widespread resurgence to fascism.4

Lilienthal’s work has immense potential for such encounters. Has the value and importance of his filmmaking been recognized? If so, by whom, where, and how? Which new projects are underway, and which new questions and fields of research have emerged? Who are today’s spectators of his work? I shall briefly revisit his work to prepare this discussion and examine current cultural and academic discussions and activities around Lilienthal’s films. Perhaps not surprisingly, ideas of a lost past in his work are linked to subjects around Jewish culture and history. In the early television plays, the catastrophe of the Holocaust presents as a feeling of loss, reflecting the absence of the Jewish population in postwar Germany that was certainly felt but not articulated within public discourse. Unresponsive figures in the surrealist Seraphine oder Die wundersame Geschichte der Tante Flora (Seraphine or Aunt Flora’s Odd Story, 1965), stilted, disconnected dialogues in Picknick im Felde (Picnic on the Battlefield, 1962), and the highly metaphoric character of Striptease (1963) are specters of Germany’s violent and unacknowledged past. David (1979) could be considered a coming-out as Jewish filmmaker of sorts. The film, set in Berlin during the Nazi years, is a commentary on the Jewish collective trauma of the Holocaust, one that marks the brutal endpoint of German Jewish life, disintegration of families, and worldwide dispersal of the community. David is followed by other films about the dreams and fate of Jewish culture in a contemporaneous context. Das Schweigen des Dichters (The Silence of the Poet, 1986) portrays an aging poet and the difficult relationship with his mentally challenged son. It provides critique for Israel as a nation that lost direction through constant warfare, which left its population physically and emotionally crippled. Creating a similarly melancholic tone, Angesichts der Wälder (Facing the Forests, 1995) comments on Israel’s territorial conflict with Palestine as another exiled community. Here, a destroyed village symbolizes the forceful disappearance of Palestinian culture and the embodied trauma of expulsion.5 With the discovery of the ruins and a friendship between an Israeli student and two solitary Palestinians, the film suggests the possibility of the existence of “alternative histories to that of the one informing the (actual) present.”6

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In colorful images, La Victoria (1973) and Der Aufstand (The Uprising, 1980) echoed Lilienthal’s enthusiasm for sociopolitical projects that were built on the premise to end foreign political domination and economic exploitation, establishing more just social structures in Chile at the beginning of the 1970s and in Nicaragua at the end of that decade. La Victoria is the coming-of-age story of the young Marcela, who participates in the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity, UP) election campaign in the Chilean capital Santiago, and Der Aufstand weaves a narrative thread of opposing political conviction of father and son in the rebellion of the Sandinista guerrillas against the Somoza dictatorship. Importantly, both La Victoria and Der Aufstand enable the filmmaker to take part in Third Cinema, a committed cultural movement that supported Latin American emancipatory political and social programs and its unwavering belief in political change. Made in collaboration with members of the local avant-garde, these films adopted views that blur fiction and documentary and a vernacular aesthetic typical of contemporary Latin American film that, according to Michael Chanan, “evokes the diversity of hitherto marginal and subaltern voices/cultural traditions.”7 La Victoria is the testimony of a short-lived phase of Chile’s political and cultural progressive trajectory, before the protests of the political right and middle classes, who believed that their rights and properties were endangered, culminated in a military coup and a decade-long situation of state terror. In more somber tones, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (Calm Prevails Over the Country, 1975), Das Autogramm (The Autograph, 1984), and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal (The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, 1988) depict everyday life under fascist regimes as they became established in many Latin American countries over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. Here, Lilienthal connects the unpredictability of state violence against nonconformist groups and innocent individuals, including the participation of the population in measures of repression in Latin America, with that of Germany twenty-five years earlier. The destiny of the figure Mingo in Das Autogramm, for example, doubly marked as Jew and social outcast, affectively echoes the ways in which Jewish communities in Europe were destroyed during World War II. At the time, German spectators of Lilienthal’s films had the chance to see stories that challenged their expectations and ideological certainties. When Latin American countries returned to democracy, scholars, filmmakers, and cultural activists, discovered the texts were material that could suture violent breaks in national film history. The authori-

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tarian regimes left behind a legacy of pain and suffering, and the lack of historical continuity was problematic in myriad ways. Lilienthal’s work certainly helped to recuperate some of this memory, which I will discuss in the following section.

Having Passed Through In Latin America, Lilienthal’s films are indispensable historical source material, providing much-needed imagery to facilitate debates about memory, guilt, and reconciliation in dealing with collective violence in recent dictatorships. Above all, the films resonate in Chile, where they assist in recovering missing pieces of cultural heritage. The legacies of the Allende and Pinochet governments remain fiercely debated between groups and communities on the left and right political spectrums. In a situation where the transitional party coalition approach was “to forget and block the dictatorship past,” families of victims have no legal platform, and former military officers enjoy immunity, an emerging memory culture serves to aid social rehabilitation and collective healing.8 Cultural-political functionaries, intellectuals, film historians, and artists, affiliated with cultural and educational institutions such as the Cinemateca Nacional, the Museo de la Memoria y de los Derechos Humanos, the Universidad de Chile, and the Santiago-based Goethe-Institut, are all involved in the mission to encourage a critical memory culture in Chile. Lilienthal’s work has figured in their efforts as a source of creative and cultural documentation and has been praised publicly through official channels. In 2001 Lilienthal was awarded the Bernardo O’Higgins Medal, the highest national prize to honor foreign citizens who have rendered outstanding services to Chile’s society, culture, and economy. However, it was not until 2003 that the cultural-historical value of his films became more widely recognized. La Victoria, Hauptlehrer Hofer (Teacher Hofer, 1975), Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, David, Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal, Der Aufstand, Das Autogramm, and Das Schweigen des Dichters featured in a celebrated retrospective at the Valparaíso Film Festival.9 The year 2003 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the military coup d’état in Chile and presented an opening for a public debate that included a diverse set of voices. Under the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos, there was a strategic move to inform the public about the events of 11 September 1973 and bring the figure of Salvador Al-

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lende back into public consciousness, which had been demonized and made invisible under Pinochet and subsequent governments anxious to maintain economic growth and political stability. As Gilda Waldman notes, “By 2003, the idea that the military coup was an act of a ‘national salvation’ had lost its hegemonic character.”10 Despite protests of groups that had been close to the regime, who continued to celebrate its achievements and believed that errors committed should be forgotten and excused, this allowed a multitude of social groups to speak for the first time. Television programs and retrospectives contained clips and newsreel footage that had never been broadcast before. This included material made and donated by Chilean artists based abroad, foreign filmmakers, and European television studios, such as the ZDF, BBC, the Italian RAI, and the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA). Foreign-made work established an audiovisual record that stood in for the lack of sources that were available in Chile. These materials became indispensable in imagining and reconstructing events, and in familiarizing younger generations with a past that was not represented accurately in standard history books.11 La Victoria was one of the few feature films that gave an impression of the socially vibrant atmosphere during the Allende government, while also conveying the sense of a bigger conflict that lay ahead. Scholars Ascanio Cavallo and Antonio Martínez note that the film offers images of an exceptional political and social project underway, containing footage of the closing acts of the last electoral campaign of the UP in the center of Santiago in 1973, which was attended by political heads of the coalition.12 In a review entitled “La Victoria de ‘Herr’ Peter” that appeared in the newspaper La Nación, a film critic noted the presence of Chilean artists and politicians in a film that had revolutionary pathos and provided current spectators with a sense of the magnitude of social problems in Chile at the time.13 The unexpected German-language encounters with the younger selves of Raúl Ruiz and Antonio Skármeta made clear to many that the work of this German filmmaker presented a key reference for Chilean avant-garde artists in exile. The Chilean participants speak German. This is awkward. . . . There are more oddities: a young man with hair on his head performs the role of a professor—this is Antonio Skármeta. Then, a leftist hippie with wild hair appears. This is Raúl Ruiz.14

It is not well known that Lilienthal was a lifeline for Ruiz and Skármeta, providing them with visas to get out of Chile right after the coup d’état and that he assisted their first projects and found a profes-

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sional network in Europe.15 Additionally, Cavallo and Martínez mention stylistic similarities in Lilienthal’s and Ruiz’s work.16 Lilienthal’s name reverberates strongly with that of Skármeta’s, whose career as an internationally acclaimed novelist was launched in his German exile. Mónica Villaroel and Isabel Mardones mention the collaboration between Lilienthal and Skármeta in their Señales contra el olvido. Cine chileno recobrado.17 Their pioneering study traces the journey of Chilean films and filmmakers to and from West and East Germany and mentions Lilienthal as a pivotal figure of these movements and to have supported Skármeta’s entry into a cinematic career. Through his work as scriptwriter in Lilienthal’s films, the artist was able to connect with other German personnel, such as production companies and media institutions in West and East Germany. Aside from literary work, he wrote the script for Christian Ziewer’s Aus der Ferne sehe ich dieses Land (I See This Land from Afar, 1978) and for the DEFA TV production Die Spur des Vermißten (Trace of the Disappeared, Joachim Kunert, 1980). Skármeta directed his first film, Permiso de residencia (Residence Permit), in 1978.18 Joachim von Vietinghoff, whom Lilienthal and Skármeta had collaborated with before, produced this film. Skármeta then made the fiction film Ardiente paciencia (With Burning Patience, 1983) and the documentaries Despedida en Berlín (Farewell from Berlin, 1984) and Tagebuch (Diary, 1986).19 Further, as mentioned previously, Lilienthal’s name and his involvement with the program Das kleine Fernsehspiel became interwoven with the exile biographies of several Chilean artists, helping them to gain access to means to finance and exhibit their work, such as that of filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento.20 Today, Chileans who participated as cast and crew in La Victoria and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal fondly remember that they formed part of the making of a “grand European production” with a renowned European director. Many of them were only able to see the finished film they worked on years, if not decades, later. The films could travel back to Chile clandestinely and be projected at friends’ houses. Due to the cultural repression in Chile between 1973 and 1989, it was not possible to screen these texts at a public venue, especially projects that celebrated Allende’s times, as in the case of La Victoria, or that openly criticized the Pinochet regime, as achieved through Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal. Nor could they have been broadcast on television. In a recent screening of the latter film in the Festival de Cine Europeo in June 2020, members of its film crew mentioned in a panel discussion that they felt privileged to have taken part in what they felt, according to Chilean standards, was a massive production, for which high-quality

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Figure 4.1. Residents share their memories from when the cycle race was filmed in their village. Still shots from Por aquí pasaron los ciclistas.

video and sound equipment was used and that was shot with multiple “gigantic” cameras. They note about the director that he “understood very well what was happening in Chile.”21 The sense of Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal as an exceptional event in the life of ordinary Chileans came across in a recent documentary. Por aquí pasaron los ciclistas (The Cyclists Passed through Here, 2018), made by Isidora Gálvez Alfageme, sees a younger generation paying tribute to the filmmaker. Gálvez Alfageme graduated from the Universidad de Chile with this film, which had its premiere at the DocFilm Festival in

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Buenos Aires in 2018. She wanted to better understand the reactions of common people, that is, “voices who are not normally authorized to talk,” when the process of filmmaking cascades into their everyday life.22 Gálvez Alfageme visited Putaendo, a town in Central Chile where many scenes of Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal were shot in the winter of 1987. Her documentary includes interviews with members of the local population, who shared stories and anecdotes of their tasks as extras. They were proud to have worked next to a professional film crew and to have gained some insight into how a film is made, and articulated their astonishment about the elaborate equipment the European team brought to the site. Their memories are safeguarded in snapshots that depict masses of people, including their younger selves and their dressed-up children, who lined the otherwise empty streets of the village to follow the cycle race. Even the local newspaper La Epoca had covered the event.23 A farmer says with a sense of pride, “Even if we ourselves never got to see this film, we believe that thanks to it we became famous.” Por aqui pasaron los ciclistas suggests that Lilienthal’s film, though the inhabitants of Putaendo did not know its title or the director’s name, is part of a communal memory of bringing the world into their place if only for one week. In the careful, clean-framed images of faces, bodies, animals, local streets, and the landscape surrounding the village with the scenes and soundtrack of Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal, the film achieves a political dimension and texture that complements that of the earlier film. Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal was about an international cycling race with a route through the mountainous regions in rural Chile. It served primarily as an allegory of an aggressive capitalism that had fragmented Chilean society, where a few ruthless and business-minded individuals thrived while others were left at the sidelines of economic success. The extras-turned-protagonists, remembering the filming of the cycle race, talk of their age, their families, their daily routines, and their work— members of an elderly and decimated community of farmers, shepherds, and small shop owners with a life that is short of resources and cut off from the comforts of modern technologies then and now. Despite Lilienthal’s films benefiting from a surge of interest in recent years in Chile, his work is less known in other Latin American countries. Over in Argentina, few know about the existence of Das Autogramm, which is based on a work of renowned Argentine writer Osvaldo Soriano and features tango composer and musician Juan José Mosalini as the main protagonist. Yet some still recall the German film-

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maker and his films with admiration. Argentine film critic Paraná Sendrós said that Lilienthal was one of the few European filmmakers who cared about the Latin American population in those difficult years in the early 1980s. He remembers Lilienthal as someone “who has given his voice to the people.”24 A screening of Das Autogramm in a film series of the Museo del Cine Pablo Dúcros Hicken in 2018 confirms the validity of the film to reflect Argentina during the time of repressive regimes. Sendrós notes about this film, “It claims the view of the people at the margins and friendship and solidarity are its central part.” Viewing Das Autogramm both surprised and moved Argentine audiences, who recognized in the film the atmosphere of fear and tension they had lived through. After the screening, a passionate debate ensued in relation to the ideas and images brought forward by Das Autogramm—that local populations had been too afraid to protest and collaborated with the oppressors. Spectators shared memories of such incidents that they had themselves experienced. Sitting in the audience, filmmaker Alejandro Areal Vélez praises the ethical dimension of the film, one that never gives up on anybody, even that of the supposed perpetrator, in an authentic film that as he states is “not distant, nor exotic. It contains a view that understands the Argentine world perfectly.”25 Areal Vélez also notes that Das Autogramm’s eloquent use of the tango-based soundtrack blends with its tradition of cultural and social resistance. The collaboration of Juan José Mosalini, Gustavo Beytelman, and Osvaldo Soriano in this film is evidence of the productivity and connection between Argentine artists in their European exile, including that of Argentina’s beloved writer Julio Cortázar. The responses to the film indicate that Argentinians understand its narrative and aesthetic character, on the one hand, as a genuine part of their cultural traditions and, on the other, as a transcultural link to Europe. Given the chance of their distribution and exhibition in Latin America, Lilienthal’s films promise to have immense repercussion with local audiences, even after all this time.

Picking Up Threads from the Past to Face the Future Cultural diversity, political conflicts, and migration flows have significantly shaped German (film) identity post–World War II. The transnational turn that German film studies has taken in recent decades recognizes the need to examine such tensions, crises, and discontinuities, focusing on social subjects and groups whose histories are neither ar-

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chived nor remembered in respect of national origin, situated instead within the expanded spaces of transnational and translocal experience.26 This research forms part of a growing number of studies that challenge ideological viewpoints and promote research on formerly subversive voices. In her introduction to the part that deals with German transnational cinema in the second edition of the German Cinema Book, Deniz Göktürk points out that scholarship on transnational film takes a “centrifugal, outward looking perspective [that] gravitates toward transnational connections in a broader horizon, emphasizing circulation across borders.”27 Based on approaches and perspectives to further build a German transnational and transcultural film history, there are a number of relevant and related questions that emerge from the results of this investigations. Notions of diaspora have been deployed in regard to German Turkish film identity from the 1970s to today, which progressed from narratives of exile, imprisonment, and emigrant identities toward a more focused celebration of German Turkish culture. In some instances research is still informed by a somewhat essentialist account that views contemporary German Turkish filmmakers, such as Fatih Akin, as ethnic individuals first and as filmmakers second, setting up displacement as their prevalent thematic concern and therefore restricting their films to negotiate a social and cultural “origin,” a home that is lost, imagined, or longed for.28 More recent scholarship considers Akin’s films to be situated within Western and Eastern values and traditions. The position that Akin acquired for a democratic filmmaking whose films built affective communities across classes, religions, and languages29 is resonant of Lilienthal’s filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s, sharing with him an accepted position inside the national cinema that they use to speak on behalf of minorities. In Cold War Europe, Lilienthal had invited much criticism for working with non-Western narrative patterns, aesthetics, and taboo subjects and venturing against ideological ideas, sometimes at the risk of being ridiculed. His persistence in expanding thematic, aesthetic, and political dimensions of German cinema came to life not only with his films. Lilienthal also indirectly helped promote German Turkish film in the various positions he occupied in film-cultural institutions over the decades. Partly thanks to Lilienthal, Das kleine Fernsehspiel opened up to house many international artists, including German Turkish ones. Apart from Akin, whose debut Kurz and schmerzlos (Short and Sharp Shock, 1998), films by Aysun Bademsoy, Ayşe Polat, Thomas Arslan, and Yüksel Yavuz featured here.30

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Frank Stern notes that Jewish film culture in Germany is still dominated by narrative and aesthetic projections and imaginations about Jews.31 Lilienthal’s contributions are important within a film historiography that is rather guided by Jewish views, imageries, narratives, and topographies. In this sense, I hope that my observations around David, as discussed in chapter 1, assist this Jewish feature film in West Germany in finding greater attention in a German Jewish film historiography. The film is an important element of emerging public debates in West Germany around artistic representations of the Holocaust, definitions of German self-image, and the Jewish Other. But there is more. Lilienthal belongs to the first post–World War II generation of Jewish actors and agents in film and television. His early work for television is intrinsically linked to conditions of Jewish remigrants in West Germany, to forms of self-protection and self-censorship, which are biographical, and to political connections that critics and scholars have overlooked thus far. Film personnel in West and East Germany, such as Artur Brauner, Konrad Wolf, Jurek Becker, Erwin Leiser, and Imo Moszkowicz, share Lilienthal’s experiences of escape, exile, and remigration. To better understand the artistic choices of this generation would assist in outlining the potentials and limits of Jewish self-awareness in their various political and cultural environments. The perspective of the seasoned filmmaker and avant-garde artist of the 1960s also resonates with a younger group of Jewish artists, such Dani Levy, Dror Zahavi, and Adriana Altaras. In a panel discussion that took place at the Akademie der Künste Berlin in 2018, Lilienthal, Jeanine Meerapfel, and Deborah Feldman discussed Jewish self-perception with the public.32 For all three of them, the Holocaust had decisively marked the lives of their families and acted as a catalyst for their artistic careers; fellow director Meerapfel was born in Buenos Aires as a daughter of Jewish refugees, and the young American author Feldman, who lives in Berlin, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. In a recent documentary, Lilienthal notes once more that the events surrounding the Jewish genocide were responsible for his choices as filmmaker. Directed by fellow Jewish Uruguayan Maria Teresa Curzio, Ma vie (My Life, 2011) is a portrait about the filmmaker that effortlessly weaves Lilienthal’s life and ideas in past, present, and future tenses. Curzio, who accompanied Lilienthal to Uruguay, where he was to prepare a new project, links the place to memories of a happy childhood in unfortunate circumstances. Although he had been born into a well-to-do Jewish family household and attended a private school in Berlin, the subsequent penniless existence did not

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deter him from thinking that he had arrived in paradise. In what is a key moment, the director, standing in the roof garden of a skyscraper close to his former home in Montevideo, reveals that his ambitions as filmmaker were always driven by an ethical imperative—a mission to redeem the losses that the Jewish community had suffered being his motivation to strive for reconciliation and peace. Ma vie originates in a relationship of understanding and trust between two generations of Jewish diasporic artists, a work that provides insight into the many layers of Jewish identity. Undoubtedly, Lilienthal facilitated an opening of spaces for Latin American film culture on German screens. While scholars have engaged with relations between European art film and Third Cinema or documented tendencies, such as in Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, to appeal to progressive Latin American artists, the presence and impact of political and radical film of Latin American origin in Europe is still unchartered territory.33 A comprehensive study about the activities of Latin American filmmakers in Europe during the 1960s to the 1980s would be useful, and my study will hopefully stimulate further such enquiries. In light of my findings in relation to Lilienthal’s connections with East and West German film industries, such projects would assist in circumventing the colonial gaze, Cold War ideological discourses, and easy dichotomies along North-South and East-West axes.

Figure 4.2. Peter Lilienthal engages in a talk with local fishermen in Uruguay. Still shot from Ma vie.

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Various projects were underway to celebrate Lilienthal’s ninetieth birthday in November of 2019, an anniversary that led to renewed engagement with his rich oeuvre. The Akademie der Künste honored Lilienthal with events dedicated to his life and work, and a large-scale retrospective subsequently took place in Berlin’s Zeughauskino and Kino Arsenal.34 Inspired by the annual Summer Academy that Lilienthal organized as director of the Abteilung Film und Medienkunst at the Akademie der Künste, there are plans to open a “Nomadic Film School” in his honor, an endeavor that will breathe new life into Lilienthal’s philosophy as a “Reisender Kinozauberer zwischen den Welten” (traveling film magician between the worlds), true to the way scholar and activist Volker Pade described him in his essay.35 The strategy for this film school is to work on subjects of current and global relevance through workshops, lectures, and conversations that bring together film students and those who are interested in providing visions of the future, just as his films always had.36 Several works of Lilienthal’s have now been digitally restored. This is a most important and urgent endeavor. Until now his films were scattered among the ZDF, SWR, or SFB television archives, university libraries, and production companies that originally produced his films. Much of the material is still in their original 16 or 35 mm copies or on VHS cassettes and in danger of disintegration. In 2019 the Deutsche Kinemathek was granted means by the Filmfördungsanstalt to digitalize Malatesta (1970), Der Aufstand, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal, and Das Schweigen des Dichters. Meanwhile, in Lilienthal’s former home city Montevideo, the Casa Bertolt Brecht and the local Cinematheque organized a film series in 2019, where they contemplated the inclusion of his early films, such as Lilienthal’s first-ever work El joven del trapecio volante (The Boy on the Flying Trapeze, 1956). Because the film could not be found, they decided to screen Malatesta, which is yet another Lilienthal film largely unknown to Latin American audiences. The Goethe-Institut in Santiago has long had plans to organize a redubbing of La Victoria and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal into its original Spanish and/or update the Spanish subtitles.37 These activities help introduce the filmmaker to broader audiences, allowing them to rediscover his world outside of the Latin American film “canon.” The greater availability of subtitled films will facilitate integrating his films in future exhibitions and screenings or educational activities. Altogether, planned retrospectives and film series, digitization, restoration, subtitling, and redubbing projects will have a positive impact on further engagement with Lilienthal’s films.

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In and beyond Europe and Latin America, Lilienthal’s productions are likely to meet with old and find new spectators, albeit in a world that has radically changed since the days they were conceived. The capitalist model has thoroughly transformed today’s political, social, and media landscape into a global community of consumers. Argentine philosopher Nestor Kohan notes about the current climate, “If a group of people confront the police, they are instantly dismissed as terrorists, adventurers, provocateurs.”38 With this, Kohan articulates deep-seated social anxieties, frustrations, and a heavy atmosphere of zero tolerance for those who do not comply with dominant political ideas. Well-crafted global media companies have long discovered television and cinema as commodities, promoting structures of conformity. Whoever can pay for it has access to a wealth of materials from around the globe, dream worlds and colorful dystopias that feature intricate scripts and sleek photography, which can be consumed anywhere at any given time. Film director Jean Louis Comolli, one of the thinkers of the French New Wave, remarked recently that the “new spectator is no longer overwhelmed by the film, he is no longer dealing with a film stronger than him, he is no longer caught in a tangle of belief and doubt.”39 Where today political decisions are geared toward economic stability and money creation, what is the reward for engaging with Lilienthal’s world? The answer is reaffirming. It is a filmmaking that alerts audiences of worlds that are outside of their attention and believable reality. The films reach across cultural, social, geographical, and temporal divides, promoting belief in social bonds and possibilities of political change. David-Jones describes the experience of engaging with ethical film: It is precisely via a sense of estrangement from one’s own centrality of the world, brought on by encounters with otherness in cinema, that the ethics required of the history of colonial modernity can be investigated. The remembrance of lost pasts . . . is not solely of importance for the cultures whose histories these pasts inform, but also for the re-appraisal of the “centre,” of that which is normative, by the making strange of the official story of world history.40

Lilienthal’s work can be likened to that of a moral compass, a reference that provides the chance to step back, reflect, and evaluate our rights and privileges, stimulating us to investigate historical and contemporaneous connections that are set up on the subjugation of others. Throughout his career, this filmmaker endorsed the vision of collective and diverse social and cultural communities, captured fleeting mo-

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ments of their existence, and kept up optimism even under dire circumstances. There is a reassurance when in Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, a group of citizens visit young, newly arrived political prisoners, bringing them food and clothes, sharing a few minutes of conversation and laughter, reassuring them that they are not alone; or when we see David through the back window, leaving on the train with a passport that a factory owner had organized for him so he could flee. Full of human warmth and social connection, there is an interest and care for the other because of their different ways to see and understand the world. Even in dark times, Lilienthal’s images preserve hope that a more colorful tomorrow exists.

Notes 1. Nico Israel, Outlandish: Writing between Exile and Diaspora (Stanford, NJ: Stanford University Press), 3. 2. Laura Mulvey, “Passing Time: Reflections on Cinema from a New Technological Age,” Screen 45, no. 2 (2004): 151, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/45.2.142. 3. Martin David-Jones, Cinema against Doublethink: Ethical Encounters with the Lost Pasts of World History (London: Routledge, 2018), 7. 4. David-Jones, Cinema against Doublethink, 25. 5. The Israeli army destroyed Palestinian settlement areas after the flight of Palestinians in the aftermath of the war in 1948 to prevent their return. See Julie Peteet, Landscapes of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 195. 6. David-Jones, Cinema against Doublethink, 5. 7. Michael Chanan, “El cine latinoamericano: del subdesarrollo al posmodernismo,” Cine Cubano 200 (2016): 125. 8. Macarena Gómez-Barris, Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 4. 9. Goethe-Institut press release on a retrospective of Lilienthal’s films at the 7th Film Festival in Valparaíso, Santiago de Chile, 2003. 10. Gilda Waldman, “A cuarenta años del golpe militar en Chile. Reflexiones en torno a conmemoraciones y memorias,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales 221 (2014): 248, http://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/rmcpys/article/view/47708. 11. Marcy Campos Pérez, “Construcciones visuales y memorias de la dictadura de Pinochet a través de películas y reportajes extranjeros (1973–2013),” Amnis: Revue de civilisation contemporaine Europes/Amériques 14 (2015), http://amnis.revues.org/2645. 12. Ascanio Cavallo and Antonio Martínez, Chile en el cine. La imagen país en las películas del mundo, vol. 2 (Santiago: uqbar editores), forthcoming. 13. Roka Valbuena, “La Victoria de ‘Herr’ Peter,” La Nación, 7 September 2003. 14. Valbuena, “La Victoria de ‘Herr’ Peter.” 15. Ignacio Latorre Gómez and Yerko Corovic Sandoval, Raúl Ruiz: Recobrando el tiempo (Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2016), chapter 2, “Santa Fe, Politica y Exilio” (e-book version), n.p.

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16. Cavallo and Martínez, Chile en el cine. 17. Mónica Villaroel and Isabel Mardones, Señales contra el olvido. Cine chileno recobrado (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2012), 108–110. 18. See also the interview with Antonio Skármeta in the appendix of this book. 19. In 2017 the Goethe-Institut Santiago organized a film series and edited a DVD collection with the films that Skármeta had made in Germany. 20. See Elizabeth Ramírez Soto and Catalina Donoso Pinto’s volume Nomadías. El cine de Marilú Mallet, Valeria Sarmiento y Angelina Vázquez (Santiago: Ediciones metales pesados, 2018), which is a seminal study about Chilean women filmmakers in Europe. 21. The panel discussion happened on 8 June 2020 as a webinar; see recording at https:// www.facebook.com/FestivaldeCineEuropeo/videos/721716165258534. 22. Interview with Isidora Gálvez Alfageme, October 2018. 23. Mariela Silva, “Esta semana termine el rodaje de la película El ciclista de San Cristóbal,” La Epoca, 1 June 1987, 26. 24. Interview with Paraná Sendrós, November 2018. 25. Interview with Alejandro Areal Vélez, November 2018. 26. For the idea of the translocal, see Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta, “Introduction: Translocal Geographies,” in Translocal Geographies Spaces, Places, Connections, ed. Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 3–22. 27. Deniz Gökturk, “Introduction: Transnational Connections,” in German Cinema Book, 2nd edition, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: BFI, 2020), 440–444. 28. See, for example, Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg, European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 29. Barbara Mennel, “Fatih Akin: Global Auteur,” in The German Cinema Book, 2nd edition, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: BFI, 2020), 242–251. 30. Claudia Sandberg, “Das kleine Fernsehspiel: Model of a TV-Avantgarde,” in The German Cinema Book, 2nd edition, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: BFI, 2020), 332. 31. Frank Stern, “Visualisierung des Jüdischen in Krisenzeiten. Imagination und Ambivalenz von Erinnern und Vergessen im deutschsprachigen Film,” in Judaism and Crisis: Crisis as a Catalyst in Jewish Cultural History, ed. Armin Lange, K. F. Diethard Römheld, and Matthias Weigold (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 309. 32. Lea Wohl von Haselberg, “Es ist kompliziert. Deborah Feldman, Jeanine Meerapfel und Peter Lilienthal diskutierten in der Akademie der Künste über ihr Judentum,” Jüdische Allgemeine, 12 September 2018, https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/ kultur/es-ist-kompliziert-3/. 33. There are studies that open up the field in this direction, such as Dennis Hanlon, “Traveling Theory, Shots, and Players: Jorge Sanjinés, New Latin American Cinema, and the European Art Film,” in Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, ed. Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 351–366; Elisabeth Ramirez Soto and Catalina Donoso’s aforementioned volume Nomadías; Claudia Sandberg, “‘Not Like the Stories I Am Used To’: East German Film as Cinematic Memory in Contemporary Chile,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 26, no. 4 (2017), 553–569, https://doi.org/10.1080/1356932 5.2017.1384368.

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34. Filmförderungsanstalt press release, “März-Entscheidungen zum Förderprogramm Filmerbe: 2,1 Mio. Euro für die Restaurierung und Digitalisierung von 45 Filmen,” 15 March 2019, https://www.ffa.de/aid=1394.html?newsdetail=20190515-1351_fo erderprogramm-filmerbe-21-mio-euro-fuer-die-restaurierung-und-digitalisierungvon-45-filmen. 35. Volker Pade, “Peter Lilienthal: Reisender Kinozauberer zwischen den Welten,” http://www.volker-pade.de/Lilienthal, percent20Peter.pdf. 36. Email conversation with Johannes Kagerer, April 2019. 37. Lilienthal’s films, made for German television and cinema, had to be dubbed into German, as is the convention for postproduction of foreign-language film on the German market until today. Most of the original, Spanish 35 mm film copies of Lilienthal’s films seem to be lost. The Goethe-Institut in Latin America had to use the German-dubbed films with Spanish subtitles for screenings. 38. Nestor Kohan, “America Latina y/o utopia. Recuperar la discusión sobre el socialismo,” Nueve cine latinoamericano 10 (2009): 70. 39. Jean-Louis Comolli, Cinema against Spectacle: Technique and Ideology Revisited (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), 137. 40. David-Jones, Cinema against Doublethink, 21.

APPENDIX In Dialogue

Home is a place elsewhere. —Peter Lilienthal

Conversation with Peter Lilienthal I met Peter Lilienthal in Munich in May 2007 with the intention to do a formal interview with him. My prepared questions ended up being signposts for a long conversation. Peter talked about his family and the Jewish émigré community in Uruguay, feelings of belonging and home, parents and children and their different political convictions, the collaboration with Antonio Skármeta as productive misunderstanding, his vocation as director, and the adventure of filmmaking in Latin America. Meanwhile, he came back to deliberate the Holocaust as an “insurmountable theological break.” The following is an abridged version of our dialogue. CLAUDIA SANDBERG: Mr. Lilienthal, where does your family come from? Peter Lilienthal: I lived in Berlin. My grandmother, even though she had grown up in Germany, spoke Spanish with me, specifically Sephardi. For her, this was the language of affection. I am not sure whether she did this deliberately, but with me, she always spoke Spanish, so that I grew up bilingual. It was a very old-fashioned Spanish; I believe it was a kind of “Quixotian” Spanish. I spoke German with my mother. German became the language of my upbringing.

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CS: Are you related to aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal? PL: Yes, it is very complicated though, because in those days there were always Jewish people who were or were not baptized. Nobody really paid attention to that unless you belonged to one of the religious families, in which case the non-baptized were considered defectors. In our family, we had a baptized side and a non-baptized one. The nonbaptized part of my family lived in Berlin, as well as in other cities. I lost track of them at some point. I know that there is a very big nonJewish side of the family who live in a small city near Bremen named Lilienthal, but genealogy was never my thing. CS: You emigrated to Uruguay with your mother and grandmother. Were other relatives living with you in Uruguay? PL: An aunt. She was the black sheep of the family. During her last years in Berlin, she married an ambassador from Honduras, and when she went to join him in Tegucigalpa, she realized that she knew nothing about the customs of this country. She found out that her husband, the ambassador, had some sort of harem of at least three or four women. We were always afraid that eventually she would come live with us, which then happened. There are crazy anecdotes about this aunt. She died at a very old age. I had two cousins who immigrated to San Francisco via China; one of them is married to a Chinese woman, and the other one died very young. Together, they owned a hotel and a laundry. As mentioned, there were two big Lilienthal families, the Jewish and the non-Jewish one. One was originally from Sweden, people from a farming background who came to Germany after a hunger epidemic. They settled near Anklam, where the pilot Otto Lilienthal lived. CS: What were your impressions when you first arrived in Montevideo? PL: I always dreamt about living somewhere near the ocean. When I arrived, I found out that this country was very European. There were no tropical adventures to be had. I mean, I thought that I would find tigers and elephants. However, I was not disappointed. When I first arrived, I had to spend a couple of days in a dark room because I had contracted scarlet fever, and back then, it was believed one had to be in the dark. I was not allowed on the street. It was in January and February, around the time of the carnival. I could hear the wonderful samba music from outside, because the Uruguayan carnival had strong Brazilian influences. This was my first impression—the dark room while the

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sun was shining outside, hearing people dancing, and the ocean swells crashing and roaring. We first stayed in a boarding house because we did not have much money. The instant I was well again and had the chance to be out on the street, no one could stop me. I went straight to the sea. I soon had to start school, as I already spoke Spanish, but mind you, a very oldfashioned version, and people made fun of me. After three months, I felt at home, more than I had ever felt anywhere else. This did not surprise me in the least. I knew this was the country I belonged in and that I was one of them. The older ones did not appreciate this country, and that actually surprised me. CS: When you say the “the older ones,” you mean your mother’s generation? PL: Yes, family, and German friends. For them, the Uruguayans were not exactly savages, but they did not consider them as cultivated people, and even though I was a child I could sense their contempt. CS: Were there conflicts between the nationals and the newcomers in Uruguay? PL: This country has a multicultural history; immigrants from the East, Italians, Spaniards, and people from the Baltic had settled here. When we arrived, there existed more than twenty different radio stations in all kinds of languages. I never heard any racist comments. In Uruguay, the word “Jew”—in Spanish judío—was used for the Turks, or for anyone seen as somewhat penny-pinching. It referred to owners of a “momand-pop store” [family-run business] or people who were stingy. The word was practically applicable to everyone and, in this respect, did not have the connotation that it has for us. I was very tall and strong, and nobody would have dared to embarrass me; actually it was rather the opposite. All I can say is that I felt very much at home, more so than I did anywhere else. Nevertheless, I was concerned about my family during my childhood. No one told me why my mother was sad or why my grandmother felt anxious. I could sense it, but they did not give me any reasons. We had financial problems, and they were outsiders. I was not an outsider, however. Now that I am saying it, I find myself thinking where I might have felt like an outsider. Nowhere, because I was always on an expedition. I had no time to feel like an outsider. My mother had a photo from when I was small, which was evidence of how one morning I took off with a little bucket and a shovel and I went digging around. She never knew what I was up to or where I had been, but when I returned somewhat dirty later on, she immediately put me in the bathtub. When she

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asked, “Where were you?” I said, “I was out digging.” I cannot remember what I did, but I never had a sense of this tragedy. Until 1943, people did not have any idea about the magnitude of the tragedy that had taken place. They assumed that the persecution they had experienced up to that point was already the worst. Who could have imagined what came next? It was a theological break for many. Those who had been so convinced of German culture and had spent their entire lives as assimilated Jews and good Germans found this particularly horrific. I cannot remember, but the old ones lived through World War I and were members of the Teutonic Order. For them, Hitler was a temporary phenomenon. They felt it all dreadful, the Nuremberg Laws and so forth, but then came the horror of Auschwitz! Who could have imagined it? Nobody, whether in Germany, in Poland, in Uruguay, or anywhere in the world. No one could believe it, and when the BBC suddenly reported this news, many people declared it as propaganda because nobody could envision this type of madness or crime. For that reason, I do not know how this had affected me. This did not happen overnight. It was an evolution . . . The first thing people did was stop speaking German. That was a given. CS: Did the émigré community dissociate from Germany at this point? PL: Not really, this was so shameful. For many, who had Schiller and Goethe on their bookshelves—if they managed to bring their books to Uruguay—Germany was still their home country and heritage, German remained their language. But not I! Even though I was so tall and blond, I did not want to be recognized as German under any circumstances. What were the South Americans supposed to think when I told them that I was not a German, but a Jew? We did not speak German in the house. With my grandma, I had never spoken German, and with my mother, I now spoke in Spanish. That was like a sign. The German Jews tried to blur all traces and cut all ties. The entire situation was too devastating. I tried to relieve my family of some of their worries, particularly those of my grandma, whom I saw so depressed at times. I believe that one continues to talk about this subject for the rest of one’s life. It is like an unsolvable mystery. CS: Because it is so inconceivable? PL: Yes, because it is so inconceivable. As I said earlier, there was a theological break where one lost all faith in humanity. What is there left to believe in?

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CS: Did your mother and grandmother feel like outsiders in Uruguay? PL: My grandmother had her routines. She was no longer teaching and rented a small house in which she sublet two rooms. My mother and my stepfather, whom she later divorced, ran a hotel. They were so busy with their daily lives, and they were not inclined to have conversations like historians or sociologists would. To manage your everyday life was difficult, and priority for most immigrants. People did see differences to the customs in Uruguay. But for most, Uruguay was and is the most generous “European” country in Latin America. Let us imagine, I put you in an airplane, and you did not know where it was going. Upon arrival, I announced that we had just landed in northern Spain, and I showed you a city that you did not know. There would be no indication that it was not northern Spain, Italy, or even Germany. There are now more black people in Italy than there were at the time of our arrival in Uruguay, and there were no indigenous people. They were all driven out in the years from 1800 to 1850. If the adults had not been so blasé [aloof] about their German heritage, they might not have felt so burdened, and life could have been simpler—just like it was for a child who had friends, liked to play at the beach, and liked to swim. I was one of those children. Furthermore, there was a very nice school right next to my mother’s hotel. I could look straight into my classroom from my bathroom window; all I had to do was step outside. It was like paradise. CS: Who were the guests who stayed at your mother’s hotel? PL: One-third of the lodgers were European immigrants, one-third were seasonal guests from Argentina, and one-third were people who stayed year-round. CS: Who were the people around your mother? PL: My mother often met with other German immigrants. She was a good bridge player, and there was a bridge club at our small hotel where ladies and gentlemen in their forties and fifties gathered in the evenings. They listened to a radio transmission of an opera that was on in the Colon [opera house in Buenos Aires], conducted by one of the many musicians who had emigrated to Argentina and Uruguay. They would sit in a half circle, which I found very strange, and discuss how much better their lives used to be. “Imagine, our house was like this and that, we had a big garden, a Steinway and two dogs, and what do we have here?” Not everyone would think this way, but many of them did live in the past.

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My mother’s friends were nostalgic, which at times bored me. Nostalgic people tend to be a little boring. There is one type of person who prepares for the future and has some kind of plan. The other sort idealizes the past or feels terrible about it. I prefer to be around people who worry more about the future, and maybe that is unfair. I am far from being nostalgic, to the point that I do not care about my past at all. I do not even watch my own films. I am busy with the little bit of life that I have left and enjoy discussing with people what can we do in this world where there is such bloodshed and where people depend on our friendship. This is often what differentiates my thinking from the philosophy of settled Jewish culture—the communities that look into the past. I often ask them, “Can we rectify the lives of the millions who were murdered?” To me the lesson of this tragedy is to think of others, to do something for them. CS: Were you in touch with the Jewish community in Uruguay? PL: No, I did not tend to visit synagogues anyway. This kind of ritualization was not for me. I did not want to go, but I attended the occasional Bar Mitzvah because friends invited me, and at the time, I thought that it was like attending a birthday celebration where you get presents. So, I started attending initiation classes, and by the second or third class, I burst out laughing. The rabbi, who was a Hebrew teacher, kicked me out. CS: Did you have a religious upbringing? PL: I will have to disappoint you; I was not educated at all. We celebrated Christmas, Hanukkah, Pesach, and whichever other holidays whose names I cannot recall right now. I liked it because I always received presents. I knew that my father’s chauffeur always played Santa Claus, but it never occurred to me that he was the real Santa Claus. I had an interest in being Jewish because I knew that the Jews were a minority and they were persecuted. It was a kind of solidarity—this may sound weird, like being a fan for a third-class soccer club, because the poor players who lose get plucked out and booed. I always rooted for the underdog. I did not perceive Jewish people as the weaker people, but as the persecuted, disregarded, and abused; that is why my being Jewish was an act of solidarity. CS: Who were your role models, and who influenced you? PL: You can imagine that I often thought about this question. It was not just one person who influenced me, but I will give you an example.

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There was a guest at the hotel, a Spanish writer who had been with the famous poet Federico García Lorca for a time and, like many, left Spain after the conflict with Franco. He first moved to Argentina and later came to Uruguay. He sat in the patio and wrote an autobiographical novel called La cathedral [The Cathedral, 1948]. I saw him sitting out there every morning when the weather was nice. His name was Eduardo Blanco Armor. His name was so beautiful, amor blanco—the white love. He taught me about literature. He and I walked down the street toward the beach, and he recited poems by García Lorca. It was all very strange to me. I laughed and thought, how dramatic he is! But then I thought about the comparisons, the metaphors; they had to have a deeper meaning. This fascinated me. The hotel was a rather old house built around the turn of the century. Eduardo had a large room. The room had big windows and a dark corner, and one morning after I brought him breakfast, he pointed, and said, “Look, there is Apollo.” I looked around and saw some bearded fellow, a sailor or a fisherman sitting in the corner whom he had brought home from the beach. I remember thinking how terrible that he was with a guy like that. Then he explained, “You don’t know who Apollo is? It is a Greek God.” These were the types of conversations we had. Recently, in fact, I heard from my friend Skármeta that there was a literary gathering in Spain where they commemorated Eduardo Blanco’s hundredth birthday. The kitchen staff also drew my attention, because they always told me interesting stories, and these people, unlike my mother’s friends and guests, felt real to me. They were sometimes full on. They tore each other’s hair, shouted, exploded, and did anything one could imagine. The Russian cook we had was a mythomaniac. The kitchen was like a film school to me. CS: Would you say that these people and experiences established your interests as a filmmaker, your sensitivity in issues such as humanity and solidarity? PL: I was always more concerned with the powerless, the poor, the working, the modest people. They were my actors. I perceived them as real, and I wanted to help them. I always had the feeling that I was better off than they. Half of the staff in the kitchen could not read or write. On occasion, I taught some of the women how to write. There were times when a woman would want to seduce me, and then later I wanted to seduce one of them. It was no drama, but there were some tumultuous relationships. It was all lively, very lively. There was never a boring day.

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For a time, I attended evening school, where I sat next to adults. I befriended an officer and a midwife, who told me about their lives. The stories of these people became part of my education. They were not shy and told me anything I wanted to know. Later on, we had a mixed-race woman cleaning for us. That was after my mother separated from my father. She was partly black, but not very dark. Her name was Alaídes, and she had eight sisters. Every so often, they invited my mother and me to eat at their house, and they always received us like royalty. My mother, who was fairly old, always sat at the end of the table. One of the sisters played the violin, and she would always play after dinner. The sound was horrible, the violin screeched. They got so excited when we visited them, which made us very happy. Alaídes was unique. Every year, she disappeared during the carnival season. The carnival lasted anywhere from six to eight weeks in Uruguay, and she waited the entire year to get away. She even made herself dresses for the occasion, and once gone, no one knew where she was. She celebrated for two full months and returned exhausted. My mother and I were perfectly aware that during this time, we would not see her. When she returned, she told us where she had danced and where she had been. One time, she invited me to her birthday party. It was quite the commotion. She lived near a cemetery. The house had two floors, but the ceiling to the upper level had some loose beams. On her birthday, there were so many people there, that the beams sagged through, and there was danger of the ceiling collapsing. The music was loud and there was a lot of dancing. I will never forget the way she celebrated. It is for this reason that I have such an aversion to all these so-called social events, film festivals, and gatherings with people of the film industry. It is all completely alien to me. I would not be caught dead at one of these events. CS: Would you say that you had a happy childhood? PL: I had a very happy childhood. I was not the typical teenager, not lovesick or anything. I was always on the move doing something. I must have been infatuated at times, but things never worked out. I now perceive myself as privileged, something I would not have expressed in this manner back then. CS: Why did you decide to return to Germany of all places? PL: The word “return” was linked to migrants who came to Germany for reasons of compensation, longing, nostalgia, or a sense of belonging. We did not feel that way at all. It was simply an opportunity to pursue a career and later get a job that interested me.

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It was my intention to make use of a scholarship that I had, for the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques [Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies, IDHEC] in Paris. I was there for a short time, about two or three months. I found it to be too theoretical, and besides, my French was very bad. At the time, I visited my grandmother, who was alone and undergoing treatment for heart disease in Berlin. Near the hospital was the Hochschule der Künste, now the Berlin University of the Arts, and there I met Professor Uhlmann. He was a very bizarre man, and taught sculpture. I liked drawing and design, and I happened to have some sketches with me. He looked at them and said, “Well, why don’t you join us?” He was a rather politically engaged person, and we got along great. We were both Sagittarius, born on the same day. I came to know his workshop, and suddenly I knew that I wanted to enroll there. I passed all the requirements. The Hochschule der Künste also offered a workshop for experimental photography. The experimental photography instructor said to me, “There is no film school in Berlin, but do your film experiments and we will count it toward your studies.” I completed two years until someone from the Südwestfunk discovered a short film of mine, one about an organ grinder that someone had dug up and broadcast in their program. Therefore, I stayed for two and a half years in Berlin, always with the intent of returning to Uruguay. By then, however, my mother had also come to Berlin to help with my grandmother, so that one of us was always with her. In Montevideo, I had been employed at a bank, first the Transnational City Bank of New York, and then the Bank Hollandaise, a Dutch bank. During that time, I managed to save some money for my studies and for my mother. When I moved to Europe, I took a leave of absence, but I knew that I would have to return to Montevideo to finish my contract. I returned to Montevideo to wrap up my last year. Then, I completed my last year at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin before accepting a position at the television company Südwestfunk as assistant director. Although I lived in Germany, I did not want to remain there. I felt a stronger connection with southern countries such as France or Italy. I never thought I would have a permanent job in Germany, but the offer from the Südwestfunk was very appealing. The station was located in Baden-Baden. I had no idea where that was. I was interviewed by a very friendly gentleman. His name was Ludwig Cremer, the head of radio drama. He asked when I could start, and a month later, I moved there. My mother moved with me. She had initially come to take care of my grandmother, who had passed away by then. My mother decided she

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wanted to be where I was. It was my intention to eventually take her back to Montevideo or to some place in the South, like Italy. However, the job became more interesting every day, but Baden-Baden was pretty much an island, compared to Berlin, which I knew from being a student. Berlin was still destroyed back then, and I felt like Robinson Crusoe from the first day I set foot there and began wayfaring through the city. I did not connect to people older than twenty-five, because there was always a sense that they might have a connection to the Nazis. But the father-son relationships in Germany fascinated me. Only after thirty years did they speak with their children about this [the Holocaust]. The sons did not receive any explanations from the fathers, especially if they had cooperated with the Nazis in one way or another. The same thing happened in Jewish or Israeli families. Here fathers did not speak with their sons either. On both sides there were strong feelings of shame about what happened. I took all of this like some sort of an adventure. I regarded myself as an ethnologist or a theologist. During this time, many people asked me why I was here, in Germany, and the answer I gave was always “Because I have a job here. I have more friends and acquaintances every day. I am also very interested in the current situation in Germany.” Up to this day, there is no other place where I can find out more about the Jewish persecution, the development of National Socialism, the German conscience, the new generations. CS: Do you consider yourself a German director? PL: It would not occur to me to see myself as a German director. I do not have a nationality as a director. When asked where I was born, I respond, “Berlin,” so consequently, I am German, but the term “German director” has a different connotation. Though I am of the generation of Kluge and Reitz, I do not belong to this generation because I did not have the same experiences. I did not take part in the Oberhausen Manifesto. Ultimately, I did not grow up in Germany, which would be a deciding factor in defining myself as a German director, as Edgar Reitz does. I do not know which country I would identify myself with, but most likely, it would be as a stateless director. In the legal sense, this is not true, but it is in the metaphorical sense. CS: You must have an ambivalent relationship with the concept of home. Is there any kind of home for you? PL: Ah, the urge of some directors in Germany to define the term “home,” and the everlasting debates in the media about this subject. I

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did not participate in this discussion because I did not need this “home.” I never looked for one. Of course, I can say, my home is Uruguay because I grew up there, but it would never occur to me to talk about the term “home.” Where does one feel happy? With friends somewhere in the world enjoying a good conversation. Or in a village in Italy, where I am a stranger, where I watch people, where the church bells ring, where I see and smell Italy. This is also a home, but only for a week, maybe a month, but not more. What would you think of me if I said, “Yes, Germany is my home,” after having gotten to know me a little bit better? You would say, “Excuse me?” I am not particularly proud of being homeless in the sense of the home others claim or identify. In this sense, home is always a place elsewhere, that you don’t know, that you imagine, where the food is better, where the house is nicer, a feeling of spring. But where is this place? CS: Where do you belong? PL: I like conversations with architects. I admire architects. I have more in common and feel better around architects than around filmmakers or writers. There are terms like “functionality” and a kind of lifestyle that I share with them. I am speaking of the ones I have met, of course, and those I find particularly nice. Let us name Daniel Libeskind, who has not had time to meet with me for years, and who spends all his time in New York or on an airplane, according to his wife. We have much in common. He is someone who has been very involved with music, is a very fine man with a kabbalistic way of thinking. He brings things together that nobody would think belong together. I also enjoy the company of teachers and doctors. We always seem to have much to say to one another. In the context of belonging, many people, whom I receive presents from, are hospitable and ready to share with me something about their lives. In the truest sense of the word, they trust me, yet I cannot say I belong with them either. But sometimes, for example when I visited Mexican families in San Diego to prepare Camilo [Camilo—The Long Road to Disobedience, 2007], I remember thinking to myself, “I belong to a really big international family.” CS: Where do your friends live? PL: I have some very good friends in Germany, especially three women with whom I worked and to whom I feel very close. But most of my friends are abroad. I just recently spent some time in the USA and in Nicaragua with one of my assistants, but I miss the opportunity, for example, that my French colleagues have. In Paris, one sits together at a

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café with anyone who is close to your heart. This someone is sometimes far away, but they always return. I do not get this feeling in Germany. When I am in New York, friends have less and less time. People seem completely driven by anxiety and fear or whatever it is. During the time I spent as director in the Department of Film and Media Arts in the Akademie der Künste I had more conversations than ever before—and after—but I miss sons or daughters, grandmothers, all the people I cannot have at my age anymore but who would take the time to discuss a topic with me without any rush. Well, I am not depressed about it. My family is very scattered and inaccessible sometimes. These terrible intrusions such as cellphones and emails are not a replacement for a good conversation, such as the one we are having right now. CS: Is it a coincidence that you are a filmmaker? Do you believe that this is the right medium to express yourself? PL: How did I come to be in filmmaking? Logically, someone has no idea of the industry or of the work itself at the age of thirteen or fourteen. One goes to the cinema and thinks, “That is nice. There are actors.” Then wonders, “Would I like to become an actor, or would I like to do what I was taught, what someone does behind the scenes; someone who holds the whole thing together, organizes it and is responsible?” This has to do with one’s nature. I played little as a child, but I watched the game and then tried to tell the others how to play it. I saw myself more as a manager than a participant. CS: As a mastermind behind the scenes? PL: Yes, something like that. There was a brilliant drama director, George Tabori. He did theater practices out on the lawn in the literary colloquium in Berlin with actors and stage designers, and I sometimes watched these practices. We met because I worked in the editing suite in the literary colloquium. He invited me to join in and I went to one of these theater exercises. He said to everyone, “I want you to put your hands up in the air, and then come close to one another. Capture the aura each of you emanates, but then, I also want you to do whatever comes to mind at that very moment.” This is how he explained it to us, so I did this. I cannot remember how many people we were, maybe six or seven, but I felt their hands. It was a nice feeling but then this urge came over me to grab all hands, like a bunch of flowers. Tabori looked at me flabbergasted and said, “That was not intended. You are not an actor, after all. You are a director!” He meant this in the physical sense.

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I became aware of the relationship I felt with the actors when watching movies as a child. My connection was not to material things or to themes, but to people. In Uruguay, children go to the cinema at an early age. There are no restrictions, and on weekends, one could watch as many as four movies. I had a strong connection to Bette Davis. I cannot quite recall how I felt back then, but I believe that it was not that different from how I feel when I see her on the screen now. She is one that does not belong in roles like the empress of Mexico or be part of a horror movie for that matter. On screen, it was as if she looked around and asked herself, “Where on earth am I? I have nothing to do with you.” One could not simply call it great concentration or pride, but rather realization that she is quite different from the others. One could perceive this in every role she played. She was a dramatic actress, and every time I saw a movie of hers, I replayed it in my mind for the rest of the week. I was enchanted by her because I could feel her presence, and I could not help myself but think about her all week long. CS: How did you meet Antonio Skármeta? What fascinated you about his work? PL: I met Antonio Skármeta at the Goethe-Institut of Santiago. He was a professor of literature at the Universidad Católica in Santiago and, like many other artists, a supporter of the worker and peasants party

Figure 5.1. Peter Lilienthal directs a scene for his film David. © Akademie der Künste.

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MAPU [Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria/ Popular Unitary Action Movement]. When I first met him, his parents invited me to dinner. I think it was love at first sight between all of us. We talked a lot about our shared experiences as working children and teenagers. While I had worked in a hotel, Antonio had worked as a delivery boy for a fruit and vegetable store. He also helped his father, who smuggled nylon stockings from Argentina to Chile hidden inside old newspapers that they sent out from the local post office. From this experience arose the scenario of the postmen and the post office in his famous film Il Postino [The Postman, Michael Radford, 1994; based on Skármeta’s novel Burning Patience]. We wanted to create something that was not based on a short story or another literary source. Instead, I imagined a young woman who wanted to become a secretary in the capital. The fictional character of this story lived in a village called Curicó, which all Chileans associate with sweets because there is a famous cookie factory. There, she had attended secretary school. The female lead, of what was to become the film La Victoria [1973], eventually left for the capital, Santiago, and during her job search, she presented herself at different employment agencies. They placed her with a person who was running for office for the Unidad Popular in the upcoming elections, a woman named Carmen Lazo. She joined her, curious to get to know the city, familiarize herself with people from different political movements. She develops her political awareness in this unbelievably fascinating time where everything happened on the street, ideas and plans of how to eliminate injustice and land occupations. I had to return to Germany, to speak with the production company and with people from television, to see if they would fund this idea. This was very easy back then. The ZDF liked the project, and I returned with someone from the newly founded Filmverlag der Autoren who managed the finances. I selected a team and we started filming. During the shoot, we made changes to the script depending on what went on, strikes and so forth. This film is often referred to as semi-documentary because it records actual events of the time. The female lead accompanies the candidate throughout her campaign, eventually winning the election and becoming a senator. The senator Carmen Lazo played her role very well, considering how unusual the situation was. In bringing the female lead together with the senator, I integrated her into the fictitious frame of a real story, and that was inspiring to me. Antonio was involved in all aspects of this film and in subsequent projects. He served not only as scriptwriter but rather as collaborator.

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We traveled together to find shooting locations and casts, and we got to know many families. We spent entire days together on the road, and this is how the story of La Victoria took shape. This is also how things developed in Nicaragua—the story matured by talking to families and observing what was going on in the streets. I had never worked with a screenwriter before, only with authors, who did not participate in writing the script. With Antonio, we developed ideas together, and he played a small role in the film [La Victoria] and took care of the costumes, anything, really, because this was teamwork. As he said, “You know, we are very different and everything between us is a misunderstanding, un malentendido.” “What do you mean—a misunderstanding?” I asked. He said, “What you believe that I know and see, that is your perspective about me, but this is a misunderstanding. And this goes the other way as well.” Our work was based on this misunderstanding and a great friendship. He is a person who is always in a good mood, is very sensual, and loves food. Back then, when we were filming La Victoria, he was not as well-known as he is now. He had a brilliant career as a writer. We are friends to this day. About a year ago, I gave a workshop in a film school in Santiago. Antonio surprised me with a dinner for which he had invited several of his political friends, whom I knew as well. Among them, the biggest surprise was seeing Carmen Lazo, the senator who was part of the cast in La Victoria. I was pleased to see that she had not changed at all. Her political views and her determined character were the same. She talked enthusiastically about her experience in Peru, where she lived in exile and worked as a cook. She was a gifted cook, a fact that helped her score well in the elections. She used to share culinary recipes on the radio. CS: What kind of themes and interests did you share in your collaborations with Antonio? PL: About a half a year after we finished our work in Chile, Allende was assassinated, and most of Antonio’s colleagues had been arrested. He kept to himself in his house, and either they did not find him, or they had not issued a search warrant for him yet. In any case, I kept in touch with him from Germany. I did everything possible to get him out, until one day he received his travel documents. We met again in Morocco, where I wanted to shoot a film. We were already in the preliminary stages when Skármeta arrived. From there, we went to Berlin, and he remained there with his exiled friends. We started thinking about our next project. Antonio described a peculiar situation to me, and the idea

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that emerged from it went into everything that we did afterwards. This was a take on the father-son relationship. I had asked him what he did when he was in hiding and could not leave his house, what stories he thought of after this terrible tragedy that had changed him, his family, and friends who were now in prison. “You’d be surprised, I thought about Pinocchio, the children’s story,” he said. It is an educational story based on the premise that the son leaves home only to regret his decision and, in the end, returns because he is afraid of his father. I found it strange because it was the opposite of what we believed in. So I replied by turning the story around. “It is not the son who returns, but the father, who in order to understand his son’s destiny, goes out to find him, only for them to meet in prison.” This conversation became the foundation for Es herrscht Ruhe im Land [Calm Prevails Over the Country, 1975] and Der Aufstand [The Uprising, 1980]. The norm is that fathers stand on the right and sons stand on the left side of the political spectrum. Fathers were afraid for their sons’ lives, who were on the streets, protested, and were arrested. The fathers believed that a right-wing government ensures order and were able to save their sons’ lives. History showed us that this was a mistake. In Der Aufstand I switched these roles. I felt that it was important to create a dialectic that could be eye-opening. We went to Argentina with this fundamental idea in mind. We found a story about the imprisonment of an entire city, in Trelew, a place in the south of Argentina. The city had a prison where many students and people from the left had been arrested by the conservative military government. When people from the Montoneros [left-wing Peronist group] and their sympathizers visited the prisoners, they were arrested as well. Then the students’ families were imprisoned. Within a short time, the entire city was behind bars, until the local shop and fabric owners talked to the governor and said, “This cannot go on. With the entire city in prison, who is going to keep the city going?” It was a very interesting conflict and a story that inspired us. In order to find a country where we could film, we traveled throughout Latin America, only to realize that it was an impossible endeavor. In Argentina, the situation was getting worse. Chile was out of the question, and Peru was not suitable. We ended up filming in Portugal. Many Chilean, Argentine, and Brazilian émigrés lived in Portugal. We shot the film in a real prison, in what was back then the small harbor town of Setúbal, near Lisbon. The cast comprised members of this émigré community, an infinite number of stand-ins and a great actor, Charles Vanel, who played the role of the grandfather.

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We continued with the idea of the father-son relationship, which was of particular interest to me because I did not have a father. I missed not having a father. I learned about the stories in Chile during the dictatorship. They worried about their sons or daughters and hoped for law and order from right-wing parties. This again comes back to the Jewish families in Germany who were not aware of the consequences and completely unprepared for the disaster that was to come. This also applied to Chile and Uruguay. When I think about the neglect and ignorance with which Jewish families after 1934, even after the Nuremberg Laws, still hung on to hope, I can only reach the conclusion that they were not concerned with politics. I have continued to pursue this subject, but it is always the same. Fathers allow their sons to become soldiers to protect their home country, only to ask themselves, when they return dead, what was promised to them, what kind of fantasy have they nurtured? All these factors played an important role. To be honest, I believe I have made the same film over and over again. I made only one film in different versions. CS: You worked often on father-son constellations in your films when you did not have this experience yourself. PL: I was never interested when my friends recommended that I write an autobiography. It is boring and I am already familiar with my life. If I would do it, I would fictionalize my story. For me, it is about transforming experiences into something else. When I wrote the script about a Jewish Santa Claus, the editor was disappointed. He thought that I would write about myself, that I would keep to the real political events. But it bored me. I prefer to take a risk. I do not intend to stick to the truth or reality. I never have, even though making a documentary forces me to listen, to ask questions, yet not change anything. This is a problem for someone who normally works in fiction and does not believe in what most people call truth and reality. CS: How did you find working with émigrés and the local population in Portugal and Nicaragua? PL: For Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, many exiles came from Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. They lived in Lisbon or in the harbor city of Setúbal, were we shot the film. Most of them did not have a job. Antonio and I visited a few that he knew from Chile; I knew a few, whom I had met during our many trips. They played smaller roles. We learned in Nicaragua that filmmaking can trigger catharsis in people. There was, for example, a girl who lived in Managua, the capital. She was about six

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or seven years old and had problems sleeping at night. In the war, she had witnessed tanks shooting up houses or people who were killed on the streets. She learned from her mother that we were making a film. We were reconstructing many of those same scenes in the film, that is, the occupation of a military base. Her mother told us that it was as if a miracle had occurred. The girl had seen us acting out the scenes and understood that it was only a performance and not actual war, and suddenly, she was able to sleep again. CS: Der Aufstand and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land were made for Germanspeaking audiences. PL: All other films were dubbed because people in Germany were not used to reading subtitles at the time. Television and cinema refused to show films in their original language. I always said that if for any reason I end up in hell, there would be a dubbing studio waiting for me. It is such a terrible thing to take someone’s voice away from them. Even though Germany does a good job dubbing, but it is still a terrible thing. Antonio also found it tragic, but we had no other choice. CS: How was your experience in East Germany? PL: The distributors worked it all out with the promise that they would show the films in the cinemas. They invited me once or twice to address the audience of the Akademie der Künste Ost. The people were smart. They asked good questions, and it was obvious that many people were better educated in politics than those in the West. But I did not understand their secret language. During one of those visits, I spoke about an event in the history of Uruguay. The country is official named Oriental Republic of Uruguay, because of its location on the eastern side of Latin America. The Uruguayans are referred to as the Oriental Nation. The historic event I talked about was the socalled exodus of the people. José G. Artigas, an officer in the Spanish Army and his followers, the entire population of Montevideo, left the capital toward the border of Brazil in the middle of the night while the Spanish Army slept, some on foot and some on horses. They made it halfway to the river when the Spanish Army confronted them. They had come to gather them and take them back. The whole country was in exodus. I told them this story without any hidden intentions, but I noticed that they whispered among themselves. I thought, “What am I doing wrong?” I kept getting strange looks from the audience and finally, I said, “Excuse me, I am noticing some strange reactions. Have I said anything that is offensive or distasteful? I am only sharing a his-

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torical episode with you.” Then it dawned on me, that I had described something they had always intended to do—leave their country, leave behind the lot of officials, and say, “They can do whatever they want, we are leaving.” Western audiences go to the cinema because they want to entertain themselves. Today it is the theater, and tomorrow, the restaurant or the opera. To Eastern audiences, a film or any kind of art was a source of nourishment, a requirement, a necessity. This is how they differ. For some it is as essential as bread, and for others it is just something trivial. CS: La Victoria had been finished just before the military coup d’état took place. Were you able to screen the film in Chile during these tumultuous times? PL: There was only one screening at the house of the director of the Goethe-Institut, which happened behind closed doors. It was the most unpleasant screening I have ever attended. The family of the girl, Paula Moya, who was cast as female protagonist asked if they could see the film. Paula took her life shortly afterward, and her sister had committed suicide two months earlier. Her father was a doctor leaning toward the political right. His two leftist sons were in prison. We all sat in a tiny room in the Goethe-Institut and watched the film on a 16 mm projection screen. I could hardly breathe and could only think of them watching their dead daughter. They saw how brave she had been and what a gentle way she had in accompanying a political fight. CS: What memories do you have of filming Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal [The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, 1988] in Chile in the late 1980s? PL: Whenever we wanted to do something in Chile, we were under the sway of the authorities. Pinochet had his people in all key positions. While we worked on Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal in Chile, we were completely dependent on the electric power company’s director, who also happened to be a general. We had to run everything by him, from getting permission to hire thirty to forty bicycles to doing preparations for the race. He would request a script, but we had two: the one we intended to film and the one we showed him. There is a difference between a dictatorship and a repressive fascist system that operates without any laws. East Germany had laws at least, but in Chile, it was a work of art orchestrated by an authoritarian regime. One day we would have permission to film, and we were all happy, and the next, they would confiscate everything and put everyone in jail. The general knew we were deceiving him, and we knew, in turn, understood that he was taking measures, but what those were, we did not know. It was

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a constant battle. He pretty much knew our filming plans, but to show his power, he toyed around with us. The other problem we faced was that we were concerned for the actors. The general always had his watchdogs listening in. They reported anything about the script, and this put the actors in danger. I had to be very cautious with the most trivial things, and that unsettled me. I believe Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal is the worst film I have ever made. CS: Peter, thank you very much for this interesting conversation. Translation: Judith Abella.

The Adventure of Filmmaking: Interview with Antonio Skármeta In April 2013, I was in Santiago for a German film retrospective that formed part of the cultural activities to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the military coup d’état in Chile. On this occasion I had the chance to talk with Antonio Skármeta, friend and long-time collaborator with Peter Lilienthal. Skármeta lived in West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, where his career as a writer had taken off. He returned to Chile after Pinochet lost the referendum and once again came back to serve as Chilean ambassador to Germany between 2000 and 2003. In our conversation, which took place in a café in Las Condes, Skármeta spoke to me about how the experiences that he and Lilienthal had as children of émigré parents translated into their filmmaking projects. He described his working relationship with Lilienthal to be based on a kind of productive desencuentro (misunderstanding) and shared with me some memories about living in West Berlin as an émigré artist and described the literary and film projects in East and West Germany. Parts of this talk feature in the short documentary Hidden Treasures (Claudia Sandberg and Alejandro Areal Vélez, 2013). CLAUDIA SANDBERG: How did you get to know Peter Lilienthal? Antonio Skármeta: Peter came to Santiago when I first met him. Later we became good friends. He introduced himself, told me what he wanted to do, who he was; he expressed all his aesthetic preferences, and he talked and talked and talked for an hour and five minutes. And after that, I said frankly, “Peter, this is very nice, I love the way you are.” He was a completely different person than I, my tastes, and the

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kind of culture I adore. He struck me as a sophisticated, cultivated man. And compared to him I was some kind of animal, a beast. I loved pop culture, I loved rock ’n’ roll, I was interested in other things: young people, I loved soccer, I liked going out with girls, all the things that Peter would not do. We were completely different. It was very funny. When we met, I had the feeling that we would not go well together. It could not work. Because I thought at that time—and I have changed quite a lot since then—that culture, music, and painting were boring. I wanted to be with my friends, go to the bars, speak nonsense. And then Peter said something that reflects the person he is very well: “Well, perfect! That is exactly what I need! Somebody who opposes me! Because in opposing me, a strength, a force, results from that.” That was the beginning of our relationship. CS: How did your collaboration work? AS: In 1972, when he was in Chile, he said, “Lets write a story. Do you have any ideas for a story?” And I said that I was writing about what is going on in Chile, and that could possibly be a film. I told him about the story, and he said, “Wonderful, wonderful, that is exactly what I need.” Then he went back to Germany, and I stayed here in the middle of this big thing and big crisis; that was the time of the Unidad Popular, and I wrote a script from here with my idea. From Europe he sent a letter, “Fantastic, it is great. We have to go on and shoot the story.” And then I have to tell you this, that is the way Peter works. My story was a story of a football player who comes from the south of Chile to Santiago, and he tries to be a winner. He is a very good football player and a virgin; he had no sex, nothing. He comes to Santiago, thinking that he will conquer the world. In Santiago, he realizes that the whole society is in crisis. They are in a conflict, the right and the left movements, there are strikes, everything, and this man who is essentially apolitical and individualist faces the social crisis. Through the experience he develops a sense of belonging to the place. When Peter came back, he said, “Okay, wonderful, great but let us substitute the football player for a secretary who uses a typewriter and comes to Santiago.” It was completely different, completely, completely, and that is the film he then made, that became La Victoria and that was our first film together. And really, I must highlight this, it was the way this always worked with Peter in all the films. I wrote a script and Peter destroyed it, changed it in such a way that I could no longer identify it as mine. That was the way we made La Victoria, Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, Der Aufstand, and Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal. He threw it away and then made the film he

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Figure 5.2. Peter Lilienthal and Antonio Skármeta in West Berlin at the end of the 1970s. Source: Akademie der Künste.

wanted to do. At the time, why did I accept the situation? Because I thought Peter was a big artist, very talented, and I liked what he did. And besides, I found him very sympathetic, as a human being, his idea of the world, his feelings, his political consciousness, his sweetness, his talent. He was a nice, pure human being. I loved that. CS: You were okay with your texts being changed so much? AS: Some situations, Peter had filmed them almost exactly as I had written them, and I recognize my signature in these scenes. In Es herrscht Ruhe im Land there is the old Parra who comes to see the government to help him free his family members. The way the scene develops, and its rhythm, all of this was written by me and was shot like that, there was a unity to it. Until the man leaves, he mentions four or five persons who are in prison “and could you please take off . . .” and the man behind the desk makes circles on the paper. That was a Skármeta, this situation in this film that I should point out. The rest is not. Remember in Der Aufstand, there is a situation when the captain comes to get Agustín. He comes to the neighborhood and he threatens everyone until the guy that he wants comes out of the house, and he submits himself to the captain to save the other people. This scene was filmed exactly as I had

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written it. That makes it two. And we can find in La Victoria one scene or another that has my signature, but all the rest are Peter’s. CS: You wrote a script for the DEFA film, Die Spur des Vermißten [Trace of the Disappeared, Joachim Kunert, 1980], in which I recognize parallels to Der Aufstand, for example, the figure of the young soldier who does not serve in the military because he is convinced this is the right thing to do, but he needs to earn an income for his family; the father who talks to a soldier as a son; then there is the hotel, this little pension, the taxi driver. These are elements that appear in other films of yours as well. AS: Yes, these are parallels and the pension, this is a well-loved scenario in my literature and in Peter’s life. We both lived in a pension as young people. You know that his mother had a guesthouse in Uruguay, and I lived for a long time in a pension in Buenos Aires. A guesthouse is something very curious because it is not home, and it is not the street. Something in between. You are inside and outside. CS: Peter Lilienthal said to me once: I always lived in a room that was not occupied by another guest. AS: He finds that the place where he can live was where feelings arise. It is where he can create a home. And the relation between father and son is something that is in Peter’s work all along. CS: You lived in West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s. What kind of place was it for the Chilean community? AS: Chileans who went to East Germany and the Chileans who went to West Berlin had very different relations, very different attitudes. I wanted to go to West Berlin. I have never been a communist; I liked the perversions of the bourgeois society. [Laughs.] Berlin housed a big community of not only Chileans but of all the many exiled people coming from all over the world. It was an exile . . . I tell you. In the beginning I was a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm DAAD [the German Academic Exchange Program stipend for artists], and they had a list of very prominent artists from the whole world. Half of them were people who suffered political problems in their countries, and they needed help. They came from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Africa. This situation marked the cultural life in West Berlin. And West Berlin wanted to present itself as an open world. It was completely enclosed, but there was the feeling of freedom in one way, and sexual in another, and I was part of it. I did my thing, I wrote literature, radio plays, it was good.

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CS: You have written the script for Christian Ziewer’s Aus der Ferne sehe ich dieses Land [I See This Country from Afar, 1978] about the young Lucho, who moves with his family to the outskirts of Berlin. In this film, Berlin is very gray and very cold. AS: I have written a story that was the basis of this film No pasó nada [Nothing Happens, first published as Nixpassiert in 1978]. What I wanted to show was the life of the Chileans in exile in West Berlin and the hopes these people had of one day being able to come back to a free and democratic Chile. That was my point, the force that this young boy Lucho has, this idea of freedom that he does not lose the relation with the country he had to leave. That was the subject that I explored in No pasó nada and in another film I made, a television film called Abschied in Berlin [Farewell from Berlin, 1984], the feeling with the generations, when your parents, your grandparents have had an experience of life, a failure. Christian Ziewer wanted to do another thing; he wanted to use the story to attack the very young sensitive politics of the Bundesrepublik [Federal Republic of Germany] to show them as radicals because he did not accept other ideas. But that was not the point with Berlin; he was exaggerating his point. CS: Did the work with Peter inspire you to start making your own films and do scriptwriting? AS: When I was living in Berlin, I was writing and I was living off a grant for one or two years, then I was writing again. Then I had my book published in Germany and in many other languages at the same time, and I became what you call an independent writer, a freelance writer. At the same time, I was teaching scriptwriting at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin. It was the same academy who refused to take Fassbinder. That was very funny. I was a lecturer there for three years and then I was writing, and I got all the films broadcast that I had made in Germany as well as plays; I could live as a professional writer. CS: Was East Germany interested in your work? AS: The story that Peter did not film (because he made La Victoria), the one with the typewriter girl, that was actually the story of a soccer player, as I said before. It was later published as a novel in many countries. It was published by Luchterhand in West Germany as Ich träumte, der Schnee brennt [I Dreamt the Snow Was Burning, 1978]. This book was translated into fifteen languages; it was quite popular. All my books were published in East and West Germany, two different countries—

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and that is important—in two different languages. Publishers from East Germany would not accept the West German translation, and West Germany would not accept a translation from East Germany. I knew the publishers; it was Aufbau-Verlag. I met them three or four times a year and we discussed projects. Then a television producer spoke with my publisher, and then the producer contacted me. And then I wrote the script for Die Spur des Vermißten, and we did another film with people from Nicaragua and DEFA, Die Verwundung [The Wound, Jurij Kramer, 1985]. East Germans wanted to make films about Latin America with a well-known writer who knew the subject—it was the same. CS: Señor Skármeta, thank you very much for this wonderful talk.

LILIENTHAL’S FILMOGRAPHY

Studio 23 (experimental film, 1958) Direction: Pit Kroke, Peter Lilienthal, Jörg Müller, Ralph Wünsche; Music: Siegried Behrend. Im Handumdrehen verdient (Earning in No Time, short documentary, 1959) Script: Rolf Opprower; Cinematography: Peter Cürlis; Production: SFB (Berlin). Die Nachbarskinder (The Neighbours’ Children, TV film, 1960) Script: Benno Meyer-Wehlack; Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus; Editing: Lothar Regentrop-Boncoeur; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Elisabeth Botz (Mutter Denger), Hans Elwenspoek (Peter Heinzelmann), Hanne Hiob (Ulla Denger), Norbert Kappen (Erich Gronzil). Biographie eines Schokoladentages (Biography of a Chocolate Day, TV film, 1961) Script: Dieter Gasper; Art Direction: Günther Kieser; Sound: Wilhelm Keller; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Ludwig Thiessen (Herr Rilke), Lilli Schoenborn-Anspach (Frau Bünte), Elke Arendt (Marlene, Frau Bünte’s Tochter), Dieter Eppler (Herr Stockhahn). Der 18. Geburtstag (The Eighteenth Birthday, TV film, 1962) Script: Theodor Kotulla, Klaus Roehler; Cinematography: Gerd Suess; Art Direction: Lothar Regentrop-Boncoeur; Sound: Peter Zwetkoff; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Hans W. Hamacher (Herr Kopp), Eike Siegel (his wife), Burghild Schreiber (Justine, their daughter), Stefan Gohlke (Kibus, their son), Wolfgang Schmidt (Ulse, Justine’s boyfriend). Stück für Stück (Bit by Bit, TV film, 1962) Script: Benno Meyer-Wehlack; Cinematography: Wolf Wirth; Art Direction: Wolf Wirth; Production: modern-art film (Berlin), SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Eva Brumby (Frau Jacob), Jens-Peter Erichsen (Manfred), Heinz Schubert (Günter), Lili Schoenborn-Anspach (grandmother), Max Haufler (Herr Meissner), Herbert Stass (Herr Jacob).

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Picknick im Felde (Picnic on the Battlefield, TV short film, 1962) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Ulrich Burtin; Art Direction: Renate Meduna; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Friedrich Mertel (Zapo, a soldier), Horst-Werner Loos (Herr Tepan, Zapo’s father), Annemarie Schradiek (Frau Tepan, his mother). Schule der Geläufigkeit (School of Familiarity, TV short film, 1962) Script: Dieter Gasper; Cinematography: Gert Süss, Ulrich Burtin, Immo Rentz; Editing: Joachim von Mengershausen; Art Direction: Curt Stallmach; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Max Haufler (Herr Hübenett), Ursula Diestel (Frau Hübenet), Peter Mosbacher (lawyer), Thomas Birkner (Tim), Michael Nowka (Butzel), Ilse Künkele (Bäumchen). Striptease (TV play, 1963) Script: Sławomir Mrozek; Cinematography: Gerd Schäfer, Ulrich Burtin, Immo Rentz, Willi Reiser; Editing: Agathe Baum; Sound: Harry Tietz, Albrecht Weiser; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Joachim Wichmann (Herr 1), Max Haufler (Herr 2). Marl—Porträt einer Stadt (Marl—Portrait of a City, documentary, 1964) Script: Hans Hermann Köper, Peter M. Ladiges; Cinematography: Friedhelm Heyde; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Production: Film-Novum (Berlin), Köper+Schmidt Books books and films (Cologne), WDR (Cologne); With: Günther Marschall, Rudold Heiland, Karl-Heinz Zaddack, among others. Das Martyrium des Peter O’Hey (Martyrdom of Peter O’Hey, TV film, 1964) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Günther Kieser; Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus; Editing: Edith von Seydewitz; Art Direction: Günther Kieser; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Joachim Wichmann (Peter O’Hey), Angelica Hurwicz (Frau O’Hey), Thomas Rosengarten (Jas O’Hey), Helga Ballhaus (daughter). Seraphine oder die wundersame Geschichte der Tante Flora (Seraphine or Aunt Flora’s Odd Story, TV film, 1965) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Friedhelm Heyde; Art Direction: Günther Naumann; Sound: Joachim Ludwig; Production: SFB (Berlin); Cast: Heinz Meier (Daniel), Adolf Rebel (Viktor), Else Ehser (Tante Flora), Annemarie Schradiek (Betty), Käthe Jänicke (Dora), Joachim Röcker (controller). Guernica—Jede Stunde verletzt und die letzte tötet (Guernica—Each Hour Harms and the Last One Kills, TV short film, 1965) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gert Süss; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Art Direction: Renate Meduna; Sound: Harry Tietz; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Heinz Maier (Fanchou), Annemarie Schradiek (Fanchou’s wife), Friedrich Mertel (soldier). Abschied (Farewell, TV film, 1966) Script: Günter Herburger, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Art Direction: Günther Naumann; Sound: Albert Mangelsdorff; Assistant Director: Annemarie Weigand; Production:

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SFB (Berlin); Cast: Max Haufler (Kurt), Angelika Hurwicz (Luise), Andrea Grosske (Sonja), Peter Nestler (Horst), Ingrid Mannstaedt (Isolde). Der Beginn (The Beginning, TV film, 1966) Script: Günter Herburger, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Sound: Rainer Lorenz, Hans Peter Schulz; Assistant Director: Peter Stripp, Hartmut Bitomsky; Production: SDR (Stuttgart); Cast: Kim Parnass (Rick), Joachim Wichmann (father), Eva Brumby (mother), Ursula Alexa (aunt), Martin Brandt (tenant), Dunja Reiter (Dunja). Abgründe (Abysses, TV film, two parts, 1966) 1. Robert (1966) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Peter Schneider; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Sound: Karl-Heinz Brieger; Assistant Director: Peter Stripp; Production: SFB (Berlin); Cast: Else Quecke (Fräulein Giehse), Thomas Rosengarten (Robert), Peter Hirche (Dr. Kovall), Renate Gerhardt (Robert’s mother), Ladislaus Somo (Robert’s father). 2. Claire (1966) Script: Peter Lilienthal, George Moorse; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Siegrun Jäger; Sound: Hans-Dieter Schwarz; Music: David Llywelyn; Assistant Director: Daniel Schmid; Production: SFB (Berlin); Cast: Boy Gobert (John Tuthill Crane), Elfriede Irrall (Lotte Rank), Sigrid Johanson (Claire), Rolf Zacher (Pauli), Jan Andreff (Buzzi). Unbeschriebenes Blatt (Blank Paper, TV film, 1967) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Sound: Wolfgang Haesen; Assistant Director: Lutz Heering; Production: SFB (Berlin); Cast: Axel Bauer (boss), Heinz Meier (applicant). Verbrechen mit Vorbedacht (A Crime Well Planned, TV film, 1967) Script: Pier Paul Read, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gerd von Bonin; Editing: Sigrun Jäger-Uterhardt; Art Direction: Günther Naumann; Sound: David Llywelyn; Assistant Director: Pete Ariel; Production: SFB (Berlin); Cast: Andrea Grosske (Cecilia Katz), Maria Schanda (Frau Katz), Vadim Glowna (Anton Katz), Willy Semmelrogge (judge Hopek). Tramp oder Die einzige und unvergleichliche Lenny Jacobsen (Tramp or the Only and Unique Lenny Jacobsen, TV film, 1968) Script: Barry Bermange, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Siegrun Jäger-Uterhardt; Sound: Harry Utikal, Hans-Dieter Schwarz; Assistant Director: Pete Ariel; Production: SFB (Berlin), JadranFilm (Zagreb); Cast: Franciszek Pieczka (Josef), Vadim Glowna (Guido), Relja Bašic (Smith), Rolf Zacher (Austin). Malatesta (feature film, 1970) Script: Michael Koser, Peter Lilienthal, Heathcote Williams; Cinematography: Willy Pankau; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Art Direction: Roger von Möllendorf; Sound: George Gruntz; Assistant Director: Pete Ariel; Production:

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Manfred Durniok Produktion für Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), SFB (Berlin); Cast: Eddie Constantine (Malatesta), Vladimir Pucholt (Gardstein), Christiane Noonan (Nina Vassileva), Diana Senior (Ljuba Milstein), Heathcote Williams ( Josef Solokov). Ich, Montag—Ich, Dienstag—Ich, Mittwoch—Ich, Donnerstag. Porträt Gombrowicz (I—Monday, I—Tuesday, I—Wednesday, I—Thursday, Portrait Gombrowicz, TV documentary, 1970) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Production: BR (Munich); With: Rita Gombrowicz, Francois Bondy, Dominique de Roux. Die Sonne angreifen (Attacking the Sun, TV film, 1971) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gerd von Bonin; Editing: Annemarie Weigand; Art Direction: Gianni Longo, Geneviéve Kapuler; Sound: George Gruntz; Production: Iduna Film (Munich), SFB (Berlin); Cast: Jess Hahn (Hippolit), Peter Hirche (Maggadino), Isolde Miler (Amelia), Gerry Miller (Karol), Dieter Schidor (Walter), Ingo Thouret (Skuziak), Willy Semmelrogge (Friedrich). Noon in Tunesia (TV documentary, 1971) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Editing: Peter Ariel; Music: George Gruntz; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden); With: George Gruntz, Don Cherry, Daniel Humair, Sahib Shihab, Henri Texier, Salah El Mahdi. Jakob von Gunten (TV film, 1971) Script: Ror Wolf, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Dietrich Lohmann; Editing: Siegrun Jäger; Sound: Gunther Kortwich; Production: ZDF (Mainz); Cast: Sebastian Bleisch (Jakob), Alexander May (Herr Benjamenta), Hanna Schygulla (Lisa Benjamenta), Peter Kern (Kraus), Reinhard Hauff (brother). Start Nr. 9 (Start No. 9, TV documentary 1972) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Horst Zeidler; Editing: Heidi Genée; Sound: Gunther Kortwich; Assistant Director: Ingo Thouret; Production: ZDF (Mainz); With: Ursula Rose, Randolf Rose. Shirley Chisholm for President (TV documentary, 1972) Cinematography: Horst Zeidler; Editing: Russell Parker; Production: Filmverlag der Autoren (Munich); With: Shirley Chisholm, Conrad Chisholm. La Victoria (feature film, 1973) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Antonio Skármeta; Cinematography: Silvio Caiozzi; Editing: Heidi Genée; Art Direction: Cecilia Boissier; Sound: Hajo von Zündt; Production: Filmverlag der Autoren (Munich), ZDF (Mainz); Cast: Paula Moya (Marcela), Carmen Lazo (as herself), Vincente Santa Maria (Paula’s uncle), Miguel Ángel Carrizo (Cosme). Hauptlehrer Hofer (Teacher Hofer, feature film, 1975) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Herbert Brödl; Cinematography: Kurt Weber; Editing: Heidi Genée, Christa Reeh; Sound: Heiko Hinderks, Francis Quinton; Mu-

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sic: Robert Eliscu; Assistant Director: Elvira Senft, Bernard Jenn; Production: F.F.A.T-Film (Munich), WDR (Cologne); Cast: André Watt (Hofer), Sebastian Bleisch (Jakob), Kim Parnass (Ludwig), Eva Pampuch (Beatrice), Norbert Kückelmann (factory owner). Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (Calm Prevails Over the Country, feature film, 1975) Script: Antonio Skármeta, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Robby Müller, Abel Alboim; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Sound: Ángel Parra; Assistant Director: Eduardo Duran, Luis Filipe Rocha; Production: F.F.A.T-Film (Munich), ZDF (Mainz), ORF (Vienna); Cast: Charles Vanel (Granddad Parra), Henriqueta Maya (Angelica), Eduardo Duran (Miguel Neira), Luciano Noble (Angelica’s father), Zita Duarte (Miguel’s sister), Uberlinda Cordera (teacher), Antonio Skármeta (lawyer). Kadir (TV documentary, 1977) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Horst Zeidler; Production: ZDF (Mainz), Olga Film-GmbH (Munich). David (feature film, 1979) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Ulla Ziemann, in collaboration with Jurek Becker; Cinematography: Al Ruban; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Hans Gailling; Sound: Wojciech Kilar; Production: Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion (Berlin), F.F.A.T. (Munich), Filmverlag der Autoren (Munich); Cast: Torsten Henties (young David), Mario Fischel (David as adult), Valter Taub (father), Irena Vrkljan (mother), Eva Mattes (sister), Dominique Horwitz (brother), Gustav Rudolf Sellner (factory owner). Der Aufstand (The Uprising, feature film, 1980) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Antonio Skármeta; Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Peter Lilienthal, Fernando Castro, Maria Victoria Cardona, Mercedes Galeyno Manzanares; Sound: Claus Bantzer; Assistant Director: Antonio Yglesias; Production: Independent Film Heinz Angermeyer GmbH (Munich), Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion (Berlin), Provobis Gesellschaft für Film und Fernsehen (Hamburg), (ZDF) (Mainz), Istmo (San Jose, Costa Rica), INCINE (Managua); Cast: Agustín Pereira (Agustín), Carlos Catania (father), Maria Lourdes Centano de Zelaya (mother), Vicky Montero (sister), Oscar Castillo (Captain Flores). Dear Mr. Wonderful (Ruby’s Dream, feature film, 1982) Script: Peter Lilienthal, Sam Koperwas; Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Jeffrey Townsend; Sound: Claus Bantzer; Assistant Director: Ulla Ziemann, Jerry Jeffee, Genie Joseph; Production: SFB (Berlin), Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion (Berlin), WDR (Cologne); Cast: Joe Pesci (Ruby Dennis), Karen Ludwig (Paula), Frank Vincent (Louie), Richard S. Castellano (agent). Das Autogramm (The Autograph, feature film, 1984) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Georgio Carrozzoni; Music: Claus Bantzer, Juan José

184

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Mosalini; Assistant Director: Ulla Ziemann, Miguel Cardoso; Production: Provobis Gesellschaft für Film und Fernsehen (Hamburg), Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion (Berlin), Euro-America-Films (Paris); Cast: Juan José Mosalini (Daniel Galván), Ángel del Villar (Tony Rocha), Anna Larretta (Ana Gallo), Pierre Bernard Douby (Ignaz Zuckermann), Hanns Zischler (Leutnant Suarez), Dominique Nato (Sepulveda), Vito Mata (local police officer). Das Schweigen des Dichters (The Silence of the Poet, feature film, 1986) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Justus Pankau; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Franz Bauer; Sound: Claus Bantzer; Production: Edgar Reitz Filmproduktions GmbH (Munich), WDR (Cologne); Cast: Jakov Lind (Yoram Lifchiz), Len Ramas (Yoram’s son Gideon), Daniel Kedem (Gideon as a child), Towje Kleiner (Fayermann), Vladimir Weigel (Avi), Barbara Lass (Janina). Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal (The Cyclist of San Cristóbal, feature film, 1988) Script: Antonio Skármeta, Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Horst Zeidler; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Juan Carlos Castillo; Sound: Claus Bantzer; Production: Edgar Reitz Filmproduktions GmbH (Munich), ZDF (Mainz); Cast: René Baeza (Santiago Escalante), Luz Jiménez (Santiago’s mother), Dante Pesce (Santiago’s coach), Javier Maldonado (Bruno Picado). Die vier Tugenden: Gerechtigkeit (The Four Virtues: Justice, TV short film, 1990) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Ingo Kratisch; Editing: Jürgen Günther; Sound: Wolf Dietrich Peters; Assistant Director: Ulla Ziemann; Production: ZDF (Mainz); With: Gorca Giribas-Contreras, Bruno Ferrari, Georg Tryphon. Don Giovanni oder Der bestrafte Wüstling (Don Giovanni or The Punished Rake, TV film, 1992) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Peter Wendt, Thomas Weber; Editing: Frank Evers; Sound: Wolf-D. Peters-Vallerius; Assistant Director: Ifat Nesher; Production: SWF (Baden-Baden), Pioneer LDC (Tokyo); Cast: Ruggero Raimondo (Don Giovanni), Daniela Dessi (Donna Elvira), Jane Eaglen (Donna Anna), Rockwell Blake (Don Ottavio). Wassermann. Der singende Hund (Wassermann: The Singing Dog, TV film, 1995) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Avi Avivi; Sound: Claus Bantzer; Assistant Director: Ulla Ziemann, Eylon Ratzkowsky; Production: Objectiv Film (Hamburg), ZDF (Mainz); Cast: Tal Feingold (Tali), Jill Feingold (Selina), Roy Nathanson (Roy), Rami Danon (Max Klepfisch), Yonathan Hova (Johnny), Rusty Jacobs (Dr. Sunshine). Angesichts der Wälder (Facing the Forests, feature film, 1995) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Gérard Vandenberg; Editing: Sigrun Jäger; Art Direction: Avi Avivi; Sound: Claus Bantzer; Production: rubicon Film (Cologne), Israfilm (Tel Aviv), SWF (Baden-Baden); Cast: Rusty Jacobs (Noach), Muhammad Abu Site (Abdul Karim), Raha Abu Site (Nahida, Abdul’s daughter), Adi Nizan (Lucienne), Rami Danon (manager of the forest-

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ation department), Ami Vainberg (army officer), Slomo Sadan (Noach’s professor), Avner Peled (bus driver). Denk ich an Deutschland: Ein Fremder (When I Think of Germany: A Foreigner, TV documentary, 2001) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Elfie Mikesch; Sound: Lilly Grote; Editing: Siegrun Jäger, Suzie Giebler; Assistant Director: Ulla Ziemann; Production: Megaherz (Munich), BR (Munich), WDR (Cologne); Cast: Ulla Ziemann (mother), Leonhard Kaminski (son), Istvan Imreh (teacher); With: Zwi Hecker, Norma Drimmer, Eliahu Avital, Obi Oji, Anetta Kahane, Gabi Mukendi, Uta Leichsenring, Alex Jacobowicz. Camilo—Der lange Weg zum Ungehorsam (Camilo—The Long Road to Disobedience, documentary, 2007) Script: Peter Lilienthal; Cinematography: Carlos Aparicio; Editing: Julian Isfort; Sound: Mike Guarino; Music: Seraphin; Assistant Director: Raffaele Passerini; Production: steelecht (Offenbach/Main), Filmwerkstatt Münster (Münster), Triangle 7 (Brussels), RTBF (Brussels), WDR (Cologne), ARTE (BadenBaden); With: Camilo Mejía, Fernando Suárez del Solar.

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INDEX

Der 18. Geburtstag, 33, 179 Abschied, 5, 33, 180 absurd theater, 35 accented cinema, 15, 16. See also diasporic cinema Agde, Günter, 114–115, 116, 117, 133n44 Akademie der Künste (after 1990), 11, 147, 149, 165 Akademie der Künste Ost (AKO), 24, 106, 114, 115–117, 133n46, 171 Akin, Fatih, 146 AKO. See Akademie der Künste Ost Allende, Salvador, 62, 63, 121, 122, 168. See also Allende government Allende government, 60, 70, 140, 141. See also Allende, Salvador; La Victoria; Pinochet dictatorship; Unidad Popular relations with East Germany, 121–122 Allgemeiner Rundfunk Deutschlands (ARD), 108 Angesichts der Wälder, 39, 43, 138, 184 años de plomo (years of lead), 25 antifascism, 112, 113–114 ARD. See Allgemeiner Rundfunk Deutschlands Areal Vélez, Alejandro, 145 Argentina, 2, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29n64, 35, 62, 72, 76, 79, 87, 90, 92, 93, 103n71, 120, 131, 132n25,

144–145, 158, 160, 167, 169, 170. See also Buenos Aires; Das Autogramm Argentine exile community, 87–88. See also Chilean exile community; Latin American exile community Arrabal, Fernando, 2, 35 Arslan, Thomas, 146 art cinema, 14, 16–17, 18, 129 audiences, 10, 16, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31, 32, 46, 47, 92, 99, 105, 108, 109, 112, 116, 117, 131, 149–150 and Der Aufstand, 126–129 and Das Autogramm, 144–145 and David, 49–52, 53 and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, 117–126 memories, Lilienthal, 171–172 Der Aufstand, 3, 5, 7, 21, 23, 24–25, 61, 80–84, 106–107, 109, 130, 139, 140, 149, 183 and Camilo, 85–87 in East Germany, 112, 114, 116 memories, Lilienthal, 169–171 memories, Skármeta, 174, 175, 176 political context, 80–82 reception in West Germany, 126–129 Das Autogramm, 3, 5, 8, 23, 25, 61, 87–93, 97, 106, 109, 110, 112, 130, 132n28, 139, 140, 183 Argentine cultural memory, 144–145 Jewish figure, 90–91

Index

popular culture, 92–94 reception in Argentina, 144–145 reception in East Germany, 116–117 Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten, 21 Berlin Film Festival, 2, 46, 126 Beyer, Frank, 37, 114 Biographie eines Schokoladentages, 33, 179 Birri, Fernando, 20, 29n64 Blanco Armor, Eduardo, 160 Bohm, Hark, 8–9 Bolivia, 18, 62, 98, 110 Brauner, Artur, 147 Buenos Aires (Argentina), 25, 80, 88, 92, 105, 144, 147, 158, 176. See also Argentina Buñuel, Luis, 35 Caiozzi, Silvio, 63, 64, 100n16 Caliche sangriento, 64. See also Soto, Helvio Camilo—Der lange Weg zum Ungehorsam, 23, 61, 79, 85–87, 98–99, 164, 185. See also Mejía, Camilo Cardenal, Ernesto, 81, 82 Carow, Heiner, 115, 116 Castro, Fidel, 8, 18, 101n25 Chaskel, Pedro, 62, 67, 100n5 Chile, 11n28, 17–18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 60, 61, 62–70, 71, 72, 76, 77, 79, 80, 87, 90, 93–98, 106, 107, 110, 111, 114, 118–126, 130, 131, 137, 139, 140–144, 167–170, 172, 173–174, 177. See also Santiago Chilean coup d’état, 11, 25, 61, 70–71, 94, 107, 129, 139, 140, 172, 172. See also Pinochet dictatorship commemoration in Chile, 140–141 reactions in Eastern Europe, 122–123 reactions in Western Europe, 118–119, 121 Chilean exile cinema, 71–72, 79. See also Das kleine Fernsehspiel

203

Chilean exile community, 122–123 memories, Skármeta, 176 Cineteca Nacional (Santiago), 25 Cold War, 2, 12, 22, 55, 60, 61, 106, 107–108, 114, 126, 130, 146, 148 Cortázar, Julio, 81–82, 145 Cremer, Ludwig, 4, 162 Cuarteles de invierno, 87, 103n71. See also Soriano, Osvaldo Cuba, 8, 18, 19, 62, 71, 82 Cuban cinema, 18, 20, 63. See also Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) Cuban revolution, 81, 121 cultural repression, 88, 90, 142 Curzio, Maria Teresa. See Ma vie David, 2, 7, 8, 10, 22–23, 30, 31–32, 36, 37–54, 55, 60, 111, 130, 138, 140, 147, 166, 183. See also Holocaust Jewish cast, 37–38 reception in West Germany, 46–54 and Professor Mamlock, 40–41 Davis, Bette, 1, 166 Dear Mr. Wonderful, 5, 106, 115, 116, 117, 183 Deer Hunter, 46 DEFA, 37, 40, 112, 113–114, 129, 132nn29–30, 142, 176, 178 and Chile, 123 and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, 124 memories, Skármeta, 176–178 Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB), 5, 6, 36 Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin), 26, 149 Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF), 124 DFF. See Deutscher Fernsehfunk DFFB. See Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin diaspora, 11–14, 21, 30, 79. See also Jewish diaspora and David, 30, 39 diasporic culture, 137 and German Turkish film, 146

204

Index

diasporic cinema, 14–17, 105. See also accented cinema dubbing. See subtitles Dutschke, Rudi, 6, 128 East German cinema. See DEFA East Germany, 22, 24, 41, 81, 83, 106, 107, 110, 111–117, 118, 120, 130. See also Akademie der Künste Ost (AKO); DEFA and Chile, 122–123 and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, 124–126, 130 memories, Lilienthal, 171–172 memories, Skármeta, 176, 177–178 Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, 1, 3, 7, 23, 24, 43, 60, 72–79, 88, 106, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114, 129, 130, 139, 140, 149, 151, 183 memories, Lilienthal, 169–170, 171 memories, Skármeta, 174, 175 motivation, setting, cast, 72–74 reception in East Germany, 122–126 reception in West Germany, 117–122 exile cinema, 4, 10. See also accented cinema; Chilean exile cinema; diasporic cinema Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 2, 8, 9, 10, 37, 48, 122, 177 Feldman, Deborah, 147 film criticism, 117–118 Filmverlag der Autoren, 64, 126 France, 32, 61, 71, 72, 88, 112, 162. See also Paris Francia, Aldo, 11, 20, 62, 63, 100n16 French New Wave, 35, 148, 150 Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), 80, 81, 83, 87 FSLN. See Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional Gálvez Alfageme, Isidora, 25, 143–144 García Lorca, Federico, 9, 160 GDR. See East Germany

Gegenschuss—Aufbruch der Filmemacher, 8 Genée, Heidi, 8, 27n19 German cinema, 17, 25, 32, 146. See also diasporic cinema; national cinema; transnational cinema East German Cinema. See DEFA New German Cinema, 2, 3, 7–9, 10, 17, 37 West German cinema, 31, 119, 126–129 German Jewish community, 32, 54, 130. See also David; Jewish community memories, Lilienthal, 154–157 German Jewish film, 25, 31, 53, 80, 147. See also German cinema German Jewish relations, 2, 22, 31, 47, 53. See also David; Holocaust Germany, 2, 3, 9, 11, 22, 25, 41, 71, 98, 131, 147. See also East Germany; post–World War II; West Germany memories, Lilienthal, 154, 155, 158, 164, 165 Nazi Germany, 34, 38–39, 40, 43, 49, 50, 139, 157, 170 Getino, Octavio, 19, 63 Goethe-Institut, 62, 110–111, 120, 140, 149, 152n19, 166, 172 Gombrowicz, Witold, 35, 56n16 Grupo Chaski, 83 Guernica—Jede Stunde verletzt und die letzte tötet, 33, 35, 180 hachsharah, 42–43, 55 Hallstein doctrine, 108, 131n10 Hauff, Reinhard, 8 Hauptlehrer Hofer, 7, 10, 36, 39, 43, 56n20, 60, 140, 182 Heimat series, 32, 52–53. See also Reitz, Edgar Herburger, Günter, 56n20 Herzog, Werner, 2, 8, 9, 21, 37 Hochschule der Künste, 4, 162 Holocaust, 23, 31, 32, 46–47, 49–50, 52, 54, 57n33. See also David

Index

Holocaust, 9, 22, 30–32, 46–55, 55n3, 98, 113, 130, 137, 138, 147. See also Holocaust and David, 37–46 in Heimat, 52–53 and Lilienthal’s early work, 31, 32–36 memories, Lilienthal, 156–157, 159, 163 ICAIC. See Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos Ich, Montag—Ich, Dienstag—Ich, Mittwoch—Ich, Donnerstag. Portrait Gombrowicz, 56n16, 182 “Ikaros. Ich erbaute das Labyrinth,” 101n26 Il pleut sur Santiago, 71 imperfect cinema, 18 INCINE. See Instituto Nicaragüense de Cine Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), 82–83 Instituto Nicaragüense de Cine (INCINE), 82–83, 102n58 Iraq War, 85, 86 Israel, 12, 30, 39, 45, 109, 138, 163 Istmo Cine, 83 Italian neorealism, 19, 148 Jakob von Gunten, 8, 36, 60, 182 Jewish community, 23, 31, 49, 54, 55, 148, 159. See also German Jewish community in David, 38, 40–45 Jewish diaspora. See also diaspora and David, 45–46 and Lilienthal, 2, 3, 11 in Uruguay, 157–159 El joven del trapecio volante, 149 Kadir, 7, 183 Kampner, Dietmar, 11 Das kleine Fernsehspiel, 10–11, 70, 71, 101n26, 109, 142, 146. See also Stein, Eckart

205

Koenig, Joel, 37, 43 Kulturnation, 108 La hora de los hornos, 19, 63. See also Third Cinema La Victoria, 3, 7, 17, 23, 25, 36, 43, 60, 64–70, 71, 75, 79, 80, 94, 98, 109, 111, 120, 126, 130, 139, 149, 182 and Chilean cultural memory, 140–142 female protagonists, 69–70 memories, Lilienthal, 167–168, 172 memories, Skármeta, 174, 176, 177 and revolutionary cinema, 68 Latin American exile community, 23, 61, 73–74, 80, 130, 170. See also Das Autogramm; Chilean exile community; Es herrscht Ruhe im Land memories, Lilienthal, 170–171 Lazo, Carmen, 66, 70, 167, 168. See also La Victoria Legaspi, Alejandro, 83 Leiser, Erwin, 147 León (Nicaragua), 82, 83. See also Der Aufstand Libeskind, Daniel, 164 Ma vie, 8, 25, 147–148 Malatesta, 2, 6, 7, 10, 149, 181 Malatesta, Errico. See Malatesta Das Martyrium des Peter O’Hey, 5, 33–34, 180 Meerapfel, Jeanine, 80, 147 Meins, Holger, 6 Mejía, Camilo, 85, 103n68. See also Camilo Memorias del subdesarrollo, 20, 63. See also Cuban cinema Mexico, 86, 166 Montevideo (Uruguay), 1, 92, 110, 148, 149, 155. See also Uruguay memories, Lilienthal, 155–156, 162, 163, 171 Morir un poco, 62, 67 Mosalini, Juan José, 88, 90, 91, 92, 144, 145. See also Das Autogramm

206

Index

Moszkowicz, Imo, 147 Moya, Paula, 64, 65, 111, 172. See also La Victoria Mrozek, Sławomir, 35 Museo de la Memoria y de los Derechos Humanos (Santiago), 25, 140 Museo del Cine Pablo Dúcros Hicken (Buenos Aires), 145 Die Nachbarskinder, 4, 179 national cinema, 14, 15, 16, 17, 82, 106, 118, 146. See also German cinema New German Cinema. See under German cinema New Latin American Cinema, 2, 23, 62–63, 64. See also Third Cinema Nicaragua, 2, 21, 22, 23, 61, 80–87, 106, 114, 116, 122, 126, 127, 137, 139, 178 memories, Lilienthal, 164, 168, 170–171 Nicaraguan revolution, 23, 61, 80–82, 87 nomadic figure, 30, 39, 41, 54, 68 nueva cancion, 92. See also Parra, Violeta Operation Condor, 19 ORF. See Österreichischer Rundfunk Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), 72 Palestine, 38, 41, 45, 138 Paris (France), 11, 24, 37, 88, 92, 162, 164. See also France Parra, Ángel, 75 Parra, Violeta, 70, 75, 123 Pesci, Joe, 117 Picknick im Felde, 2, 35, 138, 180 Pinochet dictatorship, 24, 25, 64, 70, 72, 77, 79, 111, 120, 122, 140, 141, 142, 172. See also Chilean coup d’état and East Germany, 114, 124

and West Germany, 118–119, 130 Polat, Ayşe, 140 Por aquí pasaron los ciclistas, 25, 143–144 Portugal, 61, 72, 73, 103n71, 121, 169, 170. See also Der Aufstand; Das Autogramm post–World War II, 9, 13, 14, 22, 25, 30–36, 48, 52, 53, 54, 106, 130, 138, 145, 147 Professor Mamlock, 40. See also Wolf, Konrad Der Radfahrer vom San Cristóbal, 23–24, 25, 61, 87–98, 111, 139, 140, 149, 184 female resistance of the Pinochet regime, 96–97 memories, Lilienthal, 172–173 memories, Skármeta, 174 in Por aquí pasaron los ciclistas, 143–144 reception in Chile, 142–143 Reitz, Edgar, 32, 52–53, 163 rémigré, 32–33 Sandinistas, 21, 23, 61, 80, 81, 85–87, 128, 137, 139. See also Der Aufstand; Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten; Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN); Nicaraguan revolution Sandino, Augusto César, 80 Santiago (Chile), 25, 75, 110, 139, 140, 141, 149, 173. See also Chile; Goethe-Institut; Museo de la Memoria y de los Derechos Humanos in La Victoria, 62–68 memories, Lilienthal, 166, 167, 168 memories, Skármeta, 173, 176 Sarmiento, Valeria, 11, 72, 142 Schamoni, Thomas, 10 Schlöndorff, Volker, 2, 6, 31, 112, 122 Schule der Geläufigkeit, 33, 180

Index

Das Schweigen des Dichters, 35, 39, 138, 140, 149, 184 Schygulla, Hanna, 8 Sellner, Rudolf, 4 Sender Freies Berlin (SFB), 5, 34, 149 Sendrós, Paraná, 145 Seraphine oder Die wundersame Geschichte der Tante Flora, 34, 54, 138, 180 SFB. See Sender Freies Berlin Shirley Chisholm for President, 7, 100n20, 182 Skármeta, Antonio, 19, 61, 64n17, 79, 93, 94, 101n26, 110, 111, 128, 141–142, 152n19 in East Germany, 123 interview with, 173–178 about Lilienthal, 98 Lilienthal about, 154, 160, 166–168 meeting with Lilienthal, 64 in West Germany, 173 work on Der Aufstand, 80–82 work on Es herrscht Ruhe im Land, 71–75 Solanas, Fernando, 19, 63 soldiers, 21, 38, 46, 75–79, 84–86, 91, 94, 98, 170, 176 Somoza regime, 21, 61, 80–82, 85, 139. See also Der Aufstand; Nicaraguan revolution Die Sonne angreifen, 35, 182 Soriano, Osvaldo, 88, 93, 103n71, 144, 145 Soto, Helvio, 63, 64, 71 Die Spur des Vermißten, 123, 142, 176, 178 Start Nr. 9, 7, 182 Stein, Eckart, 10, 11, 101n26. See also Das kleine Fernsehspiel Straub, Laurens, 8 Strauß, Franz Josef, 119 Striptease, 34, 35, 40, 54, 163, 180 Stück für Stück, 33, 179 student movement, 2, 6, 122, 128 subtitles, 149, 153n37, 171

207

Südwestfunk (SWF), 1, 4, 5, 162 surrealism, 35, 48. See also absurd theater SWF. See Südwestfunk Tabori, George, 165 tango, 24, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 144, 145 television, 17, 23, 46, 49, 72, 83, 94, 106, 108–109, 112, 113, 118, 123, 124, 126, 132n14, 141, 142, 147, 149, 150, 167, 171, 177, 178. See also Das kleine Fernsehspiel in La Victoria, 94, 95–96 Lilienthal and early, 1, 2, 3, 4–5, 7, 22, 24, 31, 33–36, 54, 138 Third Cinema, 17–21, 22, 61, 107, 128, 129, 139, 148. See also New Latin American Cinema Third World, 3, 24, 107, 129, 131n9 and East Germany, 114 and West Germany, 107, 110, 121, 127 trains, 45, 67, 88, 89, 91, 93 transnational cinema, 4, 14–15, 22, 25, 30–31, 61, 130, 145–146 Trotta von, Margarethe, 112, 116, 122 Unidad Popular (UP), 17, 60, 62, 63, 64, 66, 118, 121, 122, 139, 141, 167, 174 UP. See Unidad Popular Uruguay, 2, 34, 79, 110, 120, 147–148. See also Montevideo memories, Lilienthal, 154, 155–162, 164, 166, 170, 171 Uruguayan carnival, 161 utopia, 43, 45, 55, 63, 94, 98, 100n11, 107, 114, 121, 125, 130 Valech Report, 102n42 Valparaíso Film Festival, 140 Valparaíso, mi amor, 20–21, 63 Vanel, Charles, 74, 169 Venceremos, 67 Verbrechen mit Vorbedacht, 8, 35, 181

208

Index

Vietinghoff, Joachim von, 115, 142. See also Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion Viña del Mar Film Festival, 62 Von Vietinghoff Filmproduktion, 82 Wenders, Wim, 2, 8, 9 West Berlin (Germany), 4, 33, 72, 80, 81, 115, 133n44, 176, 177 memories, Skármeta, 173, 176–177 West German cinema. See under German cinema West Germany, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32–33, 71, 72, 80, 106, 107–111, 117, 129–130, 138, 142. See also Germany; Hallstein doctrine; rémigré; West Berlin Der Aufstand in, 126–129 and Chile, 118–122 David in, 46–54 Es herrscht Ruhe im Land in, 119–122

memories, Lilienthal, 161–164, 167, 168, 171 memories, Skármeta, 173, 174, 177–178 and Third World, 107–108 Wicki, Bernhard, 116 Wolf, Konrad, 40, 41, 45, 113–114, 116, 147 World War I, 14, 157 World War II, 2, 14, 21, 22, 32, 45, 50, 113, 123, 139 Yavuz, Yüksel, 146 ZDF. See Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen Zéro de conduit, 1 Zielinski, Siegfried, 11 Ziewer, Christian, 8, 80, 123, 142, 177 Zischler, Hanns, 8, 43 Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), 5, 7, 10, 27n28, 64, 70, 71, 72, 82, 101n26, 108–109, 141, 149, 167. See also Das kleine Fernsehspiel