User Reviews

"Schlingensief - In das Schweigen hineinschreien" or "Schlingensief: A Voice That Shook the Silence" is a German documentary from 2020 that actually got released this week for general audiences. At over two hours, it is surelly a bit on the long side, but it felt shorter to me, so all good. The writer and director is Bettina Böhler and after a co-director effort two years ago, this film here is her first project as the woman in charge of it all. However, her main profession is editing obviously, an area of profession that she has been working in since the early 1980s and for which she has received a great deal of awards recognition too, mostly for her work on Christian Petzold's films. He is one of the best German directors in my opinion, so she surely learnt a bit from the best here. Böhler is already 60, so a pretty late point in time to start directing, but it's all good. Actually, the outcome of this documentary was exactly what you could expect from a director who is mostly an editor. There are no intervvies recorded by Böhler in 2019, 2020 or so for this film. It entirely consists of old footage and that is fine too. There is more than enough. So it consists of many many snippets from over the years. these snippets are all about Christoph Schlingensief, the man mentioned in the title here and also who you see on the photo with his wild hair. Schlingensief died from lung cancer exactly ten years and one day ago at the age of 49 only, which is pretty sad, but I am glad this film exists, so people will remember him (as they should) and maybe even some will discover him, those that are too young or simply did not care about Schlingensief back in the day. By the way, Böhler was not only in touch ith Schlingensief and worked as an editor on two of his films, but she also had her 60th anniversary in 2020, so she is approximately two months older than the master. Today I was lucky enough to watch the film and see a brief Q&A with Böhler herself who was there to elaborate a bit on the movie and on her memories when it comes to Schlingensief. I am glad I got to go there. She also sounded as if this was a bit of an exception and she will focus more on editing in the future again, which is alright too. Actually, her previous documentary (where she was a co-director together with another pretty famous female German director) was also about a big filmmaker, namely Ingmar Bergman. Okay, he is another league than Schlingensief of course, especially abroad, but it is still interesting I think how Böhler ended up making two documentaries about other filmmakers when her filmmaking career was about to start.

Now a few words on the film we have here: It is in chronological order, which I liked. I almost always prefer that to mixing points of time, especially in documentaries and like Böhler accurately said afterwards: Schlingensief's life was wild and colorful enough, no need to make things even more spectacular. The film starts with his childhood and we find out about how his parents wanted many children, but he was the only one I got. Those references about his parents were also among the more interesting parts here, be it the talk about his dad during wartime or when he filmed them at the cemetery and they weren't too fond of it, but you could see how much Schlingensief worked with the camera. His body of work is another example of that looking at how prolific he already was under the age of 10. Oh boy, we also hear the German anthem. How evil. I already just mentioned wartime and this subject really became defining for so much that Schlingensief did throughout the years. Fittingly, there is also an interesting reference to the name of a deceased family member and how he elaborates on you have to get it all out that is linked to said name before actually you really become this name in a negative sense. I'd rather not mention the name exactly, but you can imagine whhich one it is. The one that starts with a G, not with an H. So yeah, we get chronologically step by step what was going on in Schlingensief's creative life. Professional life. About the private person, we do not find out too much, but it's okay. There is enough material anyway and maybe his widow did not ant to be included for example, which would be absolutely understandable. This is also a documentary that will make you smile on many occasions. What I found the funniest was probably when he talked about his experiences with Wim Wenders on two occasions. That was so funny, also how during the second occasion the director left the theater, many followed him and there was a brawl afterwards. You can say a lot about Schlingensief, also negative things, but you cannot say it is not a joy to listen to him, you cannot say that he is always 100% authentic, also when he is confronted by critics, which happened many times during his career. Some times we see in here too. It is also a sad film though towwards the end, when we see him at the hospital and things seemed to be getting better and we see and hear his tears and talk about how he wants to live. Also when he says to a child that he is not dead yet, is pretty touching. Early on, you will also find a reference about this subject, like how he elaborates on what will happen with his career if he reaches 80 or even 90 years. He loved life. that much is safe. Of course, you will also find inclusions of actors that Schlingensief worked with on many occasions: Helge Schneider, Udo Kier, Irm Hermann (who just died very recently) and she also worked with Fassbinder many times, one of Schlingensief's biggest inspirations. And one time, really early in both their careers, Schlingensief even worked with (now) Oscar winner Tilda Swinton. Funny scene with her and Kier and a blind man. But Schlingensief's maybe biggest idol career-wise was Alfred Edel and I must say I have/had no clue who he is, but clearly he meant a lot to the protagonist of this documentary and it really harmed him when Edel died. Aside from the film works, we also find out a bit about his work in Bayreuth, where he was quickly too confrontational and too much of an enfant terrible to return, and also about his many exhibits of performance art and activism. It is true that it was also all in, just take the Möllemann parts and the Israeli flag. I did not know it is allowed to burn it when the President is not around. Still, the police interfered. It is definitely true that with a lot of the stuff Schlingensief did (take Kohl's beheading), people would not get away with today. Imagine somebody did that with Merkel. Heavy consequences. Maybe they could get away with it if AfD politicians were the target. There it is all just satire as we have learned. Okay, I am drifting a bit away now. Finally, I want to mention Freakstars 3000 and I remember watching this back then and I think that still today it is a nice statement on equality for disabled people. They have been forgotten too now in 2020 (and for years in fact) because it is all about refugee culture. Oh my. Anyway, no hesitation for me in giving this documentary a thumbs-up. I am glad I got to see it today and if you get a chance, then take it and go for it, especially if you are from abroad and chances are you have never heard of the man before. Here and there, we even had moments like the "I want to live" where the film was better than 3 out of 5, but these were not frequent enough for me to say that what we have here is not just a good, but a great movie. Still easily a positive recommendation for sure and I am glad it got nominated at the German Film Awards this year. Good stuff from Böhler.