Material

Summary

It begins with the laughter of children. "Material" consists of such pictures from the last 20 years. Part of them I shot myself: In 1988, during Fritz Marquardt′s production of Heiner Müller′s "Germania Tod in Berlin". What interested me was the reality, the in between, the little conflicts between set designer and stage director in front of the model about the relationship between audience and stage, between top and bottom. What interested me was the torment and the earnestness.

Then a million people demonstrated in Berlin at Alexanderplatz. I had tied myself to the lectern with a banner and filmed. The faces of the people. One night a bit later in December, first guards and then prisoners, long-term convicts elected as spokesmen in the Brandenburg prison, stood before the camera, and each of them said what is was important for him to say. Then, in the newly elected People′s Chamber, delegates revealed themselves in the final days of the GDR as members of the State Security, until the public was shut out.

Pictures from the late eighties in the GDR on up to the immediate present in the year 2008 in Germany. What has been left over besieges my mind. All these pictures keep reassembling themselves to make up something which they were originally not made for. They are still in motion. They are becoming history.

The material remains incomplete. It is what I have stored, what was important to me. My picture.
From a text by Thomas Heise

Source: 59. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)