DAS DEUTSCHE KETTENSÄGENMASSAKER

Homage to Tobe Hooper's horror classic THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE from 1974, as is strongly hinted to in the title, this one-hour work combines motifs from the Slasher genre with more performative speculations on cross-German encounters along the inner-German frontier. To get her hands on the coveted West Mark as soon as possible after the fall of the Berlin Wall young Clara sets off for the West. There, however, she encounters members of a sinister butcher's family who have their own ideas about how to implement the “incorporation” of the East. Taking obvious delight in the proceedings the family members gradually shake off any inhibitions and lose themselves in a veritable, if artificial, bloodlust hysteria.

Shortly before the scheduled national release in November 1990 several cinemas withdrew their agreement to screen the film. This largely improvised work was considered too extreme at the time, coming only a year after the fall of the wall. From today's perspective the film strikes the viewer as a grotesque-macabre foreboding of things to come. CL