Christoph Schlingensief
1960 - 2010
Partisan
Lutz Pehnert, Matthias Ehlert
Frank Castorf, Martin Wuttke
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 1992-2017. The end of the GDR gave rise to new artistic freedoms in reunited Berlin. Shortly after the fall of the Wall, rebel director Frank Castorf was appointed artistic director of the Volksbühne. His way of working altered the public’s perception of this theater. The chronological history of the Castorf era between 1992 and 2017 is told here in excerpts from the productions and in a series of conversations conducted on the long sofa in the theater's foyer.
Partisan
Ausländer raus! Schlingensiefs Container
Paul Poet
Christoph Schlingensief, Matthias Lilienthal
FOREIGNERS OUT! SCHLINGENSIEFS CONTAINER is a thrilling, insightful, funny chronicle and reflection of one of he biggest public pranks and acts of art terrorism ever committed. Austria 2000: Right after the FPÖ under Jörg Haider had become part of the government, the first time an extreme right wing party became state officials after WW2, infamous German shock director Christoph Schlingensief showed a very unique form of protest. Realising public xenophobia and the new hate politics in the most drastic ways possible, he installed a public concentration camp right in the middle of Vienna's touristic heart, right beside the picturesque opera where hundreds of tourists and locals pass by daily. And it was no concentration camp you had ever feared to return from the old times, but one that cynically reflected our new multimedia culture. Satirising reality TV shows, "Big Brother" especially, a dozen asylum seekers were surveilled by a multitude of cameras, could be fed and watched by.
Foreigners Out! Schlingensief's Container
Silentium
Wolfgang Murnberger
Josef Hader, Simon Schwarz
A man who accused a catholic bishop of abusing him when he was a child dies in the Austrian city Salzburg. Everyone except his widow and the eccentrical detective Simon Brenner keeps silent and believes that the man killed himself.
Silentium
Schlingensief – In das Schweigen hineinschreien
Bettina Böhler
Christoph Schlingensief, Tilda Swinton
Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.
Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
Christoph Schlingensief - Die Piloten
Cordula Kablitz-Post
Christoph Schlingensief, Nicole Konstantinou
Documentary satire about a project by Christoph Schlingensief: Ten years after his TV project "Talk 2000", Schlingensief started to work on a new talk show – at least that was what he claimed. But in reality, it was obvious that the pilot episodes he produced would never be broadcasted. Nevertheless, all celebrities from the political and cultural sphere, Schlingensief had requested, accepted his invitation, including the filmmaker Oskar Roehler, the televangelist Jürgen Fliege, the politician Claudia Roth, or the rapper Sido. It is beyond question, that the talk show panel took an unconventional course directly from the start – and was soon threatening to turn into an uproar.
Christoph Schlingensief - Die Piloten
Freakstars 3000
Christoph Schlingensief
Werner Brecht, Susanne Bredehöft
As stated in the opening titles and at the end Freakstars 3000 is supposed to be a commentary on the problems of the non-disabled people. The more I was shocked about how the disabled were depicted in this film the more I started to realize that in every non-disabled TV counterpart of this show (German TV shows like "Popstars" or "Friedmann" or the home shopping channels) its mentally "non-handicapped" participants are treated in a completely identical way: The total prostitution of the mind in front a huge TV audience at the expense of one's most important gifts one should hang on to: dignity. On the other hand one could completely understand people who are furious about "exploiting" these handicapped persons. But that's what Schlingensief's works are all about: shock people and don't care about those who cannot or will not try to get the message (if there is one).
Freakstars 3000
Hamlet: This Is Your Family
Peter Kern
Christoph Schlingensief, Bibiana Beglau
A provocative and ironic pamphleteering documentary about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001). Both a media event and a form of political action Schlingensief let ex-neo-Nazis play themselves. His provocation in so-called Nazi-free Switzerland was not appreciated and when he added fuel to the flames by calling for the local political party SVP to be banned, his media offensive made front-page news far beyond Switzerland.
Hamlet: This Is Your Family
00 Schneider - Jagd auf Nihil Baxter
Christoph Schlingensief, Helge Schneider
Helge Schneider, Helmut Körschgen
The funny clown Bratislav Metulskie is found dead in circus "Apollo". The retired commissioner 00 Schneider is asked to assume control of the case. Schneider and his aged sidekick Körschgen investigate to find the murderer.
00 Schneider - Jagd auf Nihil Baxter
The African Twin Towers
Christoph Schlingensief
Originally conceived as a film about 9/11, Richard Wagner, and the warrior Hagen von Tronje, to be shot in the German southwest African colony of Lüderitz, Namibia, The African Twin Towers instead turned into an unusually personal and absorbing documentary about an incomplete film and Schlingensief’s art in general.
The African Twin Towers
Tunguska - Die Kisten sind da
Christoph Schlingensief
Irene Fischer, Mathias Colli
An early declaration of war on narrative cinema, using a barrage of visual and acoustic elements while at the same time juggling ironically - as he still does - with the term 'avant-garde'. A number of other preferences and obsessions were evident at an early stage, e.g. the mind-numbing habit of having his people stumbling and screaming around: life as a race track. His films likewise feature a lot of theatrical and cryptic outpourings. No wonder that they failed at the box office. No wonder either, however, that Schlingensief was attracted to theatre.
Tunguska – Die Kisten sind da
