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The first two parts of the 19th film are about five former pupils. Two of them already made themselves known through the "CVs" of 1980: Ilona, the electronics worker and later youth functionary in Frankfurt (Oder), and Winfried, the graduate engineer for electronic device construction, who was then also commander of the combat group of his company, the Gröditz (Saxony) pulp mill, and now lives temporarily unemployed in Augsburg. In addition to Ilona and Winfried, who were politically active, the new film portrays Jürgen, Petra and Christian. Their cinematic lives are shorter, because the documentarians had long lost track of them. Now, over 50 years old, Jürgen, initially trained as a painter and upholsterer and now a transport and warehouse worker in Manschnow (Oderbruch), and Christian, an agricultural machinery fitter and now an in-house technician at the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau in Berlin, were willing to be filmed once again.
Pioneering the harsh landscape of Nebraska was difficult enough in 1869. Pioneering a new university was almost beyond reason. What was a university? Who should go? What should be taught? There were no guidebooks. No road maps. They were building a university out of little more than hopes and dreams.
Mondo Cane and the Schoolgirl Report series stand as obvious influences on this occasionally amusing but generally rather tedious exploitation film that alternates between documentary, fake documentary and docudrama. The theme is Satanism and the linking thread is a recreation of what is supposedly the real-life case of a murder and attempted murder of two Munich teenage men by a quartet of girls who had been dabbling in devil worship. During the ensuing trial, the lawyer resorts to dilatory tactics while the hearing is frequently interrupted by the girls breaking into incantation, temper tantrums or shivery fits ostensibly bearing on demonic possession. When the subject of the Manson killings is brought up, the most obnoxious of the defendants breaks in indignantly, claiming that Sharon Tate’s “execution” was justified as she posed dangers to the Satanic community.
The story of the American Founding, the greatest political achievement in history. The American colonists had developed a unique way of life as they practiced self-government for 150 years. In the struggles between the colonies and the mother country that followed the French and Indian War, Britain declared that Americans had no right to rule themselves. This went against everything the Americans knew. In response, our ancestors risked their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to fight the War for Independence. Against all odds, they won, and in victory formed a stable, lasting republic.
Thomas Bernhard in Madrid.