Zustand und Gelände

A film by Ute Adamczewski. In German with English subtitles

The title already indicates that this is about two levels. History and the present, archive and presence – these are the terms Ute Adamczewski uses to describe the tension between state and terrain. The series of dichotomies could be continued with “image and sound”. What we see in these two hours are towns, places and landscapes in Saxony. They all have a connection to events immediately after the Nazis seized power in 1933. At that time the hunt for political opponents began which affected so many that numerous, partly improvised prisons and camps were built in the area.

An off-screen woman’s voice calmly reads from documents of the period, supplemented and expanded by memoirs of those affected from the post-war period. Historical-political aspects are added successively. In the GDR, only those who had fought against fascism were regarded as “victims of fascism”. Jews were no victims in that sense. This finds a remarkable parallel in the fact that even the Nazis in their attempts to bring order to the persecutions of 1933 (still) excluded the Jews: “Foreign descent is no reason for protective detention.” An impressive film about the presence of the past, both in form and content.

Bert Rebhandl