Günther 1939 (Heil Hitler)

The film Günther 1939 (Heil Hitler) consists of “found footage” derived from an amateur film from 1939. The re-working of the material by Johannes Rosenberger is a protest: sheer indignation, and unsubtle, with good reason. The original film, made by a husband and father consists of three “stories”: 1. “My beautiful wife has given birth to a beautiful child. Look how they are looking at me.” 2. “Down on the street a parade is going past, look at all the uniforms and all the people. And there goes Hitler!” 3. “And that’s where we went on holiday - sailing and in the woods.” Rosenberger repeats these three pieces in their original sequence by re-photographing them on the optical printer. His intervention lies in the fact that he emphasises the borders of the picture by photographing not only the image, but also the edge of the film and the framelines; he slows the rhythm enabling a search of the “historical moment” (Hitler driving past) and overlays the whole with a soundtrack - a rhythmically scratchy beat, a shrill, jarring sinus tone and Robert Schumann’s song “May, lovely May, you will soon be here again”. The protest implied by his intervention is directed against the objectifying position of the amateur filmmaker. In the process of documenting “important” moments in a life, everything is reduced to a sameness, everything “special” to the indifferent. The passive and positivist bourgeois peeps out from behind this point of view.


 


Amateur film describes, in an invisible handwriting, a million miles of day-to-day reality. Rosenberger’s film is less a protest about the content of that invisible handwriting than against its syntax; a grammar which is an ideology - heartless, but at the same time sentimental. (Alexander Horwath)

Orig. Title
Günther 1939 (Heil Hitler)
Year
1994
Country
Austria
Duration
8 min
Category
Avantgarde/Arts
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Credits
Director
Johannes Rosenberger
Music
Robert Schumann
Editing
Johannes Rosenberger
Executive Producer
Constantin Wulff
Available Formats
16 mm (Original Format)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
mono
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
b/w
16 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
mono
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
b/w
Festivals (Selection)
1995
Belo Horizonte - Festival Int. de Cortas Metragens
Melbourne - Int. Film Festival
Ankara - Festival of European Film / Festival on Wheels
Sao Paulo - Short Film Festival
Olympia - Film Festival
Chicago - Onion City Film- und Videofestival
Rotterdam - Int. Filmfestival
1996
Edinburgh - Fringe Film and Video Festival
Stuttgart - Filmwinter, Expanded Media Festival
Denver - Int. Film Festival