Goethe Directors Talk: Margarethe von Trotta

German director Margarethe von Trotta on "Hannah Arendt": Turning thoughts into images

Presented by the Goethe-Institut
http://www.goethe.de/ins/ca/tor/ver/a...

Margarethe von Trotta ranks among the most important female directors in German cinema since the 1970s. Her most well-known films include: DIE VERLORENE EHRE DER KATHARINA BLUM (1975, co-directed with Volker Schlöndorff), DAS ZWEITE ERWACHEN DER CHRISTA KLAGES (1977), SCHWESTERN ODER DIE BALANCE DES GLÜCKS (1979), DIE BLEIERNE ZEIT (1981), HELLER WAHN (1983), ROSA LUXEMBURG (1985), DIE RÜCKKEHR (1990), IL LUNGO SILENZIO (1993), DAS VERSPRECHEN (1994), ROSENSTRASSE (2003), ICH BIN DIE ANDERE (2006) and VISION (2009).

Joined by von Trotta's American co-screenwriter Pamela Katz. Katz is a writer with a special interest in historical and biographical subjects, she co-wrote von Trotta's film ROSENSTRASSE - based on a true story of resistance to the Third Reich; THE OTHER WOMAN - about Stasi Romeos in former East Germany; and REMEMBRANCE - based on a true story about a pair of lovers who escape Auschwitz. She teaches Film & TV at NYU. In conversation with Marc Glassman, a Toronto freelance writer and editor of several books on Canadian film.

About the film: In April 1961 the German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) left her New York exile for Jerusalem to report on the Adolf Eichmann trial for The New Yorker. She is determined to directly confront those people whose behaviour under the Nazi regime she wants to understand.

When Arendt's articles appear they unleash a worldwide wave of outrage. She sees Eichmann not as the monster world opinion does, but recognizes him as a pen-pushing killer who wanted to carry out his task to the best of his ability and feels no guilt because he was merely following orders.

For her, Eichmann was the embodiment of the "banality of evil", a phrase that resounds to this very day. "The trouble with Eichmann," Arendt wrote, "was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal."

Arendt's courageous perception has international consequences. She is despised, vilified, loses lifelong friends. She maintains, however, her consistent posture, seeking to understand, even if that means "thinking till it hurts."


Thank you to our friends and partners at German Films and TIFF for their support.

Part of the Goethe-Institut's focus on German Film.