Event

DDR/DDR

(Amie Siegel, 2008, USA, HD, 135 min) This experimental documentary takes the failed East German state and the lasting East-West divide as subjects, investigating the line between victim and perpetrator. Siegel interviews a hobbyist is so intensely engaged in the East German obsession with Western films that he's chosen to emulate American Indian culture and life by developing a communal Indian village. In her discussions, the hobbyist's victimhood under the East German state is juxtaposed with the victimhood enacted through role-playing the targets of American genocide. A sense of a the slow cultural death, and the societal aimlessness that results, is evoked.

"[Siegel's] polymathic style recalls Countdown (1990), Ulrike Ottinger's account of the two Germanys uniting their currencies. DDR/DDR also evokes Godard's Sympathy for the Devil (1968), a provocative essay mixing a Rolling Stones session, Black Panther rhetoric, and Native Americans. DDR/DDR is an alluring and allusive dossier." Chicago Sun-Times

Free for members! Director in attendance.