Vom Leben und Überleben, [About Living and Survival], video-documentation, Beta SP 110 min, OF /English subtitles, by Bernadette Dewald und Gerda Klingenböck, A 2003
The decisions regarding the principles of composition of About Living and Survival illustrate a kind of counter-position in confronting current expectations from the genre of documentation. The montage of six narrative interviews from the source of the “Videoarchive Ravensbrück” adopts the form of the base material – the narration – using its shape as structure. Other elements of the historic and current repertoire were abandoned – only short intertitles are used to provide local and chronological orientation. The women “sit in anonymous rooms or spotless kitchens, the camera remaining at a respectful distance. In front of a neutral background, their stories unfold to construct a space, a raw landscape of memory...Ravensbrück remains off-camera in the lives of these women, as it has always been off-camera with regard to the world´s memory. Of Living and Surviving forces unpleasant memories to the surface and gives something horrible, even unimaginable, a name and a face.“ (Sylvia Szely/ Sixpackfilm)
| Videoarchive Ravensbrück / Vom Leben und Überleben [About Living and Survival] |