Hamlet - This is Your Family

Synopsis: Documentary film about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001), a theatre project for which Schlingensief engaged several neo-nazis as amateur actors. In the theatre production director Peter Kern acts the part of Claudius. Background sound includes audio-clips from Gustaf Gründgen’s 1963 production of Hamlet with Marianne Hoppe and Maximilian Schell.
Language: German (Standard)
Country: Germany
Medium: Film; Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Year of release: 2002
Duration: 75 mins

Director

Contributor

Christoph Schlingensief; Kalle Mews; Peter Brombacher

Cast

Notes: Available on DVD from www.amazon.de.
General: The initial Hamlet project, as well as the premiere of the film in Duesseldorf, caused a huge stir and several demonstrations against this "unholy alliance of art and media-efficient neonazis" (translated quote from a review of the film in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 13 January 2004). Schlingensief and later Kern engaged ex-Neonazis as amateur actors for the mousetrap scene. The project was meant to function as a kind of re-socialisation therapy.
History: Schlingensief’s Hamlet on which this documentary film is based premiered in Zurich 2001. After receiving threats from extremists and demonstrations from the left-wing student organisation Antifa-KoK, the premiere of the documentary film on 8/1/2004 was moved from the Lichtburg cinema to the ‘Maschinenhalle’, an event location in Duesseldorf.
Reviews: Svenja Klaucke, ‘Die Mausefalle’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, 13 January 2004.

This record has been viewed 956 times.

British Universities Film & Video Council