Marcel Ophuls’ NOVEMBER DAYS on DVD
Marcel Ophuls’ documentary NOVEMBER DAYS will be available soon on DVD. The film was commissioned by the BBC and shot one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. By way of a series of interviews, it explores the “hangover” in the wake of German reunification. In taking stock of this situation, Ophuls quickly departs from the conventional reportage model, approaching his material in a playful manner and infusing his commentary on it with ironic humor. Such an edgy approach to recent Germany history was perhaps last seen in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s contribution to GERMANY IN AUTUMN. Here, Fassbinder does not attempt to deal with the so-called German Autumn in an objective manner but instead chooses a radically subjective approach that focuses less on the political events of this period than their effect on the individual. The film gives vent to the confusion about what is going on outside the filmmaker’s four walls above all in conversations with his mother and boyfriend. For Ophuls too, history is a concept that is constantly shifting. His interviewees – who range from GDR head of state Egon Krenz, dramatist Heiner Müller and neo-Nazi Michael Kühnen to members of the general public – are not degraded into contemporary witnesses of a fact-driven narrative. Rather, it is through their experiences and perspectives that the story emerges.
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