Dear Romuald Karmakar,
With 19 “clips” over 19 days, with protagonists ranging from animals at Berlin Zoo to neo Nazis on Alexanderplatz, I was surprised but happy to hear you are one of four artists, alongside Germany's favourite Ai Wei Wei (and his mother), to animate the German Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale starting tomorrow –or rather the French Pavilion, as both countries have traded places again this year, harking back to the first post-war Biennale. But that shouldn’t matter to you as a multi-hyphenated German-French-Iranian writer-director-producer of feature films and docs anyway. I was a bit worried about what kind of shot you would be given at the grandiose art spectacle when Deutschlandfunk radio commented on your inclusion in Susanne Gaensheimer's curation: "The film community ignores this honour, the art world is irritated. As usual, Romuald Karmakar polarizes."
Not bad for an artist under 50 who never studied film but is a member of the Academy of the Arts Berlin,. I very much remember when you came to public prominence in 1995 with your feature debut, the intense psycho thriller
DER TOTMACHER (The Deathmaker) with Götz George, who won the Venice Festival award for the role of (real-life) serial killer Haarmann. Up to that point I had only known about Haarmann, Germany's Jack the Ripper, from my grandmother singing the uplifting popular song "Wait, wait just a while, soon Haarmann will get you with his little axe and make minced meat out of you." Only later did I learn that Fritz Lang had used him early on as a template for Peter Lorre in M.
A decade before this success, you had apparently picked up a
super 8 camera like so many politicized German 80’s artists –punk & the Berlin underground come to mind--, notably and contentiously making the doc-fiction film EINE FREUNDSCHAFT IN DEUTSCHLAND (A Friendship in Germany) with yourself, a teenager at the time, playing a young Hitler. I wonder what it means to you when you call yourself a
"Hitler researcher"? Your work on SS officer Walter Rauff, which you are currently doing as a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute, tells me you are not giving up on the topic (which would indeed be unlike you). I wish I had seen your Harvard show
"The Influence of Influence" earlier this year and a lot of your new American material. Guess I have to book an Easyjet flight to Venice this summer to see parts of it.
Torontonians who watched our multi-author GOETHE FILMS series "24 Hours Berlin" last spring would know your handwriting: The beautifully serene segments about surprisingly pensive star techno DJ Villalobos that you released as a stand-alone documentary later. And of course we have the collaborative collage GERMANY 09 in our library, which has your short RAMSES (alongside Tykwer, Akin, et al.). A sort of
democratic approach to filmmaking seems to be your trademark. I was at the premiere of ANGRIFF AUF DIE DEMOKRATIE (Democracy under Attack – An Intervention) at Berlinale 2012 and which I understand is now part of the Venice Biennale presentation. A rather hard to digest (not to say plodding, sorry) filmic-discursive tour de force through current European critical thought that stunned the international Berlinale visitors around me with its verbosity and bellicosity. Well, you have never been known to shy away from controversy, and it’s actually good to see that to this day you are a political filmmaker true to your convictions, offering viewers
uncomfortable but often enlightening investigations. I am thinking of your 2001 HIMMLER-PROJEKT (The Himmler Project) --a reading of the notorious SS commander's never-ending speech-- or HAMBURGER LEKTIONEN (Hamburg Lectures), also part of the Venice Biennale program --with speeches by an Salafist preacher. If I ever need to commission a film on German history in all its facets, then and now, I will call you (now that the other, more glamorous agent provocateur of German film, Christoph Schlingensief, is dead. RIP. What was your relationship like anyway? Always wondered.). In my opinion, your critics who complain about brutality or machismo –yes, boxers, fighters, mercenaries, killers, nazis populate your films— overlook this particular angle you approach your work from, one that can never be accused of even remotely adoring or mythologizing (unlike a few other prominent living German filmmakers...). You just shine your camera light into the abyss. And then keep it there for an unpleasantly long time, I have to say. Never easy on us, never easy on yourself.
Since 1996 the German Film Institut Archive has been holding your film and production materials: scripts, budgets, cast lists, dailies, sound reports, photos, promo materials, notes and props of all of his dozens of films --a treasure chest for any PhD candidate. Most people won’t know that at age 24, Film Museum Munich had given you your first retrospective, a bit of a prodigy. Who quietly keeps on delivering. Two decades later, the Film Museum Vienna honoured your with a major retrospective, which included, as per your request, the film UTOPIA by Sohrab Shahid Saless. That for me is typical Karmakar as well: While recently saying in an interview that "I am only interested in my own viewpoint", you strongly reference/follow/promote other filmmakers you like – I can spend hours browsing through your film list
"Films you should see before it's too late". Karmakar the filmmaker and film fan, living and breathing the art form in all its manifestations.
Among your recommendations, I liked you quoting Sidney Lumet's 1995 book MAKING MOVIES as an inspiration: »I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in RAN in a particular way. His answer was that if he'd panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he'd panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport neither of which belonged in a period movie.
Only the person who's made the movie knows what goes into the decisions that result in any piece of work. They can be anything from budget requirements to divine inspiration.«
In keeping with your love of open dialogue, people around the world can click themselves through your oeuvre to their heart’s content on your video channel
Cinekarmakar.
And
thank you for sending lovely little online greetings from Venice with your 2-minute “mini film” WATERMUSIC and your other Italian impressions!
Come to think of it, perhaps you are the perfect choice to express something meaningful about Germany at the French Pavilion in Italy. Wishing you much success and some overdue recognition, greetings to Venice from Toronto,
Yours
Jutta Brendemühl
