"I wanted the GDR to look colourful", Christian Petzold has said repeatedly when asked about the cinematography and aesthetics of his Oscar-nominated film "Barbara" and his personal stake in the story:
"Mr. Petzold, “Barbara” tells the story of a female doctor in the GDR, who applies for a travel permit to the West and therefore is being transferred to a hospital in a hick-town. How did you choose this subject?
It is now nearly ten years ago that I first played with that thought. I liked a book by Hermann Broch very much, a novella called “Barbara”, about a female communist resistance fighter.
In 2006 I met a doctor from Fürstenwalde (East Germany) who told me the stories of some of his colleagues who had applied for travel permits.
The men were sent to "educational institutes" to be humiliated, and later were forced to work as military surgeons. The women were put to work in rural hospitals – it was sort of an exile. When I heard that, the story of “Barbara” came back to mind, also because I have always been interested in the “Eastern Block”: my parents were born there.
The deepest feeling my parents expressed was their nostalgia for East Germany. The sites that my parents remember are of course also mine because we used to travel to the GDR over and over again. I know these places by heart.
I had the impression that you used any temporal and local colour in “Barbara” very sparsely.
We are overly precise with each millimeter, each tiny prop is correct, the radios are authentic, fabrics are authentic. But we mustn’t concentrate on the work we’ve done to achieve this.
I like to have a living environment – which means that things in it have to have been touched. Kade Gruber, the set designer, and his team usually finish the set two months before the shooting starts, so that the actors can make spaces and props their own. These glasses have really been used by them, this camera actually contains a film, and this car is really driven by the actors themselves.
As you often did in the past, you shot this movie in the summer. Why?
Because I wanted the GDR to have colours.
I’d been to the GDR every year, my memories of this land are colorful. So I wanted by all means to start shooting in mid-August and continue until October because it’s during this time that you have
the specific chromaticity of early fall with its light shades of brown. And after I had worked with digital equipment on my last movie, I decided to go back to using Kodak and 35 mm. Their color palette is so human."
Born 1960 in Hilden, West Germany, Christian Petzold moved to Berlin in 1981. He attended the Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie and worked as an assistant director for Harun Farocki and Hartmut Bitomsky. His RAF film “Die innere Sicherheit” (2000) gained him several awards. He then shot "Wolfsburg" (2002), "Ghosts" (2005), "Yella" (2007) and "Jerichow" (2008). “Barbara” is Petzold’s first film taking place in the past.
interview by Cristina Nord, abridged from and courtesy of TAZ, Berlin 2012
GOETHE FILMS:
Oct 2, 6.30pm: “Barbara” by Christian Petzold (2012)
Harking back to this year’s TIFF World Premiere of “Phoenix”, where director Christian Petzold reunited actors Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld, we present his biggest success to date, “Barbara”. Co-writer Harun Farocki said to Petzold after “Barbara”: “With Nina and Ronald you have a romantic couple that is so intense and powerful, now you can tackle a difficult topic like ‘Phoenix’.”
GOETHE FILMS screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St W, Toronto
with English subtitles
Tickets $10, day-of sales only at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, open at 10am
Open to audiences 18+.
P.S. Come & watch all 3 films in our series "Before the Fall" October 2 + 7 + 9 for your chance to win 1 of 3 DVDs of that other Berlin Wall classic, "Good Bye, Lenin".
by Jutta Brendemühl
