Director's Portrait:

A large number of critics view Romuald Karmakar as one of the most controversial and aesthetically and politically radical contemporary German filmmakers. His films are seldom shown in Germany without provoking a momentous debate. In 2000, it was possible to see The Himmler Project within the context of the International Forum of Young Film at the Berlin Film Festival: an actor (Manfred Zapatka) stands in front of a gray wall and reads the carefully reconstructed text of a three and a half hour speech which Heinrich Himmler held before 92 SS-generals in 1943, the protocol of which has been stored in the appendix of the documents concerning the Nuremberg Trials since 1947. Karmakar calls his working process a «re-concretizing», for the film is neither a mere document nor a feature film, in fact he puts his audience in an ambivalent position: on the one hand, we are witnesses to an historical speech, on the other hand, we cannot avoid feeling addressed by it ourselves, and we feel identical to its former target group.

It is this mixture of film aimed at both the intellect and the emotions which constitutes the quality of Karmakar's works; it is extremely difficult to evade what is visible and audible, even when this approaches the limits, causing disquiet or sometimes even disgust. And yet his cinema never has a pedagogic intent. His films are not easy to digest, they are confrontations with themes which are difficult to bear. Who wants to know anything about cock fights? Or boxers, or the trainers of fighting dogs? Who wants to hear about international mercenaries? Warheads was made at the beginning of the 90s, when the war in former Yugoslavia seemed infinitely far away, even for Europeans. At that time, German film critics in particular - absurdly - accused him of a lack of distance. He probably just looked far too closely at the interconnections between the war games in US American training camps, the training grounds of the French Foreign Legion, and a real war at the center of Europe.

Karmakar's strength is that he approaches his subjects and those actively involved in them without reservation, but with the will to show: this exists. This has happened. And it will go on happening. As Karmakar sees it, an entire generation of German artists and filmmakers has taken cover behind a ban on certain images - people have maintained, and still do, that the horror of the Shoah, the crimes of the German Armed Forces, of the SS, of each individual German could not be shown. «They have just avoided attempting it. It is possible to show these things if you seriously want to,» Karmakar counters, and each of his films is evidence of such.

But Karmakar wants to show guilt, whether he is making a feature film or a documentary work. Sometimes it is not possible to draw such a clear dividing line in his works, and this has something to do with a notion of historiography which refers to a «before» and an «afterwards», to real events, their premises, their myths and their fictionalization. Karmakar occupies an interface which may not only be drawn between the past of the Third Reich and the present of a young Berlin republic, but also one which continually confronts German audiences with themselves - perhaps the reason why his work is better understood abroad. His films are anything but easy, neither for the filmmaker nor for his international audience. «The easy way is always mined,» says Karmakar, describing his approach. We shall also be able to follow his difficult route in the future, as several projects are currently in development: these include Night's Song (Die Nacht singt ihre Lieder, cf. p. 30), the filming of a theater play by the Norwegian author Jon Fosse, and a feature film about the crimes of a German police battalion posted in Poland during National Socialism. The working title is a quotation from one of the perpetrators: «I made every effort, and this was possible, to shoot only children» («Ich habe mich, und es war mir moeglich, bemueht, nur Kinder zu erschiessen»).