During World War II, a young Austrian films his private life and his career with the Nazi “Reich Labor Service.” Eighty years later, the films turn up at a dealer’s. The footage shows a seemingly idyllic family—until images of a child behind barbed wire abruptly shatter the harmony.
Together with historians, Andreas Kurz investigates the background and context of the material, leading him to a family member. The film reveals how fragmentary history is and how carefully historical evidence must be interpreted.
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Director Biography – Andreas Kurz
Andreas Kurz is a director, writer, and musician. He studied German studies and history in Vienna and taught at universities in Hungary, China, and Russia. Since 2022, he has been producing contemporary history documentaries together with Mario Hengster.
Director Statement
Heidi Fial works as a film restorer at the Filmarchiv Austria and is also a passionate collector of historical films in her private life. She is particularly interested in the early 9.5mm amateur film format developed by Pathé Paris, because it enabled the general public to make amateur films for the first time.
Pathé’s stroke of genius was to move the transport perforation from the edge of the film strip to its center—between the individual frames—thus gaining a large exposable image area despite the economical use of material. At only 9.5mm wide, this film material offered almost the same image area as the laterally perforated 16mm film.
Several years ago, Heidi Fial bought a 9.5 mm projector from a second-hand dealer in Mödling, where she also saw a stack of 9.5 mm film cans. The dealer said he didn’t know what kind of material it was – “some amateur film footage” – and gave her the eight reels to go with the projector.
Heidi Fial searched for a long time for a use for the historical material until she came across the contemporary documentary films that I had made with Mario Hengster (Hengster Filmproduktion) and in cooperation with 3sat and ORF. These were mainly my two-part series for 3sat (“Blutiger Boden, reiche Gewinne” / “Blutiger Boden, deutscher Raum”) and a documentary about the Nazi armament project ‘Zement’ and the Ebensee concentration camp: “Stollen in den Dachsteinkalk,” which aired on ORFIII under the title “Lager des Schreckens.”
In the winter of 2023, Heidi Fial gave me the material from the eight film reels in digital form.
Looking back on my work on this documentary film project today, what I find remarkable is that I found the films uninformative at first. I watched them without any particular emotion: just some people standing with their families in some garden, and men from the Nazi Reich Labor Service doing rather unspectacular work in various areas affected by the war. Everything was very normal, nothing particularly shocking, especially compared to the material I had worked on for my two-part series on the economic system and settlement policy of the SS.
In the course of my search for the creator of these amateur films, I found the amateur filmmaker’s daughter, Mrs. K., a kind, friendly, and open-hearted woman who also spoke very affectionately about her father. She confirmed my impression that the people documented on film were an average and normal family (and I don’t mean that pejoratively).
However, as I repeatedly viewed the material, I found more and more small details that moved me: a young woman standing amid the rubble of a French apartment building, holding a mechanical kitchen soda maker that she had obviously found in the ruins, looking emotionlessly into the camera of the man standing in front of her and filming her misfortune. Or a ragged boy, first sitting on a barrel of white liquid, then standing behind barbed wire. Or the amateur filmmaker’s repeated, somewhat ridiculous attempts to portray himself as a real soldier, even though he belonged to the National Socialist “Reich Labor Service,” a youth labor organization, and was dealing with children.
Today I know that I first had to learn to look for the madness of this era at the periphery of the image: what can be seen often points beyond the edge of the image, perhaps showing only a symptom or the tip of the iceberg that hides as a bestial monster beneath the family-friendly surface of the film footage. And over time I understood: it is the great ruin of the twentieth century that shows itself here in faint traces.
For me today, that is what is fascinating and frightening about these recordings: that they show how an inconspicuous and blameless man is led and seduced into participating in a huge crime, and how he allows himself to be led and seduced, like millions of others.
I am torn: should we pity the amateur filmmaker? Should we reproach him for his behavior? Should we accept it as the normal, average behavior of a person of that time? The latter is the most difficult for me, although – as sobering and disillusioning as it may be with regard to our future – it would probably be the most realistic approach.
The danger of people being manipulated and seduced by a system such as fascism is greater today than ever before. We must try to analyze cases such as that of amateur filmmaker Otto P. from his own perspective, without justifying him and without judging him. His films offer an unusual opportunity to do so. It would be too easy to judge this man from today’s safe position, where history lies relatively clear before us. We should remain in doubt. We should also doubt our own steadfastness.
| Andreas Kurz Director, Writer Mario Hengster Producer Joseph C. Stoisits Key Cast Teresa Prugger Key Cast Klaus Fischer Key Cast Nora Neumüller Key Cast Olivia Steiner-Haidecker Key Cast Fabio Ringer Key Cast |
