DDR/DDR
Nov 20, 2010
(Amie Siegel, 2008, USA, HD, 135 min)
Free for members!
Special members-only reception with Amie Siegel at 7pm
Director in attendance
"[DDR/DDR] is a mosaic of interviews and incidents that gradually connect, allowing issues of history, state control, personal identity, and memory to emerge. A man walking across streets and fields as if on a tightrope is a recurring motif—an apt metaphor for the East-West divide. The camera moves through derelict East German buildings and records a man throwing Stasi-style electronic equipment from a moving truck; East German emulators of American Indian culture explain that their hobby began as a clandestine cry for freedom from Soviet oppression. The sociocultural theme is complicated, however, by a former East German mother who reminisces about her family's more comfortable life before reunification. The ruminating psychological and intellectual content of Siegel's works posits that everything is subject to shifting interpretation."
—Jason Edward Kaufman
—Jason Edward Kaufman
“[Siegel’s] polymathic style recalls Countdown (1990), Ulrike Ottinger’s account of the two Germanys uniting their currencies. DDR/DDR also evokes Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil (1968), a provocative essay mixing a Rolling Stones session, Black Panther rhetoric, and Native Americans…. DDR/DDR is an alluring and allusive dossier.” — Chicago Sun-Times