Directors Lounge Blog

Remixing the Monster

In Jewish Folklore, a golem is an animate being created entirely from
inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word golem literally means
“cocoon”, but can also mean “fool”, “silly”, or even “stupid”. The
name appears to derive from the word gelem (גלם), which means “raw
material”.

The story of the golem in Jewish text may first have appeared as the
story of god forming Adam from clay. However, it is most popularly
associated with Prague where it appears in Jewish folklore. The story
concerns a village of Jews under the threat of the Holy Roman Emperor.
To protect the Jewish community a rabbi constructs thegolem out of
clay and brings it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. In
some versions of the folktale, the golem is a saviour, in others he
becomes increasingly violent, killing gentiles and spreading fear.

But is Wegener’s Der Golem (1920) anti-Semitic?  As I watched the film
last night for the first time I couldn’t help asking myself that
question. Why would an early 20th-century German director decide to
film a Jewish legend? Is it merely coincidence that Wegener, who plays
the Golem in the film, earned an “Actor of the State” designation from
the Nazi party?

The film plays on some Jewish stereotypes. The rabbis are portrayed in
Orientalized wardrobe adorned with arcane symbols and inscrutable
magical scrawl, perpetuating the hoary Christian association of Jews
with sorcery. The Jews exploit the Golem for labor while the courtly
gentiles offer him flowers. In the end it is a gentile child that
shows the Golem kindness, but this kindness unwittingly becomes the
death of the Golem. To complicate things further, Wegener’s film
attributes tropes of greed and money-lending to the Emperor’s court,
not to the Jews in the Prague ghetto.

Making a black and white case for anti-Semitism in Der Golem is nearly
impossible. While there are Jewish stereotypes that can be pointed to,
there is also room for an interpretation of Wegener’s Golem story as
separate from Judaism and conforming more to a Faustian / Dr.
Frankenstein formula. In this interpretation of the story, the ethical
ambiguity of Wegener’s rabbi is closer to that of Goethe’s Faust—a
symbol of the artist and the the unstable implication of his
creation—than it is to familiar anti-Semitic stereotypes. The story of
an obsessive scholar who creates a homunculus and conjures the devil
to bring the figure to life is more universal than traditional Jewish
folklore.

The 1920’s was a significant period in the portrayal of ethnic and
racial stereotypes on the screen. In America, Der Golem was predated
by D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. This film, set during and
after the Civil War, was based on a novel called The Clansman and
provoked great controversy for its positive portrayal of white
supremacy and sympathetic account of the rise of the Ku Klux Clan. The
Birth of a Nation is also noted for its innovative technical and
narrative achievements, and its status as the first Hollywood
‘blockbuster.’ I bring up The Birth of a Nation to point out another
film which exists on one level as technically stunning while carrying with it a
complicated history.

Many of the Germans I’ve spoken to about Der Golem are unaware of its controversiality. It exists for them as a classic horror film, nothing more and nothing less. This might explain why on Saturday when Der Golem was set to a live score and remixed by the Swiss
band Less, that remix had no sense of irony to it. There was no subtext, no wink at the audience. Instead the film and the score seemed separated from any interpretation. Clips from the film were looped until they lost their original meaning and became merely rhythmic images. It was certainly impressive to see so many musicians working together and collaborating live with such an old and powerful film and maybe it is just my own hangup to want a direct dialogue with Der Golem.

-Sabrina

Of the Moment

It occurred to me as I sat watching highlights from the 2009 Directors Lounge, that what experimental film can do better than any other form is capture moments. Feature length narrative films work tirelessly to make their leading actors and leading actresses convincing as genuine characters. But once an actor or an actress reaches a certain height of celebrity, is it ever possible to separate them from their celebrity on screen? If Angelina Jolie picks apples in a film about an apple farm, can we ever not see her as Angelina Jolie? I think the answer is no.

Sometimes experimental films feel like one of those manic moments you have at 2 a.m. where you bolt out of bed and race to write something down or film something or call a collaborator and rattle off an idea. There’s a breathless sense of excitement to experimental films. There’s an obvious joy for the audience in seeing someones idea executed perfectly on screen.

Barbara Rosenthal’s short film, I Got The World In The Palm Of My Hand (1988) definitely has this energy to it. In the film Rosenthal reads a newspaper article about the psychic Joan Quigley, who more or less ran the Reagan administration during the last years of his presidency. The punchline to the article is a quote from Quigley herself arguing with the depiction of her in the media and announcing emphatically that she is a “serious political astrologer.” Rosenthal can be seen on screen with a globe cupped between her hands. The immediacy of the image and the rapid-fire way Rosenthal reads the article give the film a breathless quality. It’s as if Rosenthal wants to get the idea out as quickly as possible before the moment is gone and the impulse subsides.

Christroph Kopac’s Zucker (2005).

Another film that shares Rosenthal’s, “don’t let a good idea get away from you” quality is Katharina Hein and Christroph Kopac’s Zucker (2005). In this film, Kopac is the subject, the very drunk subject, and Hein narrates his actions as if he were an animal in a nature documentary. The action of the film concerns Kopac trying to crush a single sugar cube with a hammer. He attempts this over and over again, laughing harder each time it doesn’t work. During the screening, his drunken laughter was so infectious that most of the audience laughed along. It was somehow so sweet and comforting to be able to witness someone in that state of mind. The feeling the film communicated was so immediate and bursting with life, it was just a pleasure to be a part of it.

Too much thought goes into the marketing of films, the casting, and hyping the director. Not enough thought is given to the script, the idea behind the film, and freedom to experiment and discover hidden moments. If it wasn’t for the Director’s Lounge, we might not be able to identify an honest human emotion on screen.

-Sabrina Small

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