The black channel returns
The Black Channel Returns is a satirical history film by the authors Werner Martin Doyé and Andreas Wiemers . In the style of a classic television documentary , they tell a largely made-up story. The ZDF showed the film for the first time as part of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall on the evening of November 9 of 2009.
content
The film is a mockumentary , a parody of the classic form of the period film on television and alludes to the program The Black Channel , which was shown on GDR television between 1960 and 1989 .
In the satirical television film, alleged historical documents and never-before-shown film recordings are supposed to prove that the history of the GDR was different from what was previously known and had to be "rewritten". The GDR would have been far superior to the Federal Republic and the fall of the Wall would have been planned by the SED leadership. Actors appear as contemporary witnesses or "experts" and substantiate these theses, including the "GDR expert" Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler . For example, a "contemporary witness" who can be recognized as a pedagogue claims to have remembered that the controversial "potty requirement" in day-care centers was nothing more than a group dynamic process.
The film satirizes not only the media but also the behavior of the audience. B. conspiracy theories about the moon landing are taken up and the first cosmonaut in space and then the moon landing of the Americans as a film shoot in the Soviet Union “uncovered”. The film closes with the GDR had opened the wall to the West to ruin the agreement costs and Honecker had been in Chile for his successor Angela Merkel , the financial crisis and the nationalization of banks as "plan" of the socialist planned out state.
reception
When the film was first broadcast at 11:50 p.m. with 1.1 million viewers, it achieved an audience rating of 11.1%.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung described the film as “really gorgeous” and summed up: “Not a trace of an index finger. More like the middle finger. Yes, how does something like that get on ZDF? ”The irony of the GDR appears“ unheard of and sometimes really very, very funny ”, especially because“ it uses exactly the same means and mechanisms as the countless documentaries that are currently being broadcast on television soap".
The daily newspaper, on the other hand, described the documentary satire as “unsuccessful” and “not particularly funny”: “It may well be that it has to be to make fun of the 'jubilee pathos' that dominates the media and the 'unified mess'. But that doesn't work by letting the supposed drivertell Honeckers that his boss actually hated parades because he had to stand around for hours in the cold. 'Hermann, that's boring,' he said to me afterwards. Hermann, unfortunately that also applies to what you are saying. "
The Berliner Morgenpost reported that the film was “not only extremely funny when it came to making fun of history, but also a fitting satire on normal documentaries with their schematic mix of contemporary witnesses and archive material”.
Prices
The film was nominated for the 2010 Adolf Grimme Prize in the “Entertainment” category.
Web links
- The black channel returns in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The black channel returns on the ZDF website
- The black channel returns on the authors' homepage
- The black channel returns on the Vimeo video portal
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Moorstedt: Ballet instead of fratricidal war ( memento of the original from November 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 9, 2009, p. 17.
- ↑ Peer Schrader: Attention, attempt at satire! , in: the daily newspaper of November 9, 2009
- ↑ Wonderfully silly , in: Berliner Morgenpost of November 10, 2009
- ↑ Nominations Category Entertainment 2010 on the website of the Grimme Prize ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
