Overgames

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Movie
Original title Overgames
Country of production Germany
original language German , English
Publishing year 2015
length 164 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Lutz Dammbeck
script Lutz Dammbeck
production Lutz Dammbeck
music Jörg Udo Lensing
camera Börres Weiffenbach ,
Eberhard Geick ,
Volker Tittel ,
István Imreh
cut Margot Neubert-Maric

Overgames is an essay documentary by Lutz Dammbeck from 2015. In it, the director searches for clues about the making of the TV game shows and their connection with the US concept of re- education measures in West Germany. Here Lutz Dammbeck discovers that the “ Games without Borders ” had their origin in psychiatry and investigates the question of whether these are not also part of the permanent media revolution.

He tries to fathom the connections between science, media, power, war and play. The over two and a half hour work takes the viewer to the most diverse places, people and the theses of his elaborate research. Directors and presenters of American game shows, psychiatrists, anthropologists and paranoid people of various stripes have their say. Scenes from game shows and film documents complete the work.

The film was released in German cinemas on April 21, 2016 and was broadcast on ARTE on March 6, 2017 .

content

"It starts in a laboratory and ends in a sanatorium"

Lutz Dammbeck's 164-minute documentary epic begins with these words. The starting point for the documentary was a statement made by the television entertainer Joachim Fuchsberger in an interview with Anne Will in 2004. There the showmaster said that the games from his game show "Just don't get nervous", broadcast from 1960, came from psychiatry. When asked: “And how many patients watched you there?” The answer was prompt: “A crazy, mentally disturbed nation”.

That piqued the filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck's curiosity and wanted to know what it was all about. In search of an answer, after ten years of research and film work, the full-length documentary "Overgames" was created.

The film combines three narrative strands:

1.Game shows and psychology:

Using Joachim Fuchsberger's whispers about the German nation, he examines the question of which treatment methods from psychiatry were used as games in the entertainment shows. What is the secret of a successful game show and what makes people want to participate.

2. Re-education:

Here Dammbeck deals with the history of ideas behind the denazification and re-education program of the Allies in West Germany . Here he brings the sociologist and concept creator Margaret Mead and the psychiatrist Richard M. Brickner into the light. Under the impressions of his visit to Germany in 1935, he attested to the German national character paranoia and a collective madness. With the paranoia, considered incurable, which Brickner sees embodied in the Prussian Junker on a collective level and contrasts the rites of the Balinese natives sketched by Mead, he acquires "Is Germany incurable" in his 1943 book. With this thesis, Mead and Brickner were able to win the approval of Max Horkheimer and financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and consolidate the basis of the term re-education.

Moving on, Dammbeck pursues the idea of ​​using Germany as a test laboratory for the market-driven and modern implementation of the permanent revolution.

3. The history of ideas of the permanent revolution:

The third and most detailed narrative thread traces the history of ideas of the permanent revolution . However, this deviates from Leon Trotsky's ideas in terms of the New American Way of Life . It stands for a revolution which, with the help of new sciences such as cybernetics , systems theory and genetic engineering , is supposed to create a technically conceived new nature. It is about the constant improvement of people in a society of equals. The idea began over 300 years ago as the " Glorious Revolution " in England, continued on its way in France and spilled over to the United States. There it was researched in American laboratories and further developed as part of the New World Order . At the center of this ongoing worldview revolution is again the colorful media world, the greed for wealth and the dissolution of the previous value systems. For this, the people must be uprooted and give up their old cultural achievements and religions. Findings from research are used for re-education and adaptation through self-re-education. Divergent elements that do not fit into this system of freedom, democracy and capitalism must be remodeled, treated and integrated. From this context, Lutz Dammbeck explores the effects on today's society and sees it as a dystopian future development.

The various narrative strands are interwoven and are intended to provide a link between the individual subject areas. Quotes from literature serve as a bridge. The viewer accompanies the filmmaker to the various locations of his research and looks over his shoulder. The journey leads to American showbiz greats, well-known psychologists and anthropologists and to the archives of museums and private collections. Media documents from game shows, research, as well as documentaries and feature films complement the topics. Funny, exciting and terrifying scenes alternate. The intrigue of media, power, military and science records the abysses of the permanent revolution.

criticism

Overgames has a very unconventional narrative style for a documentary. The game show hook is overlaid by the history of ideas of the permanent revolution. It was already mentioned in the previous film " Das Netz ". With a trick, the topic of cybernetics is packed into the colorful world of TV shows and connects it with the history of psychiatry and the re-education program in post-war Germany. A thrown together potpourri of a socio-historical psychology study with literary quotations by Franz Kafka , Michel Lepelletier , Werner Altendorf , Günther Anders and Stephen Greenblatt and a little quirky interviewees develops from this . In order to emphasize the subjective perspective, film excerpts are partially played on laptop and video camera screen. The documents from the archives are held in the camera by hand. The subject areas mentioned are factually researched and verifiable. Lutz Dammbeck's considerations make it clear what influence political decisions of the past have on our lives today. Sometimes, however, he leaves the answers open in order not to drift into speculation. Rather, there appears to be a desire to encourage the viewer to think for themselves in a world of cheerful and serious games that has been declared crazy.

Awards

The film was awarded the Goethe Institute's Documentary Film Prize in 2015 .

Others

With a running time of more than two and a half hours and due to the topic, it was quite questionable whether this essay documentary could even be broadcast on public television . The project was initially rejected by all editorial offices. At ARTE, however, they recognized the artistic added value and financed the film together with WDR and RBB . After being broadcast on ARTE on March 6, 2017, Overgames was released on DVD with numerous additional material and extras.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for overgames . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; January 2016; test number: 157 135 K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Documentary Film Prize of the Goethe Institute 2015 for “Overgames”. Retrieved September 24, 2019 .