The time is now

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Movie
Original title The time is now
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1987
length 97 minutes
Rod
Director Eduard Schreiber
script Eduard Schreiber
Rolf Richter
production DEFA studio for documentary films
music Eckhard Rödger
camera Wolfgang Dietzel
cut Viktoria Dietrich

The Time is now is a documentary film by the DEFA studio for documentaries by Eduard Schreiber from 1987 .

action

The film begins with a radio broadcast from the National Defense Council of the GDR on October 25, 1983, in which the population is informed that according to an agreement between the government of the Soviet Union and the government of the German Democratic Republic on the territory of the GDR with the Preparatory work for the stationing of missile complexes operational-tactical determination is started.

The film team travels through the GDR for several weeks looking for discussions and observations on the subject of peace . The interviews are repeatedly interrupted by songs with Etta Cameron and fade-ins with explanations by Eduard Schreiber and Rolf Richter, in which both express their thoughts about the meaning and purpose of the film.

The first person I spoke to is the translator Georgia Peet, who was 19 years old and was brought to the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a communist . Here she loses her carefree happiness until she has finally learned through the comradely help of a Dutch, Christian resistance fighter to defend her life, her self-respect, her humanity. A big problem for women in the concentration camp was showing themselves naked in front of others. The Dutch woman overcame her shame when she told herself that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he was also naked. Georgia learned from other inmates that personal hygiene is one of the most important things in survival and what kindness means. But in the concentration camp she lost the ability to be happy.

In Dessau the team meets the toxicologists and chemists Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Lohs about the conversation, who in this area, 30 years earlier, had been commissioned to develop and manage the scientific and technical solution for the destruction of the chemical warfare agent from the fascist era. This task took six years instead of the estimated two years and he realized that the use of these weapons at the end of World War II would have meant a devastated and uninhabitable Europe. Basically, this task takes him up to the time of the interview, because he continues to see his main task in the outlawing and destruction of chemical warfare stocks around the world, because despite the known danger, work on the development of chemical weapons continues. As a convinced Marxist, Lohs makes a big plea for tolerance towards those who think differently, because tolerance is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of one's own point of view, a strong position.

We get to know the evangelical pastor Jan Laser from Königswartha at a baptism. In his sermon, he calls on the faithful to be clear about the fact that peace work within the framework of the Christian peace conference must increasingly shape the work of the entire church community, which is related to the view of the current world situation. The pastor holds peace seminars with his congregation, in which he has already been active as a pastor for 20 years, and many ecumenical guests, because he is convinced that a Christian in society must actively participate in the all-important efforts to secure peace is called.

One day Eduard Schreiber received a call that Major General Hans Unterdörfel of the National People's Army was available for a conversation. Unterdörfel is a troop general that the team has stubbornly insisted on. On the way to a military exercise for the division he led , he says that his most important wish for the future is the maintenance of peace and that Gorbachev's proposal to make the world free of nuclear weapons by the year 2000 will be realized. When asked whether he can imagine that his job will one day be abolished, he replies in the affirmative, but with the remark that there is still a long way to go. He thinks about what he can do to make the profession of military man, which he has exercised with awareness and commitment, superfluous one day because he has successfully fulfilled his military peacekeeping mission.

At the Dresden Residenzschloss we get to know the young, calm and obsessed with his work, stonemason Ralph Jeremias. He shows us what damage the Second World War caused to the walls, which he now wants to restore with great physical effort and precision with his difficult and at the same time beautiful craft for a peaceful eternity.

Production and publication

The Time is now was filmed in three years of work under the working title Friedensfilm on ORWO color. The festive premiere took place on August 27, 1987 in the Berlin Kino International . In the Federal Republic of Germany the film was shown for the first time on February 18, 1988 during an information event for the 38th International Film Festival in West Berlin .

Richard Ritterbusch was responsible for the dramaturgy. The composition for the music title The Time is Now came from Hannes Zerbe , the text for it was created by Rolf Richter and, like the numerous other titles represented in the film, it was sung by Etta Cameron .

criticism

In the criticism of KPG in the Neue Zeit it was said:

"This documentary stimulates and excites, because it is not ostensibly agitatory, not know-it-all instructive or even demagogic."

In New Germany , Dr. Volker Müller:

“The filmmakers did not feel like reporters, chroniclers, 'forensics'. They bring themselves into the film visibly and confessingly with their personal concern and responsibility for the state and perspective of the world. This attitude is aesthetically reflected in original lyrical language as well as in visually impressive metaphorical images in which the cameraman demonstrates his pronounced poetic sense of style. "

The lexicon of international film found the attempt remarkable to reproduce one's own sensitivities with haunted, more poetic than realistic mood images, thereby breaking new ground in documentary filmmaking in the GDR.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland, August 28, 1987, p. 4
  2. ↑ Neues Deutschland, February 13, 1988, p. 12
  3. ↑ Neue Zeit of August 29, 1987, p. 2
  4. ↑ Neues Deutschland from September 1, 1987, p. 4
  5. ↑ The Time is now. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 16, 2018 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used