INPUT / … / … / Told_ untold_ retold

History on television was originally told by profound academicians who used the screen to educate and enlighten the audience. Doesn’t television have an increasing need to give history back to the storytellers? German television has come to be known –especially at INPUT- for its endless analyses of the German Fascist period. But these three programs, as meticulous and painstakingly made as they are, have not been selected for their “German-ness”. Rather, each offers quite different approach to dealing with the past. With RED EARTH we ask ourselves whether the new content in this story of a mining family in the late 1900s can transcend the traditional television play form, and if it all, how? GERMAN PICTURES, a compilation of sequences taken from Fascist “Kulturfilme” (1933-1943), attempts a harsh dialectical analysis of the language of images. The “new criticism” of the Leni Riefenstal school untells the stories told and examines them –a serious challenge for the television of today and tomorrow. IN THE COUNTRY OF GANGSTERS AND COPS retells history through a family saga in a totally different way. Montage technique prevails. Humor, irony and historical associations are speaking for a new, highly sophisticated generation of film-makers. All three programs “tell”, “untell” and “retell”, us that history is memory and that memory is borne by images.