Universal hotel

UNIVERSAL HOTEL is a meditation on the remaining historical evidence of a Polish prisoner-of-war forced to participate with a German prostitute in a deep cold and rewarming experiment at Dachau in 1942. Like SHOAH, it seeks to counteract the incomprehensibility of evil by making it specific, factual and thus real –but in Thompson’s case, there are no survivors to give testimony, no witnesses to confirm the truth of his speculations. The past remains hauntingly unrevealed, the present marked by strange perspectives, anxious dreams and baffling signatures. The value of UNIVERSAL HOTEL as history is guaged by the fact that it is regularly screened for international study groups at the Dachau Archives.“As the Director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, I have had the opportunity to view a considerable number of documentaries recalling the fate of those suffering the Nazi regime. Often, filmmakers strive to reconstruct history on a large scale... Peter Thompson’s film uses a completely different approach. Indeed, he offers the viewer a new way of seeing. Using only a few photographs and drawings which he collected from different people and in different countries, he concentrates on one person only... With minimal sources, underlined by Thompson’s account of his search for information, the film becomes an extraordinarily moving experience” (Barbara Distel, Director, Dachau Archives and Memorial)Thompson’s films are works with which one must come to terms because they are demanding of both intellect and emotions. They exact a deep and disturbing response, and they only work when the audience is willing to. That makes perfect sense within the context of Thompson’s concern’s, which are anything but trivial. Each of his films begins with documentary materials –footage of actual people, places and events. But rather than presenting objective views of confirmable realities, they investigate the subjective experience of time, history, memory and meaning.UNIVERSAL HOTEL aired on Independent Focus at midnight on a Sunday night on Thirteen/WNET in New York. It had an audience of about 150.000 which is double the average for that time period. The filmmaking technique is powerful and unusual, particularly with this topic.