Meat, Your Parents: A morbidly wicked parade of ghosts of the past, packed with black humour! Booed at the Berlinale 1986! Wim Wenders left after 10 mins! Starring Helge Schneider, whose soundtrack counts among the best of German Cool Jazz - and New German Cinema icon Alfred Edel puking all over the place! "I now knew that the past and the generation of our elders would be totally overcome, unacademically, yet head-on. The problem is now chewed to death. I started to become attracted by the cannibalistic solution to coming to terms with the past. Especially in view of the couple Adolf-Joe and Evi The Bearded, who remain clean and survive the gourge -and-digestion massacre as the only ones. The Kid- and Meatgeneration likes its meat well-seasoned." Actor, film critic, public prosecutor Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, after principal photography. "I felt there was something very existentialistic about “Menu Total”. It’s the story of a little boy who exterminates this entire family. Of course, when the film came out everyone presumed I’d had a really difficult childhood. That my dad had raped me, on numerous occasions probably, and danced around in front of me dressed in women’s clothing and so on. All I can say to that is that if it happened I can’t remember it. I never saw my dad in lingerie or anything like that. I don’t remember any rapes so if it happened it must have been when I too young to be conscious of it. My grandparents weren’t that sort of people either. But there must be some deep, dark black box inside of me. A place which is hungry to tackle material like this." - Christoph Schlingensief.


Christoph Schlingensief started making movies sincethe age of 8. The introduction discusses his trajectory from making his ownlittle home movies to his rejection from film school and subsequent assistantposition of German experimental film maker Werner Nekes. The speech discussesthe formative years of Schlingensief's artistic voice and the development oftechniques that he would come back to again and again throughout his career.

With extract screenings of early short films byChristoph Schlingensief.

 

Quotations
* „My best film!“ (Christoph Schlingensief)