A documentary film by Nina Toussaint and Massimo Iannetta, running time 82 minutes
A cinematic approach to the darkest chapter of GDR history: the measures taken by the Stasi to completely destroy members of the opposition. The film is shot at the central Hohenschönhausen prison in Berlin. Surviving witnesses and quotes from Jürgen Fuchs reconstruct the topography of terror.
“There have always been those who say that people cannot be changed by violence. But they say that people cannot be changed by force, because we have mastered our craft and have plenty of time.” Jürgen Fuchs
The central remand prison of the Ministry of State Security in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen in the former GDR was no ordinary prison. The building, which was not marked on any East Berlin city map and which still bears traces of recent German history – the Nazi dictatorship, the Soviet occupation and the Communist dictatorship – has the uncanny peculiarity of having as many interrogation rooms as detention cells.
Its topology and design reveal its true purpose: a huge surveillance apparatus, a machinery of control, a laboratory of interrogation techniques, of systematic mental destruction. Hohenschönhausen is the symbol of the repressive system of the former GDR: a place where some of the worst methods of “Operative Decomposition” were executed. With the aim of systematically destroying any spirit striving for freedom.
The ‘procedures’ and ‘measures’ of the Stasi also included arrest. Sometimes used simply to intimidate, it could also end in ‘interrogation’ and entail serious consequences: endless pre-trial detention, sham trials, severe punishment, almost impossible social and professional reintegration, reprisals against people close to them, revocation of citizenship and deportation, incitement to suicide, i.e. covered-up murder.
A film in the form of a tour through the former Stasi remand prison, where the stories of three contemporary witnesses intersect and are confronted with the topology of terror and the absence of the perpetrators…
Written and directed by Nina Toussaint/Massimo Iannetta
Participants Sigrid Paul and Hartmut Richter
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