Sundance
Film Festival, 2000 - Documentary Jury Prize for Directing
Berlin
Film Festival, 2000 - FIPRESCI Award (Fédération
Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique)
for Best Film (Panorama Section); Teddy Award for Best
Documentary
By
the 1920’s, Berlin had become known as a homosexual eden,
where gay men and lesbians lived relatively open lives amidst
an exciting subculture of artists and intellectuals. With
the coming to power of the Nazis, all this changed. Between
1933 and 1945 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality
under Paragraph 175, the sodomy provision of the German
penal code dating back to 1871. Some were imprisoned, others
were sent to concentration camps. Of the latter, only about
4,000 survived. Today,
fewer than ten of these men are known to be living. Five
of them have now come forward to tell their stories for
the first time in this powerful new film.
The
Nazi persecution of homosexuals may be the last untold story
of the Third Reich. Paragraph 175 fills a crucial
gap in the historical record, and reveals the lasting consequences
of this hidden chapter of 20th century history, as told
through personal stories of men and women who lived through
it: the half Jewish gay resistance fighter who spent the
war helping refugees in Berlin; the Jewish lesbian who escaped
to England with the help of a woman she had a crush on;
the German Christian photographer who was arrested and imprisoned
for homosexuality, then joined the army on his release because
he “wanted to be with men”; the French Alsatian teenager
who watched as his lover was tortured and murdered in the
camps. These are stories of survivors -- sometimes bitter,
but just as often filled with irony and humor; tortured
by their memories, yet infused with a powerful will to endure.
Their moving testimonies, rendered with evocative images
of their lives and times, tell a haunting, compelling story
of human resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty.
Intimate in its portrayals, sweeping in its implications,
Paragraph 175 raises provocative questions about
memory, history, and identity.
"Exquisitely
lyrical" -
Dennis Harvey, Variety
"Not
to be missed! Devastating ... elegant and powerful" -
David Ansen, Newseek
