Kassel Dokfest makes a chance discovery and the Kassel trilogy KASSEL, ANNÉES 30: UNE TRILOGIE ALLEMANDE (KASSEL, 30S: A GERMAN TRILOGY) by French filmmaker Catherine Bernstein celebrates its German premiere after almost 30 years: On Saturday, 16.11. and Sunday, 17.11. the three documentaries shot between 1996 and 1999 can be seen at the Gloria cinema. They thematize inner-family guilt and involvement in Nazism in a remarkable way while showing a part of Kassel's city history and its inhabitants. With the help of the city archives, Catherine Bernstein also embarks on a worldwide search: What happened to the seven Jewish classmates of her grandmother who are missing from the photos of the annual class reunions held in the post-war period?
The presentation of the films will be followed by moderated discussions with Catherine Bernstein and other guests.
About Kassel, about remembering and forgetting and the topicality of the work (in German language).
Catherine Bernstein was born in
Tours in 1964 and lives and works in Paris. After working as an assistant
director for feature film productions, she first made her own short films,
including “Zohra à la Plage” and “Nue”. She then made three longer
documentaries, which were based in Kassel. For the third part, “Les Raisins
verts (The Green Grapes)”, she received the Jean Lodz Scam 2000 Award. As a
documentary film director, she primarily thematizes the search for traces of
the past, such as in “Assassinat d'une Modiste (Murder of a Hatmaker)” (2006),
which is about the plundering of Jews by the Vichy government, or in “Fritz
Bauer – Generalstaatsanwalt. Nazi Hunter” (2016) about the lawyer Fritz Bauer
and the first major German court case against Nazi war criminals. One of her
most recent films, “Congo-Océan, un chemin de fer et de sang (Congo-Ocean: A Railway
Line of Blood)” (2023), illustrates a part of French colonial rule.
In an interview Catherine Bernstein tells us about the conception of the film trilogy „Kassel, années 30: une trilogie allemande (Kassel, 30s: A German Trilogy)“.
In cooperation with:
Initiative Gedenkort Polizeipräsidium Königstor, Kassel
Junges Forum der Deutsch-Israelischen Gesellschaft e. V. (JuFo), Kassel
Sara Nussbaum Zentrum für Jüdisches Leben
With support of:
Antidiskriminierungs-Netzwerk Nordhessen
(AdiNet)
Arolsen Archives
Gedenkstätte Breitenau
Geschichtswerkstatt Friedrichsgymnasium Kassel
Gesellschaft für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit Kassel e.V.
Sozialer Friedensdienst Kassel e.V.
Stadtarchiv Kassel
Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten VVN-BdA, Kreisvereinigung Kassel
Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V.
We would like to thank the Kasseler Sparkassenstiftung Stadt Kassel for their financial support of the event.