The German Chainsaw Massacre

Director: Christoph Schlingenseif

1990 / 63min / DCP

Called “one of the greatest artists who ever lived” by Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek, Schlingensief—who died in 2010 at age 49—was a multihyphenate whirling dervish of chaotic creative energy and relentless provocation, the inheritor of the mantle of German cinema’s foremost enfant terrible left vacant following the death of R.W. Fassbinder. Here, in the savage, antic second film of his “Germany Trilogy” (featuring appearances from Fassbinder regulars Volker Spengler, Udo Kier, and Irmann), he gives the subject of German reunification the Grand Guignol grindhouse treatment, telling the tale of an East German fugitive who, fleeing to the West after stabbing her husband, falls into the hands of a tribe of incestuous cannibals inhabiting a dilapidated factory.

Introduction by Annika Haupts, curator at the Deutsche Kinemathek on Friday, December 13th