AKE DIKHEA?: Zeit des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit [Time of Darkness and Silence] + Diskussion,

D 1982, R: Nina Gladitz, 60min, DFmeU

Followed by discussion (in German):
Closed WDR Archive for 40 Years. Power and powerlessness over Holocaust testimonies.
After the screening, there will be a discussion about the history of the film "Time of Silence and Darkness" and about the majority society's power of disposal and interpretation over the history and memory of Sinti and Roma in Germany.

With:
Miriam Carbe, commissioning editor at ZDF/Arte.
Prof. Sabine Rollberg, Professor of Artistic Television Formats, Film and Television
Petra Rosenberg, Chairwoman of the Landesverband Deutscher Sinti und Roma Berlin-Brandenburg ( State Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg)
Moderation:
Knut Elstermann, filmcritic and moderator

Documentary filmmaker Nina Gladitz follows in the footsteps of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Tiefland", which was shot from 1940-44 and was not completed until 1953. Riefenstahl used as extras Sinti and Roma who were interned in the Maxglan camp near Salzburg and in the Marzahn camp in Berlin and who were later deported to Auschwitz. Gladitz finds witnesses who survived the war and the concentration camps and who make serious accusations against Riefenstahl: she had personally selected them in the internment camp and conscripted them for filming without pay.

After the television broadcast of the film in September 1982, Riefenstahl sued Gladitz and achieved in a sensational legal battle that the claim had to be removed that Riefenstahl had known about Auschwitz and had promised help to the forced extras but never given it. As a result, the film disappeared for 40 years in the closed archive of WDR and was not shown publicly again until April 2022 at the university in Freiburg.

As part of the AKE DIKHEA? 6th International Festival of Romani Film, the film will be shown for the first time in an international cinema context after 40 years of a screening ban in cooperation with the Landesverband Deutscher Sinti und Roma Berlin-Brandenburg and the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.