“Never. Nobody wanted to hear about it. If you would just mention one of those words… Leave me alone with this stuff. It’s over now and done with.” Gay survivor, 93 years old
“Paragraph 175” is the inspiration of Klaus Mueller /… / [who] had come to feel that as a gay German of postwar vintage, “I did not have a past at all,” and he set out to meet and interview as many of his remaining “gay grandfathers” as he could. (Chip Crews: ‘Paragraph 175’: The Nazis’ Victims of Shame, In: Washington Post, October 19, 2000)
Paragraph 175 documents the Nazi persecution of homosexuals through the words of some of its survivors. Their testimonies – filmed for the first time – give insight in what for decades has been ignored or silenced. The Nazis arrested app. 100,000 men as homosexuals. Half of them were sentenced to prison of which an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 were incarcerated in concentration camps. Camp inmates sentenced under the anti-gay Nazi law ‘Paragraph 175’ were marked with a pink triangle. The German government never paid restitutions to the gay victims of the Nazi regime. In the late 1960’s, the pink triangle was reinterpreted by the gay and lesbian community as a symbol of gay pride. But we never knew the individual men who were forced to wear it in the camps. No names, no faces – just an empty memory. Now we learn to know some of them. Their stories are complex and marked by the horror of the camps and their humiliation after 1945, but also by their resilience, anger and strength.
PROJECT HISTORY
Having worked since the early 1990’s on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, I came into contact with a small number of gay survivors and asked them if they would be willing to share their story with me. While they were hesitant in the beginning, we developed a bond of trust and I was able to learn about their ordeal before and after 1945 in their own words. Gay survivors have never received legal recognition or support. Their voices are unique and part of our complex, yet largely undocumented history. Based on my conversations with gay survivors, I developed the idea for a documentary film to safeguard the diverse stories of those few known gay survivors still alive and to document their suffering. For me, it was vital to learn about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals based on the individual voices of survivors and their experiences, instead of just reconstructing this dark chapter through the documents of their perpetrators alone. In January 1997, I reached out and proposed a collaboration to American directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
MORE INFORMATION ON THE TELLING PICTURE WEBSITE
IMDB summary and IMDb user reviews
CREDITS
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY
Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman
IDEA / DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH / ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Klaus Mueller
NARRATED BY
Rupert Everett
PRODUCERS
Michael Ehrenzweig
Janet Cole
CO-PRODUCER
Howard Rosenman
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Bernd Meiners
EDITOR
Dawn Logsdon
WRITER
Sharon Wood
MUSIC
Tibor Szemzö
AWARDS
UNITED STATES
- Documentary Jury Award for Directing
Sundance Film Festival [American premiere 2000] - Jury Award: Best Documentary
Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival 2000 - Three Dollar Bill Cinema Award for Excellence
Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2000 - Audience Award: Best Documentary
San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2000 - GLAAD Media Award, 2002
- GLITTER AWARD: Best Documentary voted by U.S./International Gay Film Festivals 2002
- NEWS & DOCUMENTARY EMMY AWARD 2002
GLOBAL
- FIPRESCI Award (International Film Critics Association):
Best Film, Panorama Section; and Teddy Award: Best Documentary of Festival
Berlin International Film Festival [European premiere 2000] - International Documentary Award 2000
- Jury Prize and Audience Award: Best Documentary
Turin International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival - Jury Prize: Best Documentary
Milan Gay and Lesbian Film Festival 2000 - Audience Award
Pink Apple Film Festival (Switzerland) - Audience Award: Best Feature Film
Madrid Gay and Lesbian Film Festival - Audience Award: Best Feature
Barcelona International Gay and Lesbian Film Exhibition - Audience Award: Best Documentary
identities Queer Film Festival (Austria) - Audience Award, Best Documentary
Mezipatra – Czech GLBT Film Festival - YAMAGATA International film festival 2001
- Audience Award: Best Film (MiX Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity)
REVIEWS
“At once admirable and deeply unsettling, this film draws upon the testimony of little more than a handful of the all-but-vanished ranks of survivors to relate the horror of the Nazi purge of homosexuals from the life of Germany and the aftereffects that scar and roil these men as the 21st century begins.” (Lawrence Van Gelder: ‘Paragraph 175’: Condemned by the Nazis, but Not for Religion, New York Times, September 13, 2000)
„Von den 100 000 Homosexuellen, die während der Nazi-Zeit inhaftiert, gefoltert und, zu Tausenden, vernichtet wurden, leben heute noch zehn Zeugen. Fünf von ihnen stellen sich ihrem Schmerz und machen diesen Dokumentarfilm zu einem unvergesslichen Erlebnis – diese Floskel meint für einmal wirklich zu einem Erlebnis, das man nicht mehr vergessen kann. Und dies ohne Rückgriff auf die bekannten Bilder des Grauens.“ (Stefan Zweifel: Dokumentarfilm als Dokument. «Paragraph 175» und die homosexuellen Zeugen des Holocaust. 8. Juni 2000 / Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9. Juni 2000)
Daniele Scalise, Caso del Giorno. Quelli col triangolo rosa Migliaia di omosessuali morti nei campi di concentramento nazisti. Una ferita rimossa. E ora riaperta dal documentario “Paragrafo 175”. Ne parla l’autore Klaus Müller, 06.07.2001, L’Espresso Online
Carlos Bonfil, Artículo 175, foro de la cineteca, martes 19 de septiembre de 2000
SCREENINGS IN
USA, Brasil, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Hongkong, Israel, Canada, Portugal, Poland, South Korea, Mexico, Finland, Taiwan, Australia, Turkey, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, South Africa, China a.o.
SCREENED ON TELEVISION
United Kingdom (Channel 4); United States (HBO), Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, a.o.