Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker

Story

Schlingensief traces the first hour of reunification as a national slaughter. The news of the opening of the Berlin Wall sends a West German butcher’s family into an almost unrestrained rush of blood. In a seedy hotel kitchen, they slaughter former GDR citizens.
The German Chainsaw Massacre is a short-term reaction to a short-term political development. Schlingensief deliberately uses the frenzied camera movements, the sound of a chainsaw always audible in the background and its gimmicky performance in concrete use on humans as an element of trash. The film also interprets German unification as such, as a blood-soaked, cannibalistic act of the incorporation of the East by the West.
The German Chainsaw Massager is the 2nd part of Christoph Schlingensief’s “Germany Trilogie”, which also includes 100 Years of Hitler (1989) and Terror 2000 (1992).

Director

CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF (*1960 in Oberhausen, † 2010 in Berlin) was a German film and theatre director, an author and performance artist. He became known as a film director with his "German Trilogy" (1989-1992). In the 1990s he became a resident director at the Volksbühne in Berlin. On the occasion of the 1998 federal elections, Schlingensief founded the party "Chance 2000". At the 2004 Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, he directed his first opera, "Parsifal", which received enthusiastic reviews, after which he became increasingly active in the field of visual arts. He worked on numerous art and theatre projects until his last years.