Berlin International Film Festival | 13 February

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-- The Forum
-- The Panorama
-- Retrospective
-- Kinderfilmfest
-- New German Films




Parallel: Panorama: Paragraph 175

Paragraph 175

by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

For German homosexuals, Paragraph 175 was one of the most hated laws of the Nazi regime. Though originally written in 1871, the real shock was that the newly anointed West Germany chose to leave it on the books after the war.

The most rabid implementation of the law was inevitably during the Nazi regime, when an estimated 100,000 men were arrested and 10-15,000 incarcerated, with only about 4,000 surviving.

This film tells the story of some of the survivors, filling an important gap in the historical record. American writer-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Celluloid Closet) were inspired by a chance meeting with Dr Klaus Mueller, who was researching gay survivors of this Nazi persecution.

"As gay men and Jews," wrote the producing team, "we felt a particular urgency to record what stories we could while there were still living witnesses to tell them."
 

Owen Levy

Berlin 1999 - Berlin 98 - Berlin 97 - Berlin 96