Die 120 Tage von Bottrop (1997)

The surviver of the Fassbinder family meet on Potsdamer Platz for the shooting of the Last New German Film – a remake of Pasolini’s THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM.

Chaos total: Director Schlingensief, degraded to a set manager, will be replaced by an unknown, who get’s the Bundesfilmpreis award. Film as a nightmare – or vice versa. Producer Volker Spengler sends an agent (Christoph Schlingensief) to Hollywood where he meets Udo Kier, Kitten Natividad and Roland Emmerich on a mission to raise money and get ex-Visconti superstar Helmut Berger to appear in the film. Depicting a German cultural scene at the turn of the century that still has not come to terms with the legacy of New German Cinema, Schlingensief tackles the topic once and for all: with endless references both open and obscure, Schlingensief takes the process of de- and reconstruction just far enough to both completely demystify and pay tribute to an era and its heritage. With appearances from the German film, TV and theatre scene, many actors, contributors and cultural icons appear as themselves; but Schlingensief is not afraid to resurrect some of the dead, only to kill them off again: part parody, part heartfelt homage, THE 120 DAYS OF BOTTROP gives New German Cinema its final coup de grâce.

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