Abstract

Ziewer has no language. He neither directs and cuts images, nor does he direct and cut information. He tries to present what is found as a construction, and what he constructs is supposed to look like something found. He neither has a language, nor does he lack any. As though he had sent someone off and said, shoot something ‘bout machines today, he sends himself off. The gesture of his work: completely that of soulless work, dull, secure, conscientious on the surface, and somewhat bungled as well. With the same movement that assigns meaning to his images and sentences, one assigns living space to people, divides the work, selects children at school. The movement of bureaucratic terror. It’s bad that there are so few people who sense the political aspect in film language. [From a review of Schneeglöckchen blühn im September (1974), a film written by Klaus Wiese and Christian Ziewer, and directed by Ziewer.]