Peter Nestler: 05

2 April, 2017 - 16:30
Paddenhoek

Jean-Marie Straub once strikingly characterized Peter Nestler as a “Documentarian Not Reconciled”. Here is a filmmaker, he suggested, who does not seek to capture reality to make it correspond to preconceived conceptions. He simply attends to what is before him: to people and their everyday environment, their roles in processes of production and change, their testimonies of injustice and resistance. Most of all, he lets people speak, rather than speaking for them, putting confidence in what they have to say, rather than reiterating what they are expected to say. This is how the filmmaker succeeds in framing the world anew: by paying the utmost attention to concrete realities and voices that are all too often ignored or discarded. Hartmut Bitomsky, another avowed admirer of Nestler’s work, described this approach as one of Finden, Zeigen, Halten (finding, showing, holding): like an archaeologist patiently and meticulously digging into the soil of material life, uncovering and preserving traces of histories that continue to haunt the present.

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In the presence of Peter Nestler.

Pachamama – Nuestra Tierra / Pachamama – Our Land

Peter Nestler
,
DE
,
1995
,
16mm
,
colour
,
93'

A travelogue, filmed in Ecuador: “In the ruins created by them and with the building blocks of the indigenous temples, the Spanish conquistadores erected their churches. Of the ancient cultures, they destroyed whatever they laid their eyes on, even the musical instruments by the indigenous people. Still, a lot has been preserved in what is now Ecuador. Art treasures endured thousands and thousands of years buried in the ground. By coincidence, they are found, uncovered by heavy rainfall or raging rivers. That’s where archaeologists conduct systematic excavations (or others excavate to sell the antique sculptures). The film is about the indigenous cultures of Ecuador, of what is past and what is preserved, of destruction and resistance, of persisting in new ways, of music in the villages high up in the Andes, of music in the cities and in a tropical climate among descendants of African slaves. The film is about Earth, about working with Earth, sacred to the indigenous people. An account of beauty that silences, of friendliness, also grief.” (Peter Nestler)

Tod und Teufel / Death and the Devil

Peter Nestler
,
DE
,
2009
,
HD
,
b&w
,
56'

An archival exploration of the biographical imagery and ideology of Peter Nestler’s Swedish grandfather, Count Eric von Rosen, an aristocrat with a serious interest in ethnology and anthropology. An embodiment of the colonial ‘adventurer’ of his time, Von Rosen undertook expeditions to South America and Africa (including the former Belgian Congo), turning a blind eye to the systematic decimation of the cultures he visited. At home in Sweden, he supported the Finnish counter-revolution and, later on, Nazism in Germany. “I had, long ago, discovered all these boxes with still photographs in the attic at Rockelstad, and while browsing through them I found images from the civil war in Finland, which I quickly became fascinated by, since no one had photographed the Reds who were later imprisoned and executed. He was a good photographer: his images of Indians were fantastic. Then came his involvement with Nazism in the early and mid-1930s. I always thought that this was a story that I had to tell some day. But at the same time, it was incredibly personal, and I pushed it away from me. I never really systematically dealt with these images. But then, when I found more articles he had written, I immediately understood that this was fantastic documentation, and then I made the film.” (Peter Nestler)