DER SCHWARZE KASTEN
Deutschland 1992 – Director: Johann Feindt und Tamara Trampe – Original language: German – Length: 94 min.
In February of 1990 the author Jürgen Fuchs was giving a reading of the diaries he wrote about his detention in a Stasi jail. During the reading, a man stood up and said:" I'm one of those people you're talking about, but nobody listens to us." A month later, the film directors Tamara Trampe and Johann Feindt started their on-camera interviews with that man, Dr. Jochen Girke, a psychologist born in 1949 and former Lieutenant Colonel in the Stasi. During his time in the Stasi, he trained would-be interrogators, jail psychologists and informers' supervisory officers in operative psychology. The application of his scientific knowledge had devastating effects.
With unflinching forthrightness, the film tries to penetrate into the sealed mind of this man who says of himself:" I was a criminal by word." An artificial space becomes a sort of closed-cell for both the interviewed and the interviewer. But the filmmakers also leave this cell in order to visit the people who shared his life at that time and who, through either their expressed approval or their silence, gave him the feeling that what he was doing was acceptable.
"Our motto was: psychology in use for the person, with the person and against the person."(Dr. Jochen Girke)
Award: Prädikat: besonders wertvoll
Supporter of BEST.DOKS 20/20
English/Original Title: The Black Box. Writer: Johann Feindt, Tamara Trampe. Camera: Johann Feindt. Sound: Paul Oberle. Editing: Sybille Windt. Production: Max Film. Producer: Wolfgang Pfeiffer. Distribution: Basis-Film Verleih GmbH.
