After the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder he is considered Germany’s most prolific independent filmmaker. Von Praunheim’s work takes an unabashed, self-critical look Germany’s role in hindering and fostering gay liberation. This week he arrives in South Africa, a guest of the Out-in-Africa film festival. His recent feature film, The Einstein of Sex, about the early gay sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who came under attack by the Nazis, will show at the festival.
We hear a lot about a political shift to the right in Europe – are very extreme groups like neo-Nazis really on the rise?
Yes and no. You know how it is with sensationalism. On the one hand, since the wall came down I think the right got encouraged. From the leftwing extreme to the rightwing extreme I think many young people in East Germany were totally repressed by the leftwing ideology, and when the wall opened they went to the other extreme.
Is there such a thing as gay rightwingism?
In Germany it’s coming up now after the wall came down. It’s more or less new for us, this problem, which you had in England or France for a much longer time. It’s extremely frightening. You have a lot of prominent cases of gay Nazis. Of course the rumour is about [Jorg] Heider of Austria, that he actually is gay. It’s a kind of a paradox – it’s strange to be gay and a neo-Nazi. Throughout history the military always was very attractive to gay people because it was a way to meet other men, and possibly for many people the only way to have gay sex and gay contact. On one hand you have a society like the military strictly against gay action, but on the other hand you have a subculture in it. It’s the same with the church. But you’re talking about very few people, I guess.
Do you make films exclusively with a gay or lesbian subject matter?
I’m not doing them exclusively. I’ve done about 60 films and about 20 of them have gay subjects. I’m also interested in other social issues. I did a lot of films with older women for example. I did films about cultural subjects in America and I did a film about death. But I’m very proud that I have been able to document gay politics and real life, and I think it’s quite interesting that over all the years I was able to get money for gay subjects.
And yet films you’ve made have probably not achieved worldwide distribution in the same manner as popular Hollywood films. Does that bother you?
No, I’m not a commercial filmmaker. I come more from a more artistic side, more from a kind of underground style which never was that popular. On the other hand I reach a lot of people through television. A lot of people are influenced by my films. My film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverted But the Society in Which He Lives was shown in Germany, first at the Berlin Film Festival in 1971 and then on nationwide television in 1973, and kind of started the gay movement in Germany. Everybody in Germany knew about it. It was a big scandal and got big press reactions. In the Aids crisis I was very active, I did four or five films on Aids and Aids activism. The films were not commercial in any sense but reactions connected with the films were extremely popular.
You don’t sound perturbed about the self-ghettoising of alternative film.
I think there’s always a difference with art films – it’s a different way of communication. In Germany now we don’t really have a functional cinema. German film is very weak and if I am invited onto a TV show to talk about my latest film I will possibly have a million viewers. If I show the film in the cinemas there might be a hundred thousand seeing it. Only Hollywood has the big money and the clout to be that commercial. But I’m very proud that I always was able to do what I wanted to. I never had to adapt, or was controlled by censorship or producers. And I think that’s a big privilege.
What do you think your work can say to people from the developing world?
That’s very difficult to say. I’m very proud that I have big retrospectives coming up in South Korea and in Argentine and in Russia. Of course I think it’s wonderful that these films can be shown in countries where people are just starting gay movements. Possibly they can be helpful. Film is a popular medium and it’s good that people can have discussions after films and be encouraged to start their own actions and be more proud. You see it all over – each new group coming together makes the same mistakes and has the same rivalries. People have to do it all over. You can’t really learn that much from other people. I am now a professor here at the [Potsdam] film academy and it’s very difficult to teach people. People have to do their own mistakes. You can only encourage them and give them energy …
Look out for festival showings of Von Praunheim’s feature film The Einstein of Sex and his documentary Fassbinder. He will give a special performance of his autobiographical video talkshow, 58 Years of Perversity, at the Goethe Institute, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, on February 5 at 5pm