Author: Scott Denham

Schwarzfahrer (Pepe Danquart, 1993) Danquart’s 1993 short film (12 minutes) won the Oscar for best short film, among other awards. An Afrodeutscher man sits next to an old German lady in the Straßenbahn. She launches into a very racist monologue about Black people, with racist asides about Turks and Poles. “In the old days we would have dealt with these people,” she says. A couple of things to know about the film before you watch it: 1. Riding public transportation in Germany requires a ticket, but tickets are rarely checked.…

Read More

The film is here for you this semester. You’ll need to log in with your Davidson credentials. This is optional for this weekend, just for fun, but we may return to the film later this semester. Enjoy! If you’d like just a little … taste, watch the scene beginning at 51:22 through 54:37. Martha comes in to her restaurant with Lina, who, grieving her mother’s death a week or so earlier, still refuses to eat anything (she’ll only drink milk). Her co-worker Mario learned Lina’s story just the day before.…

Read More

Dieses Wochenende lesen wir und hören wir Bertolt Brecht. Sein Gedicht “An die Nachgeborenen” ist traurig und schön und es spricht uns an in diesen finsteren Zeiten. (Das Verb ist ansprechen, to speak to.) Hier Brecht hören: Hier der Text auf Deutsch und Englisch (translated and with background by Scott Horten)https://harpers.org/2008/01/brecht-to-those-who-follow-in-our-wake/ Spend about 15 or 20 minutes with this text, one of the most revered and famous German poems of the twentieth century, even of all time. Many people in the world today live in exile from their Heimat (home,…

Read More