Machorka-Muff

An adaptation of Heinrich Böll’s short story Bonn Diary, Straub-Huillet’s debut begins with a handwritten description: ‘An abstract visual dream, not a story.’ Revolving around an unrepentant ex- Nazi’s uninhibited ascendancy through the social and political hierarchy of post-war Germany, Machorka-Muff is delirious from beginning to end. Deploying a mix of jolting cuts and nightmarish montage – a string of real warmongering newspaper headlines here, a fantastical sequence of living statues celebrating patriotism and war there – Straub-Huillet offered a fiery and uncharacteristically straightforward j’accuse against the undying nationalist-militaristic spectre haunting Germany in the 1960s – and a canny prophecy, perhaps, of the rise of the far-right in the 21st century. Screening with Not Reconciled.