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Germany in Autumn on DVD

Eleven leading filmmakers collaborated on this protest against Fascist tendencies in West Germany by reflecting on the tragic events of autumn 1977, when public official Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped and murdered by the Baader-Meinhof group, whose members mysteriously died in prison. The contents of this quasi-documentary, omnibus film range from an elegiac sequence of the burial of the prisoners to newsreel clips of Rommel's cortege and a fictitious argument among TV executives about a controversial production of Antigone. In the amazing Fassbinder sequence, he interviews his mother, who had endorsed the dictatorship, then physically abuses his boyfriend. Political history and film history intersect in this dynamic film that deftly combines art and politics.