Making Good Again (Wiedergutmachung)

Synopsis

In a highly controversial move, the infamous Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, Germany’s largest preserved Nazi monument complex, are slated to become the city’s opera house and a large-scale culture and recreation center. These plans, some of which are already being implemented, constitute the most extensive overhaul of the Nazi complex since its initial Construction in the early 1930’s.

Disconcerted and bewildered by the plan, Israeli-born filmmaker Gilad Baram sets out to closely follow the transformation of the Grounds and the societal ramifications it entails. Over the course of a few years he immerses himself in the rapidly changing complex, focusing on the multiple public usages of its structures, on its architectural renewal and repurposing and on the people inhabiting and working in and around its spaces.

In candid conversations, set against the monumental background of the decaying Nazi architecture, the site;s physical transformation becomes a reflection of a shifting socio-political zeitgeist in Germany vis-à-vis its Nazi heritage, its Holocaust and WWII-related culture-of-remembrance and a subsequent intergenerational sense of responsibility, as well as an ever-growing, re-awakening national identity.

About the Directors

Gilad Baram is a documentary filmmaker and visual artist in Berlin. His work, spanning a variety of media –  photography, film, video, installation and web art –  was screened in numerous International Film festivals and exhibited in various museums and art institutions worldwide. Baram;s directorial debut, the award-winning documentary, Koudelka Shooting Holy Land (2015, Revised 2019),  was screened in major film and photography festivals as well as cultural institutions and events in over 60 countries. his second film, The Disappeared (2018, with Adam Kaplan), premiered at Berlinale and was nominated for awards at festivals such as CPH:DOX, BAFICI and Docaviv.

Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari is a composer and sound artist, working across a broad spectrum of practices to embody and re-ritualize ways of sounding as an alternative mode of being. Exploring a plethora of artistic strategies that span from instrumental, electro-acoustic, scored or improvised music, to video and somatic work. His work has been presented in concert halls, galleries, museums, and film festivals and was supported by the American Israel cultural fund, DAAD, the Eric Siday fund and the Einstein Stiftung. Working primarily through long-term, interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange, he often collaborates with artists, scholars and filmmakers in an attempt to navigate the physical, political and spiritual turbulence of our world.

Artist Statement

More than a decade after emigrating from Israel to Germany, Making Good Again, is the first project in which we turn our gaze away from our birthplace and onto our new “home”. To that extent, in making this film we wish to deepen our understanding of the society we are now part of, of the role it wishes to assign to us, as Israeli-Jewish immigrants of Europeans decent, and of the role we wish to assume in it – that of creative observers, vocal about what we think are troubling developments that directly and indirectly affect us and our communities.

As we follow the internal German discussion concerning its culture of memory and memorialisation, we fully understand the complexity in dealing with places like the Nazi Party Rally Grounds and do not claim to have a definite answer as for what should be done with thie site. Yet, we do think that the ‘How?’ – the way in which policy is enacted – is as important as the ‘Why?’, if not more. From our unique positionality within contemporary German society we wish to shed light on the societal, cultural and political ramifications that such an ambitious and controversial project entails.