“This film tells a story of rebels (played by real rats) and cops (played by real cats). After a long domination by cats, the rats escape from prison (this is their rebellion) and find refuge in Canada. There, they feed on organic produce from a garden where the grass hasn’t been sprayed with DDT.” Rat Life and Diet in North America (Joyce Wieland, 1968)
Jul
4
Independence Day
Rats – gerbils actually – nibbling on the Stars and Stripes (via). DP: Joyce Wieland.
A movie set in the USA for Independence Day (USA)
– Jonas Mekas, via
French-Canadian patriot Joyce Wieland tells a fable of freedom.
Coincidentally, the Canadian city of Trois-Rivières, scene of the final battle of the American Revolutionary War, also celebrates an Independence Day on the fourth of July.
rats
“Where rats turn up, they spread diseases and carry extermination into the land. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel, they travel in large packs, exactly the way the Jews infect the races of the world.”Der ewige Jude [The Eternal Jew] (Fritz Hippler, 1940)
Apr
4
World Rat Day
Nazi propaganda postcard advertising an exhibition in the library of the Deutsche Museum in Munich called Der ewige Jude: Große politische Schau (“The Eternal Jew: Great Political Exhibition”). The front of the card is a reproduction of the film poster. The card is dated 1937, which is at odds with the information in this blogpost. DPs: A. Endrejat, Anton Haffner, R. Hartmann, F.C. Heeve, Heinz Kluth, Erich Stoll & H. Winterfeld.
I took a long time considering what to nominate for today's topic. This is not an easy one. And frankly, barely qualifies as as film.
In the 1930s, three films (2 British, 1 American) portrayed Jews in a positive light, as victims of persecution through history. When in 1938 the Novemberpogrome took place in (Nazi-occupied) Germany (the term “Kristallnacht” is a horrible euphemism and I won't use it), media was not unanimously jubilant about it. Understanding that violence is not the way to popular consensus, plans were made to change people's thinking about the Jews, using widely available visual media.
In 1939, the faux #documentary Der ewige Jude, directed by the leader of Goebbels' #propaganda film department Fritz Hippler, started production. Scenes shot in Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland were intercut with real, but out-of-context documentary footage, giving it a false sense of authenticity./
– narrator
A recurring theme in Der ewige Jude is disease. Not merely to suggest “the Jew”'s unclean life and religion, but as a synonym of people as a vermin, a parasite to decent (read: Aryan) society. In a chilling demonstration of the Kuleshov Effect, footage of a large group of #rats coming out of a sewer is followed by a crowd of Jews in the Łódź Ghetto, filmed without their consent or knowledge of where this footage would end up.