Edukators II

July 28th, 2005
The Edukators

Hey, teacher!
Melora Koepke
The Edukators: Jan, Jule and Peter kidnap for love and money Edukators director Hans Weingartner won't leave the kids aloneThe kids will really like Hans Weingartner's second feature - it's been pegged as a Trainspotting with politics, entertainment for the anti-WTO set, shot on handheld DV with a 250,000 euro bank loan. It's a Brechtian parable shot like reality TV with a distinctly Indymedia feel to it (there's a lot of polemical debate written into the dialogue).
Jan, Jule and Peter are a love triangle of German activist-hipsters with a secret hobby: They invade the homes of the rich when their occupants are absent, and rearrange all the furniture as a sort of home-invasion-cum-culture-jam. Jule leads a life of indentured servitude as a waitress to pay an insurance debt to a rich businessman, and when she finds out about her compadres' nighttime adventures, a kidnapping plan is hatched.
The Edukators may be an antidote to the high-frequency crapfest that has been the last month or so in the cineplex. Rampant international distribution deals are afoot after a showing at Cannes. To wit, when I get Hans Weingartner on the phone in Germany, he sounds like the walking dead - after an avowed "300 or so interviews" on The Edukators, he's half asleep and wondering just what there is left to say.
Hour You did the whole thing on a shoestring, and produced it yourself - that in itself must be exhausting.
Hans Weingartner [sounding so sleepy he's actually slurring his words] I didn't want a lot of money, it reduces the pressure and you have more freedom. Also, less commercial pressure
'I produced it myself so that I would not have to worry about it. Now, I could pay the loan back right away if I wanted to.
Hour Is it a risk or a benefit to make a movie that is so politically allegorical? That isn't really the fashion right now in moviemaking... in the Western world anyway.
Weingartner As soon as you make a political film, people become critical of the political message, because everybody has a political opinion. The risk is that nobody is going to want to see the film, not the most political time in the world. But there is romance in this film too, and [fun]... it is just political romance, and fun.
Hour People do not generally like to be lectured to...
Weingartner You have to go very deep, and find emotions that touch everybody. Jule has a debt to this upper manager, and she had to give up her life to pay this debt, and I think everyone in the audience, left or right, can understand what she is going through. It's unfair and not justified, it's a good way to explain what the First World is doing to the Third World. This way you can dispense political messages, but be careful not to fall into political programs.
Hour: You yourself were a squatter and an activist when you were younger. Is The Edukators another form of activism?
Weingartner [It is concerned with the issues] that personally occupy me. It sounds pathetic, I know, I'm sorry, but it's not, these are human feelings. We are social beings, we are not competitive beings... that is what capitalism tries to tell us, but it is bullshit. It is stuff from the '70s but if you repeat it today, everybody starts to yawn. [Yawns, then chuckles.]
Hour So this is a film for a particular time and place?
Weingartner The Edukators is only my second film, and it has been shown in Cannes, and around the world... I would never have dreamt that it could have gotten so far. There must be something in the air... five years ago, nobody would have given a shit about this film. Now, people are tired of the machine, they are tired of running around a spinning wheel in a circus where the mouse is running. The stress has reached a level that makes us unhappy, and all the yoga in the world cannot help.