Das falsche Wort

In the organizer's words:

[On International Roma Day (April 8)]

Our guest is the civil rights activist Carmen Spitta, daughter of Melanie Spitta

The persecution of the German Sinti during the Nazi era and its continuation in the Federal Republic.

For the first time in the history of West Germany, Katrin Seybold and Melanie Spitta's film shows the persecution of the German Sinti during the Nazi era - told from the perspective of Sint*izze. Melanie Spitta herself was the child of survivors. "Unpublished police files and photos of racial researchers, documents of total registration and registration are the most important part of our evidence," say the filmmakers. THE WRONG WORD is calm and disturbing at the same time, Spitta's voice - commenting on the photos and documents from off-screen - is insistent and unyielding. Because it is about the whole of the immeasurable injustice in the way the Federal Republic of Germany treated the murdered. And about the continuities of persecution right up to the present day. The filmmakers came across previously withheld material on the issue of reparations. Spitta explains: "This evidence, meticulously compiled by the perpetrators, was not allowed to be made public in order to avoid having to confess to the genocide against us. Instead, the perpetrators were heard as expert witnesses in our compensation proceedings, for which we had to be criminals. The courts believed the perpetrators, not us, the victims." (Remake Festival, Frankfurt/Main)

The wrong word

Kathrin Seybold, Melanie Spitta, FRG, 1987, 86 min., DCP (from 16mm)

Event in cooperation with the Kinothek Asta Nielsen, Frankfurt