Hans-Jurgen Syberberg is a Munich film-maker who spent six years making films which have anatomized the history of German culture and politics since Ludwig II. He produced the first chapter in his magnum opus with the flamboyant film, Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King, and he followed it with Karl May. a film about the prolific popular German novelist, and then with The Confessions of Winifred Wagner, a five-hour filmed interview with the English-born daughter-in-law of composer Richard Wagner. Syberberg's most recent film — and the largest in his awesome mosaic of German self-examination — is this seven-hour film on Adolf Hitler.

The following comments are extracts from an article by Nigel Andrews in American Film. Copies of the complete article will be available at the screening of this film.

"Audiences bewildered by the amount of material and the diversity of allusions in Hitler can be assured that the work is not as amorphous as it sounds. The film is divided into four parts and subdivided into twenty-two chapters which are linked and introduced by various masters of ceremony On occasion an entire chapter is devoted to the 'reminiscences' (real or imagined) of one of Hitler's aides or associates. In costume and often elaborate makeup, Syberberg's characters strut and fret their half hours upon the stage; changes of time and place are signalled by pictures projected on the back wall cyclorama... Syberberg presents a mordant view of political history. At his most extreme he sees the political world in two groups: the puppets and the puppeteers. But who, he asks, belongs to which group? Was Hitler the master or the tool of the German people? Did he "create" history or was he created by it? In one eerily memorable scene. the actor playing Hitler rises from the mist-swathed grave of Richard Wagnet and fulminates against the hypocrisy o those who, in the safety of hindsight, execrate a tyrant whom they and their warped expectations first encouraged. 'I am the consummation of your most secret wishes,' the actor Hitler declares, 'the reality of your dreams and legends'. . The film's strength and originality lie in the fact that Syberberg sees Hitler, and the visible menace of Nazism, merely as the tip of an iceberg. Political hope and freedom founder on the mass that lies beneath, on the social and cultural deposits that insidiously gather and coalesce to provide a foundation for Hitler and his like. If we regard Hitler as the only perpetrator of German cruelty and totalitarianism, we delude and flatter ourselves and smooth the way for the next dictator's rise..."

Hans-Jurgen Syberberg — Born 1935.

Between 1963 and 1965 produced over 80 television films of between 3 and 30 minutes duration.

Feature films — Scarabea — How Mud Earth Does Man Need? (1968), San Domingo (1970), Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King (1972), Karl May (1974), Hitler — A Film from Germany (1978). Also produced a number of feature length documentaries.