THEN CAME THE BRITISH

MRH : How did a British director become involved with a German-language documentary on a very specific period during WWII?

Mark Cairns : I met [Carl Schmitt], who is a German, at Britain's Royal College of Art, and he'd read the Blumenberg book that the film is based on. I'd known him for about ten years when we began the film, and over those years he'd been talking to me about trying to get something off the ground. He was fascinated by the story, and his fascination was infectious.

MRH : Had you read the book prior to beginning work on the film?

Mark Cairns : I hadn't read the book. It wasn't translated. I just listened to Carl talking animatedly about it, and we sort of discussed making a drama about it. Our intention was always to make a more dramatic version, but we were kind of breaking into the industry, and there was no way that we could afford to get that kind of funding to make a film like that; so when the documentary presented itself, we leapt on it.

MRH : Had you already started work on a fictional version of the film?

Mark Cairns : It had been discussed, but it hadn't really gotten as far as the script stage; we were always talking about it.

MRH : So I take there is no English translation of Blumenberg's book right now?

Mark Cairns : No, there isn't.

MRH : That's a shame, because the story is both fascinating and crazy.

Mark Cairns : It is, and tragic, and absurd.

MRH : It's completely absurd. One can imagine Stanley Kubrick would have made a film of the story, because it's just bizarre.

Mark Cairns : When I was talking to Carl about it, I had something like M*A*S*H in mind; that kind of humour out of adversity.

MRH : When you started work on the project, in terms of focusing on the documentary aspect, how did you tackle the whole structure, because you had the non-fiction book, plus a tremendous amount of research to do?

Mark Cairns : I think it was Carl's idea to structure it around a sort of diary of the war, so we would be chronicling main events in the war as they affected Germany, and as they affected the filmmakers.

MRH: Was there a lot of extant information, or did you have to go beyond the book?

Mark Cairns : Carl did an awful lot of research, and became an expert on it. He did all the interviews, and he and his wife tracked down the surviving members of the crew, and even one of the cast, and the composer [Norbert Schultze] who was very unwilling to talk about the work. He wouldn't go on camera, and he wouldn't give interviews.

MRH : I guess that's one of the problems Carl must have encountered when he tried to track down some of the survivors: how many of them were actually willing to talk about it, and if so, did they look back on the experience as a part of history that they'd managed to survive, or was it something that they just didn't want to discuss at all?

Mark Cairns : We had an archival interview with [Das Leben director and UFA production executive Wolfgang Liebeneiner] from 1979, whom I think was the kind of guy who put a spin on everything (he was proud of everything he'd done, and of course he wasn't a Nazi); there's a period interview with [cameraman Gunther Anders] that we got from a TV station; and a producer, Hans Abich, who'd known Liebeneiner... and took over UFA after the war.

MRH : You interviewed one particular actor, Gunnar Moller, who says one of the funniest things in your film, in which the actors had actually had hoped the Allies would break into Germany, so they could blissfully work again in total creative freedom.

Mark Cairns : I think he was quite happy to be making that film, because the alternative would have been fighting on the front. I think Liebeneiner sort of helped him stay on and work in films rather than actually get drafted into the army.

MRH : For the film's structure, I guess one of the biggest challenges is that you made a documentary on a film of which there is no footage.

Mark Cairns : Yes, it was a documentary with nothing to document. That was out major problem.