Wednesday | November 19, 2003 9:00 pm

The Patriot
(Die Patriotin)

Screening on Film

Directed by Alexander Kluge.
With Hannelore Hoger, Alfred Edel, Curt Jurgens.
West Germany, 1979, 35mm, color and b&w, 121 min.
German with English subtitles.

Hannelore Hoger first appeared as schoolteacher Gabi Toechert in the omnibus film Germany in Autumn. In The Patriot, director Alexander Kluge provides a much larger canvas on which the schoolteacher can pursue her quest for new ways to express her country’s history. Combining newsreel footage, interviews, and fairy-tale sequences, director Kluge constructs a counter-history of Germany, from its medieval origins to the present, which skillfully interrogates the nation’s complicated identity.