Inge, raise us from the dead! is an experimental short film based on the poems of German post-war and GDR poet Inge Müller. Inge Müller’s life was characterized by motifs such as being buried, loss, depression and the struggle for visibility as a writer. She committed suicide in 1966. Inge Müller’s poems describe a post-war society caught between godlessness and guilt, a society that surrendered its morals to the Nazi-regime under the leadership of inscrutable leaders.
Synopsis
The short film combines surrealistic and documentary images. We see Mrs. M., a middle-aged woman who lives in a high-rise building on the outskirts of a German city. Ms. M. has had a recurring dream for some time in which she is buried by rubble. As the image alternates between everyday scenes in the apartment and a fictitious green-filtered version of this apartment, the actress’s life seems to be mysteriously connected to Müller’s otherworldly existence. As a ghostly entity, her poems intervene in the life of Mrs. M. Interview excerpts, a radio as a time machine and sequences that refer back to Brecht’s Lehrstück raise questions about loneliness, aging, mental health, suicide and freedom. Inge Müller’s poems become a timetravel technology through which the present is questioned by the past.
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