Bunker - Die letzten Tage

original title:
Bunker - Die letzten Tage
other titles:
Bunker - The Last Days
country / year of production:
Germany , France , Switzerland / 2002
original length:
90 min. , color
premiere:
27 March 2003
genre:
Documentary
based on:
director:
Gavin Hodge , Martina Reuter
film script:
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plot synopsis:
In 1940 the nazis initiated a gigantic bunker construction programme for the Reich's capital Berlin. The programme was intended to convey the impression of security, since nobody considered air raids a realistic scenario - a fatale arrogance of the rulers. Of the more than 1.000 bunkers merely a fraction can still be seen today. The film shows the underground bunker labyrinth of Berlin and recounts how the people in the shelters struggled to survive.
Eye witnesses like Waltraud S., then a 15-year-old school girl, the doctor Gertraude Gerlach and Rochus Milch, switchborad operator in the Führerbunker, remember the oppressive atmosphere behind walls of several metres of concrete, of a life defined by constant fear of death, acute anoxia, hunger and lack of space. They also remember kilometre-long tunnels which connected some of the bunkers. When the SS by the end of the war flooded parts of tunnel-system in order to protect Hitler's Bunker, hundreds drowned underground.
keywords:
bunker , propaganda , air raid , post-war era
war:
Second World War (1939-1945)
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remarks:
Hitler's underground bunker in Berlin' centre at Potsdamer Platz had only been accessible for a few days in 1990 due to ammunition salavage in this area close to then recently collapsed Berlin Wall. British cameraman Gavin Hodge was the first and only one allowed to film some of the remains and wall paintings of this compound. After the shoting the bunker was sealed again and covered with earth. Hodge used the material to produce this documentary in cooperation with dffb-graduate Martina Reuter.

The film lives on the eye witness accounts and is told without commentary. Rochus Misch reports on the final days in Hitler's bunker are underlaid with feature film sequences used ironically like documentary footage.
American and Russian archive footage, scenes of propaganda films and newsreel footage make up the background for the eye witnesses' traumatic reports and form a multi-layered collage. Among them fascinating underwater takes of the bunker under the five star hotel Adlon and pictures of the Speer bunker before its blasting in 1996.

Won the DISCOVERY CHANNEL AWARD at the Munich Film Festival in 2002.

Critics (in German language) at:
http://www.salzgeber.de/presse/kritiken/bunker_tip.pdf
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