Another documentary about Nazis. Does it really have anything new to teach us or is it just appealing to morbid curiosity.
Well, this one is very good. It was released in 2000 so not new. I discovered it on Kanopy this week, but the video is also available on the Criterion Channel.
Winner of nine film festival awards, Paragraph 175 tells the story of gay men who were arrested and imprisoned or sent to concentration camps by the Nazis under the anti-sodomy law, Paragraph 175 (first codified in 1871), through archival footage and interviews with survivors.
In 2000, fewer than ten survivors were known to be still living. Five come forward to tell their stories for the first time and they are very moving. In the words of film critic Robert Strohmeyer, “The salvation of this picture is the humanity it contains.”
The archival footage showing what life was like in Berlin for LGBTQ people both before and after the Nazis came to power was also very interesting and something I had never seen before.
Pierre Seel, one of the men featured in the film died in 2005. Filmmaker Rob Epstein was interviewed at the time on All Things Considered. He talks about Seel and about the background for Paragraph 175. You can listen to the audio or read the transcript here.