History Will Teach Us Nothing

synopsis

An animated Hitler descends to Earth and recites the evocative lyrics of Jimi Hendrix's song Up from the Skies with a sly smile. “I can already smell the world that has burned,” he remarks. A film collage of disasters and violence—composed of found footage from newsreels, animated films, and hand-painted film material—has something to offer his hungry gaze. Verses by Hendrix, Sade, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Sting are recited by the dictator's voice-over, created by artificial intelligence.

“When I heard Up from the Skies again, I found it remarkable how topical this text from 1967 is and Sting’s History Will Teach Us Nothing (1987) came to mind – as well as the image that so-called evil is returning with the rise of right-wing populism.” — Jan Rehwinkel

biography

Jan Rehwinkel is an editor and filmmaker living in Berlin. He studied visual communication and has been experimenting with moving images since 1990. He uses both digital and analogue techniques, exploring the material properties of film. He is a member of the LaborBerlin collective film laboratory. For the cultural television program ZDF-aspekte, he created an episode dedicated to the rediscovery of analogue media (Analoge Medien neu entdeckt – Die Renaissance des Sinnlichen, 2024).

film details

director:	Jan Rehwinkel
producer:	Jan Rehwinkel