Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed
Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos
1968
Golden Lion — 29th Venice International Film Festival
- Director:
- Alexander Kluge
- Studio:
- Kairos-Film
- Starring:
- Hannelore Hoger, Sigi Graue, Alfred Edel
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Leni Peickert, heir to a failing traditional circus, dreams of reinventing it into something more artistically ambitious and socially relevant, but struggles to find backers, performers, or an audience willing to embrace her vision. Alexander Kluge intercuts Leni's quixotic effort with newsreel footage, philosophical quotations, and documentary-style digressions, using the circus's collapse as a stand-in for the difficulty of building something genuinely new within a hidebound institution. The film's fragmented, essayistic style mirrors Kluge's own frustrated ambitions for reinventing German cinema itself.