A excellent Essay from Ilona Hongisto in the new NECSUS – European Journal of Media Studies:
“Sweeping changes in Eastern Europe: The documentary frame in Gerd Kroske’s ‘Kehraus’ trilogy (1990-2006)”
by Ilona Hongisto
“…With Kroske’s remarkable trilogy of films this essay conceptualises documentary cinema as an ‘aesthetics of the frame’.[3] The aim is to show the indistinguishability of aesthetics from the documentary’s approach to the real and to demonstrate how the frame taps into reality as an ongoing process. In this context, the essay redirects documentary discourse from ‘true representations’ to an analysis of how the documentary frame captures and expresses the ‘regime of truth’ in operation during the transition period. Following Michel Foucault, this entails a focus on both the systems and effects of power in Post-Wall Germany. Above all, and relating to the activation of the aesthetic in documentary cinema, the direction of the essay coincides with Foucault’s insistence on the importance of ‘knowing that it is possible to constitute a new politics of truth.’[4]…”
here is the complete Essay: The documentary frame in Gerd Kroske’s ‘Kehraus’ trilogy (1990-2006)
The “KEHRAUS-TRILOGY is realesed by absolut-medien (DVD 1, from the DVD-BOX “Zeitzustände“)