How did the revolutionary German sculptor Arno Breker become the object of adoration and protégé of Adolf Hitler? In this film, director Lutz Dammabeck tries to decipher the enigma of the "Nazi sculptor".
AWARDS: Award of the Media Union. DOK Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and
Animation Film, Germany
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS: DOK Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animation Film/ Recent Films from Germany MoMA/ Berlin International Film Festival/ Finestra sulle immagini/ Venice International Film Festival
Time Of The Gods. the enigma of the "Nazi sculptor"
While working on his Hercules Concept, director Lutz Dammbeck became fascinated by the life and work of the German sculptor Arno Breker (1900-91).
How could a highly talented sculptor—who had met French avant-garde artists in Paris in the 1920s and whose work was first considered “degenerate art” by the Nazis—become Adolf Hitler’s preferred sculptor and protégé?
In trying to find an answer, Dammbeck meets with several of Breker’s contemporaries and friends, including authors Roger Peyrefitte and Ernst Jünger, West German art collector Peter Ludwig and Breker’s model, the former decathlete Gustav Stührk, who posed for a Nazi-commissioned sculpture in 1936.