Peter Geyer - Jesus Christus Erlöser AKA aka Jesus Christ Saviour (2008)

Berlin, Deutschlandhalle, November 20 th 1971. Kinski emerges into a lone spotlight on an empty stage. Shoulder length hair, plain jeans, a shirt with flower and polka dot patterns. No set, no stage effects, no costume. By reciting his own version of the New Testament's “Jesus Christ Saviour”, he realizes a project well over 10 years in the making.
It is the time of the Hippie movement, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” is celebrating a sensational success in Germany as well. It is also a time of nonviolent resistance.
But Kinski's JESUS is not some Hippie Happening. It is to be a highly emotional, highly personal recount of “mankind's most exciting story: The Story of Jesus Christ…the freest and most modern of all men, who prefers to be massacred rather than fester alive with all the others. About a man who is the way we all would like to be. You and I”.





Documental / SINOPSIS: Deutschlandhalle, Berlín, 20 de noviembre de 1971. La solitaria figura de Kinski se adentra en la escena para interpretar un monólogo escrito por él mismo, llamado “Jesus Christus Erlöser”. Esta actuación es el culmen de un trabajo que lo ha tenido ocupado durante más de diez años. Son los años hippies, cuando el musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” era un gran éxito. Sin embargo, el “Jesus Christus Erlöser” de Kinski no tiene nada que ver con aquel. Es una interpretación llena de emoción, concentrada en la voz del actor. El contenido, según el mismo Kinski, es “la historia más emocionante jamás contada: la vida de Jesucristo”, que era uno hombres de los “más valientes, libres y modernos de la historia, un hombre que prefería morir antes que continuar a vivir arrodillado”. (FILMAFFINITY)





The film “Jesus Christ Saviour” by Peter Geyer shows the nightlong struggle of an actor to get to speak his lines. The performance in Berlin's Deutschlandhalle was to be the start of a planned worldwide tour. The intro features the posters all over town, the audience streaming in, full of expectations, and the police overseeing their entry.

When Kinski appears, his voice quiet but intense as he recites his first lines in the form of a ‘wanted poster' (“Wanted: Jesus Christ”), it takes all of five minutes before the first interruptions start. Kinski reacts – he appends his line “he never wears a uniform” with “ and doesn't have a big mouth ” directed to the heckler - and the first commotion begins.

There is resistance against the Kinski sermon, doubt as to his authority to embody Jesus. Scattered and derisive remarks can be heard throughout the audience (“He already made his millions from the movies”). Very few of the 3000-5000 spectators have come to listen to him. They want to provoke him, to discuss with him and to bring a street fight into the hall. They cannot tolerate someone standing on stage and proclaiming “eternal truths”. They merely perceive the artist as some self-proclaimed leader or messiah.