Liebeskonzil

Liebeskonzil (1982)

Drama

Oskar Panizza’s The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satirically presents as the punishment from Satan for sexually active humans. As a result, Panizza was imprisoned for obscenity. Schroeter alternates scenes from the Panizza’s work with a dramatization of his trial, presenting the play as an expressionist spectacle performed by actors wearing exaggerated makeup who gesture and grimace grotesquely. The film thus forms a bridge between Schroeter’s use of tableaux in his early experiments with the political urgency of his 1980s films. On the eve of the AIDS crisis, Schroeter is presciently worried about disease as an excuse for governmental repression and the oppression of sexuality. - Harvard Film Archive

Director: Werner Schroeter
Writers: Roberto Lerici, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Horst Alexander.

Casts

	Antonio Salines as Teufel / Dr. Panizza
	Magdalena Montezuma as Doppelzeugin
	Kurt Raab as Gerichtspräsident
	Renzo Rinaldi as Gottvater
	Margit Carstensen as Staatsanwältin
	Heinrich Giskes as Verteidiger
	Agnès Nobecourt as Maria
	Roberto Tesconi as Christus
	Lauro Versari as Cherubim
	Patrizia La Fonte as Selbstmörder-Engel
	Guido Polito as 2. Engel
	Kristina van Eyck as Agrippina

Crew