Bertram Verhaag

Blue Eyed

Director	Bertram Verhaag
Country of production:	Germany
Year of production:	1996
Duration:	92 min
Sound:	Zoltan Ravasz
Camera:	Waldemar Hauschild, Hans-Albrecht Lusznat
Editing:	Uwe Klimmeck
Music:	Wolfgang Neumann, Frank Loef
Production and distribution:	Denkmal-Films Inc.

Film plot

Over the past 20 years, Jane Elliott, a former teacher in the mid-west USA, has committed herself to leading a fight against prejudice, ignorance and racism in society. She continues to practise the same philosophy which she began with her school class after Martin Luther King jun.'s death in 1968. Today her audience is much broader including teachers, students, firemen and even the complete staff of a Bank. In her workshops she divides people on the basis of two arbitrary physical properties - blue or brown eyes. She declares the latter to be better and more intelligent and grants them privileges, privileges she denies to the blue eyed, deemed to be worse, less intelligent and lower qualified. For the first time, many white people become acquainted with the feeling of belonging to a condemned group which can never win. They experience the feeling of being discriminated against, in the same way that society today discriminates against women, people with a different skin colour or the disabled.

In only 15 minutes, Jane Elliott manages to build up realistic microcosms of society today with all its phenomena and feelings. As already known from the ill reputed Milgram experiment, even participants who knew the "rules" are unable to remain uninvolved. What starts as a game turns into cruel reality which causes some participants' emotions to erupt with unforeseen intensity.

Bertram Verhaag born in Sosnowitz (Upper Silesia) in 1944. Studied sociology and political economics. After some years of working in Munich’s town development department, 1972-1975 College of Film and Television in Munich. In 1976 he founded the production company DENKmal-Film together with Claus Strigel. As part of the DENKmal-Team they worked together on about 90 films for cinema and TV as directors, writers and producers.

Filmography

2005: Andeer is Different
2004: Life running out of control
2003: Thumderbird Woman – Winona LaDuke; The Earman
2002: Discovering good health; 86 000 Seconds
2001: The Secret and the Sacred - Two Worlds at Los Alamos, Killing Seeds; The Last Man Alive
2000: The Agro Rebel
1998: The Cross-over Artist
1997: Heart on Weels
1996: Blue Eyed
1995: Solar Plexus
1994: Stay Tuned!
1992: Fear – Gate to Freedom
1991: The Eighth Commandment; Mama Papa Auto
1989: Crime Scene Family; Residual Risk or the Arroganz of Power
1987: Nuclear Split
1986: Children need Zombies
1983: Really too Mutch
1980: There is no Considuration Given to the People
1978: What's this Called Love