Light Denied - a new film about Nietzsche
Professor Karl-Otto Apel
Pawel Kuczynski is one of the most interesting documentary/hybrid filmmakers in the world. Several years ago he made a film called “Philosophers Paradise” that I discovered on the Intl. Documentary Assn. website.
As a person who studied philosophy for 10 years, receiving an undergrad magna cum laude in the subject and studying as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, and working in film exhibition since 1972, I have always been very interested in films about philosophy. I e-mailed Pawel and he not only sent me “Philosophers Paradise” but asked me if I would work with him on a film on Nietzsche. Since I had portrayed Nietzsche in a 1991 “Living Philosophers” course at The Univesity of Charleston, I was interested.
Thus began a global friendship in 2004. Since then he has sent me several versions of his Nietzsche film, “Light Denied” which tells two parallel stories - Kuczynski’s own search for the real meaning of philosophy and Nietzsche and a fictional tale of a Polish philosophy professor who wins a major award and literally thinks that he has become Nietzsche.
As I have written earlier in my review of “Philosophers Paradise,” Kuczynski’s films remind me of those of Ross McElwee, famous for exploring his Southern heritage especially in “Sherman’s March.” K. has two parents who both were philosophy professors in Poland so his cultural landscape is quite different from McElwee’s but equally intense. I love the mixing of a fictionalized tale of a man who truly takes one of the world’s greatest thinkers seriously and K’s endlessly questioning of professors of philosophy who also know Nietzsche’s writings very well. This version has a great interview with Prof. Karl-Otto Appel, a famous critic of Nietzsche of lived the distorted results in Nazi Germany.
Of all the films I have seen on philosophy including ones by people like Godard and Syberberg, none packs more intense images about the meaning of philosophy into its 64 minutes than this film. I published a long review of new films on philosophy called “The Golden Age of Films on Philosophy” in Counterpoise magazine. This film makes a fine addition to the expanding list that includes two new documentaries on Zizek.
I hope that libraries, schools, teachers, and many more people have a chance to see this gem of a film. E-mail Pawel yourself - he is a very nice man. The film includes very nice music composed by Nietzsche which I have never heard. The entire music sound is stupendously beautiful, as are the images. I really enjoyed the images from his trip to Greece since I have traveled to Delphi myself.
Steve Fesenmaier dressed as Nietzsche 1991. The University of Charleston was unable to find any of their footage of his two performances as the German thinker.
