The Pannwitz Stare

Two large views at the very beginning: a disabled man tapping the keys of a typewriter with a little stick held between his teeth; and another keyboard tapped with supreme virtuosity by ten toes. This documentary film is about disabled people and above all about the way in which we deal with disabilities. The title "Pannwitz-Blick" refers to a text by Primo Levis about the chemical engineer Pannwitz who selected prisoners from the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps to work in the German chemicals factory in the camps' immediate vicinity.

This historical reference also reflects one of the film's levels, namely citations from Nazi propaganda films, the feature film ICH KLAGE AN and so-called educational films directed against what the Fascist ideology considered as "unworthy" life and veiling its inhuman message of "racial purification" and "natural selection" as a biological law.