The African Twin Towers. Unveiling the Creative Process in Christoph Schlingensief's Late Film Work

In 2004, Christoph Schlingensief presented the first version of his Animatograph, a rotating stage
made of objects, projections and performances at the Bayreuther Festspiele where he directed his
controversial version of Parsifal. Later, he rebuilt a version of this multimedia device in Area 7, a
township of the Namibian city of Lüderitz. The Animatograph has given rise to several analyses
focusing on the aesthetic, political, philosophical and historical issues of the device. However,
while working on the installation of the Animatograph in Namibia, Schlingensief also made a film,
which documented his failed attempt to shoot a free adaptation of Wagner’s Ring in this former
German colony. Finally released in 2008 under the title The African Twin Towers, this documentary
proved to be Schlingensief’s last film, with the director dying of cancer just two years later.
Overshadowed by the impressive and ambitious theatrical and multimedia mother-project, The
African Twin Towers has received less analytical debate, particularly about its role as a
documentary film. This article reconsiders the documentary as part of Schlingensief’s film work,
looking at both its crucial contribution to a global reflection on German cinema and its impact on
nonfiction film in a post-modern context. To that end, it focuses on the apparent contradiction
between the destructive gesture of conventional cinema that is at work in The African Twin Towers
and the preservation of a nevertheless superior and sometimes apparently cynical director.