Jesus Christ Saviour

In 1971, at the height of his international fame, Klaus Kinski took to the stage of a huge auditorium in Berlin to deliver his account of the life of Christ. It was planned as the first show in a one-man world tour, but Kinski had barely...

Dir. Peter Geyer

Germany 2008, 83 mins

Feat. Klaus Kinski

In 1971, at the height of his international fame, Klaus Kinski took to the stage of a huge auditorium in Berlin to deliver his account of the life of Christ. It was planned as the first show in a one-man world tour, but Kinski had barely started speaking before members of the audience began to shout out from the darkness, deliberately prodding at his notorious temper. Over the following 70 minutes we watch the actor repeatedly attempt to deliver his gospel in between berating the crowd, storming on and off, and grappling with stage-invaders.  His reasons for taking on this challenge still remain unclear, but in presenting this unvarnished 16mm record of the event Peter Geyer (the executor of Kinski’s estate) gives us a look beyond the KK cartoon. Some of this footage is in the documentary portrait My Best Fiend, but in that instance it was used by Werner Herzog to make his regular collaborator look like a dangerous nut-job. The picture shown here is more complicated, and by the end you may even feel some sympathy for the man.

Event links Official webpage