Greatest Show on Earth

"Ladies and gentlemen! And then the sun rises, here on this stage!" A showmaster, black clothes, mid 60's, grey brush haircut (Gottfried Richter) explains in the manner of a shady bouncer to an invisible audience what will happen here very soon: fire balls, fakirs, golden rain! One act sounds more spectacular than the other! His announcements become more and more fantastic, more and more abstruse—and also more and more brutal. Exploitation of man and material. Murder and manslaughter. But—nothing happens, none of the circus acts takes place in this film. It might be for the best: In the end the bouncer announces the death of his audience.

Greatest Show on Earth deals on the one hand with the performance thinking of our time, our circus-like "Higher, Faster, Further": the hamster wheel appears to the hamster as a career ladder. And on the other hand it deals with our society of spectacle. In 2011, Greatest Show on Earth anticipated what is already "normal" today: clowns in politics, populism and the blatant lies of old white men.