User Reviews

"United Trash" or "Die Spalte" or "The Slit" is a German production from that was released back in 1996, so it had its 20th anniversary last year. The language is mostly German, but as the film plays in Africa in its entirety, there are also English-language parts. It is one of the more known works by writer and director Christoph Schlingensief and like most of the other stuff he did, it is a relatively short film. This one clocks in comfortably before the 75-minute mark already and this already includes several minutes of closing credits, so yeah, there's many films out there that have twice the running time. Culture clash would perhaps be a term that describes the film relatively well as we see the consequences of what happens when a bunch of White guys arrive in Africa and the truly absurd impact it has on the people there. Okay what else can you say? Even years after his death, Schlingensief is still among the most defining anti-mainstream filmmakers here in Germany and I like some of his stuff a lot. This one's merely okay at best. But I have a lot of respect for the man and what he did in his very own niche of film is worth appreciating. Many filmmakers have tried to bring such an amount of overthetopness and just not caring at all in terms of shamelessness to the table and almost all of them have failed. Even if I may not have enjoyed the watch here that much, I can still see the artistic approach in it and there is a reason why nobody accuses Schlingensief of racism or sexism. His vision may have been different from everybody else's, but it is fairly unique. The result is that his works and films like this one here may have a great deal of cult potential to them decades after they came out. The cast does probably not really include too many famous names with the exception of Kier who worked with C.S. on several projects. Same applies to Oskar Roehler who co-wrote the screenplay here a while before he succeeded with his own works. You could say that Schlingensief shaped him somehow. All in all, this is a trash film no doubt about it and if there is a plot somewhere deep in it, then it's as absurd as it gets. But it's really not the worst kind of trash and there are some entertaining moments here and there. But still trash stays trash and I cannot really recommend it, even if I believe it was a good decision by C.S. to keep it this short before it really starts dragging.