German Cannibal Controversy Anyone?

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Tuesday, July 6th 2004 at 2:21 AM

I am sure many of you have heard of the German cannibal that met a willing meal over the Internet, but if you haven't his name was Armin Meiwes and he was sentenced in January '04 to eight and a half years in jail for manslaughter after he admitted killing a Berlin computer specialist he met via the Internet, but was spared a murder verdict as the victim had asked to be eaten in a startling case of sexual fetishism.

Meiwes recorded the deed on video tape and shocked the court with his matter-of-fact account of how he severed the man's penis at the latter's request, and how they both tried to eat it, first raw and then fried in a saucepan.

If you are still unfamiliar and at all intrigued Reuters is reporting that gay filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has immortalized the man on film, whose working title is Your Heart in My Brain.

The film has received nearly $25,000 in public funding from a regional film foundation in North Rhine-Westphalia, the western state ruled by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats and is being billed as a mix of "grotesqueness, thriller and documentary," and is set for completion in December.

"Even the title of the project could scarcely be more tasteless," said Axel Wintermeyer, legal affairs spokesman for the conservative Christian Democrats in the state of Hesse.

Von Praunheim, a 61-year-old gay activist who has made over 50 films including an erotic comedy entitled "Can I Be Your Bratwurst, Please?," said the case intrigued him as he had been studying cannibalism for the last 20 years.

"What interests me is the gay aspect, and that it's also about sadomasochistic experiences," said von Praunheim, who teaches directing at the Film and Television Academy at Babelsberg in Potsdam near Berlin.

"I don't know if it will shock people. People tend to react with disgust on the one hand and curiosity on the other. We always say I love you so much I could eat you," said von Praunheim, adding the movie would be laced with black humor.

The film is not strictly biographical and has fictional elements because Latvian-born von Praunheim, whose real name is Holger Mischwitzky, has not acquired the rights to the cannibal's story.