‘Measures of Men’ Director Lars Kraume Prepares Prison Drama, Expresses Exasperation at Germany’s Refusal to Face Colonial Past
variety.comEd Meza @edmezavar Lars Kraume, who explores Germany’s 19th-century, bloody colonization of Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia) in his latest work, “Measures of Men,” has lined up his next project, a feature film inspired by a California prison program that brings together young inmates with aging prisoners suffering from dementia.
Developed at the California Men’s Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo, the Gold Coat program selects inmates, known as Gold Coats, to assist severely cognitively impaired inmates.
Kraume’s story is set in a Berlin prison with a multi-ethnic population, where a young man signs up for the program in an effort to get early parole only to realize that he has first the first time in his life started to love and care for someone. “It’s a beautiful story,” said Kraume, but adds that original screenplays are becoming increasingly difficult to get financed.
Kraume had similar challenges with “Measures of Men,” particularly for its dark story of moral degeneration amid Germany’s brutal colonization of Southwest Africa and atrocities against the indigenous Herero and Nama people.
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