The Barbie Tapes - Film Screening & Discussion

The Barbie Tapes is screening at the MacRobert Building on Wednesday 2 December, from 18:30 to 20:30. It's a documentary by Dutch filmmaker Foeke de Koe, and the screening is followed by a discussion and a Q&A session led by de Koe himself and Professor Thomas Weber from the University of Aberdeen.

The film centres on a secretive 1979 journey. German undercover journalist Gerd Heidemann and Karl Wolff — the highest-ranking SS officer still alive at the time — set out to track down Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo official known as the 'Butcher of Lyon'. Heidemann carried a recorder throughout the trip and unintentionally captured a voice track that became the film's core: the tapes, hidden for decades in a Hamburg basement and now housed at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, record a high-ranking Nazi perpetrator speaking freely, outside the confines of a courtroom. De Koe describes the film as a searing exploration of the inner lives of extremists.

Because the filmmaker is in the room, the second half of the evening is where you can really get into it. The discussion and Q&A bring de Koe and Professor Weber together to talk through the film, so if you've got questions about the tapes themselves or the people they capture, that's your chance to ask. It's a good way to unpack the history behind the footage and hear from the people who worked with it.

The screening runs from 18:30 to 20:30 at the MacRobert Building, with the discussion and Q&A following on. You can find more details at https://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/25245/.