Epstein: There was a point at which we thought it should be made by Germans. It was so particular to Germany and what happened during that period that it seemed natural to ask, "Why aren't Germans doing this?" Then, as we made the film more our own, it made sense that we were coming at it from the outside. Being outsiders made it easier for us to get at different levels.

Well, why didn't German filmmakers ever make this film? And why didn't Klaus approach a German documentary team?

Epstein: Klaus approached us because he felt we would make an accessible film, based on our previous work; also, that it would get an international audience and not just be localized.

Friedman: One reason that a film hadn't been done in Germany before is just historical accident. It had to do with the timing of these men deciding to go public with their stories. They made their choice at a bad time in terms of television programming. German TV had just done a whole year on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.

The impression you give is that the six you film include every gay survivor there is, except two people who wouldn't talk to you.

Friedman: Right -- everybody known to be alive. There is just a small number because the survival rates were so bad for homosexuals in the camps. The death rates for homosexual prisoners were among the highest for non-Jewish inmate groups. And the numbers were relatively small to begin with. But I can't help thinking that there are more than the eight or so that we know of.

I'm fascinated by your ambivalence -- to me, it feeds into the look and the feel of the film. It has a twilight emotionalism. Right at the beginning you have this survivor, Gad Beck, talk about a person having to see the period "romantically" in order to understand it, already upsetting expectations of what a documentary of the Nazi era would be.

Friedman: That has to do with memory; it's certainly a film about memory, about telling history through the memories of very old people recalling things that happened to them 50 years ago. That defined the style for us -- the rhythm, how we told the story.

Epstein: The first interview we did was with Gad Beck. He did set the tone, because love was such an important theme for him in getting through those times.

Following Klaus Müller's figure, all in black, as he boards a train, with that percussive music evoking railroad tracks even when he's off the train, you feel as if you're part of a detective story.

Epstein: Good, good. That was what the story became for us -- we were on this journey of discovery with Klaus as our guide. Even though the film is about memory, doing it, for me, was about being aware of what is going on in the moment and being willing and able to use that. I think that paid off time and again: When we were confronted with a problem, turning that problem into something that became part of the film. The train, for example.

The train ride came to us because we were supposed to do an interview with this guy named Karl, who ended up in the film only briefly. He's the one who says "I'm not going to talk about these shitty, shameful deeds anymore." He had agreed to do a full-length interview and then he decided he just wouldn't. We took the train ride to see him and see what might happen. We made that part of the story. And we put Klaus on the train and that's how Klaus started to become our guide.

It all happened organically. It was an exciting time to be in Berlin because it was like the moon was being developed for the first time. There were construction cranes all over the city. It was early in the fusion: You could tell that it was just starting to feel like the East and West of the city were coming together. That immediately felt metaphoric to us: this whole reconstruction and rebirth of a city in the midst of people trying to preserve the sense of what it was, before that was lost forever.

Friedman: All that provided a dramatic, immediate structure. But there also was the historical structure. And we had to find a way to marry those two.

You marry them with the imagery: the trains, for example. Near the beginning, Gad Beck talks about sneaking in some lovemaking in stalled trains during bombing raids. Near the end, when one of your other witnesses talks about nearing the end of his life, you have a brief shot of a train receding in the snow. That's typical of the poetic quality this movie has, even when you chronicle the most atrocious events.

Friedman: We knew we were going to have to rely on archival footage, but the kinds of archival footage that we were finding only tangentially applied to gay life, because all the gay stuff was destroyed. The stuff that related to the Nazis and the Holocaust all felt over-familiar. So we struggled to use that material in a way that felt new -- that would make you look at it in a different way. We had a creative collaboration with our editor, Dawn Logsdon, who did find poetry in that archival material.

People won't be surprised to see Weimar-era Berlin presented as the homosexual Eden of the '20s. We know that from the "divine decadence" of "Cabaret." But you emphasize how German homosexuality also grows out of romanticism and nature love and youth cults. It's wild -- a whole spectrum of sexual stimulus and emotion that you're not used to seeing in homosexual histories. Was that a discovery for you, or did you know about it going in?

Epstein: I think my image of German youth groups was of the Hitler Youth. We had to educate ourselves before we realized that the Hitler Youth was a co-opting of a grass-roots movement that encompassed a whole range of ideologies from the far left to the far right to nudism and vegetarianism. And it seemed, at least anecdotally, that homoeroticism was very much a part of it. But it's dangerous to draw [sweeping] conclusions -- partly because it's dangerous to apply 21st century notions of homosexuality to early 20th century German culture. At the time of these youth movements, the concept of homosexuality was less than half a century old. It wasn't until Magnus Hirschfeld [the gay founder of Germany's Institute for Sexual Research] started studying it and publicizing his ideas of the "third sex" that people started thinking of homosexuals as a "type."

I don't think you do draw conclusions. But introducing that stuff and saying "Look, this was part of Germany, too," opens the film up and -- again - lets you add a different visual component.

Friedman: Yeah. We were able to get some flesh in there. [Laughter.]

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