Jochen Hick's newest work is, just like his others and his probably most famous film "Ich kenn keinen - Allein unter Heteros", an interesting study on the perception of homosexuals again. This time the focus is on gay people, men and women, in the GDR. It describes the individual fates of several concerned as they visit places with a special meaning to them and give interviews to summarize the way they loved and were subsequently targeted by the government. It's really a good mix of tragedy and humor and I have to say they really selected quite a few interesting characters who have something to tell, some younger ones who mostly refer to the 80s not too long before the Wall fell, some older ones whose sexual revolution goes way back to the early years of the GDR.
I saw this documentary during a special screening on a Monday night where the theater always shows gay-related movies. The director was present and made a reference before the film started that it gets wrongly pushed into a spot by media that it's really just gay-themed and is allegedly not really relevant to heterosexual audiences, which is gonna hurt the film's box office considerably. I fully agree with Hick here. This one is much more than that and I recommend it very much to people with an interest in German history, even those abroad who may have enjoyed the likes of "Sonnenallee", "Herr Lehmann", "Das Leben der Anderen" etc. I really can't think of any other fiction film or documentary so far with that particular focus and the execution was certainly well done.
While I thought it dragged occasionally after the one-hour mark because of the less interesting interviewees, this was definitely made-up by the fact that I could listen to some of them for hours telling their anecdotes. There was an East German musician and entertainer (Michael Reimann? I'm not entirely sure) in there (you could easily see he has stage experience by how vividly he told from his memory), unfortunately only for one short scene where he tells one truly absurd occurrence about how people who potentially had sexually transmitted diseases were persecuted in East Berlin. And near the end there was a meeting between two gays from the GDR arrange who hadn't seen each other for a very long time, since they got separated by police in a train back in the 80s. I'm not entirely sure how I liked that. It was quite unspectacular and I usually like it more emotional, but that's really just me and on the other hand it's good they depicted it the way it happened and didn't stage anything that wasn't authentic.
As a whole, I recommend the film. It's informative, sad, funny and has pretty much all the ingredients a documentary needs to succeed. I hope it will. It's definitely worth a watch for everybody who lives in Berlin, lived in the GDR or is simply interested in East German history in general and does not deserve to be put in the niche that it's not worth to be seen beyond the LBGT-community.
I saw this documentary during a special screening on a Monday night where the theater always shows gay-related movies. The director was present and made a reference before the film started that it gets wrongly pushed into a spot by media that it's really just gay-themed and is allegedly not really relevant to heterosexual audiences, which is gonna hurt the film's box office considerably. I fully agree with Hick here. This one is much more than that and I recommend it very much to people with an interest in German history, even those abroad who may have enjoyed the likes of "Sonnenallee", "Herr Lehmann", "Das Leben der Anderen" etc. I really can't think of any other fiction film or documentary so far with that particular focus and the execution was certainly well done.
While I thought it dragged occasionally after the one-hour mark because of the less interesting interviewees, this was definitely made-up by the fact that I could listen to some of them for hours telling their anecdotes. There was an East German musician and entertainer (Michael Reimann? I'm not entirely sure) in there (you could easily see he has stage experience by how vividly he told from his memory), unfortunately only for one short scene where he tells one truly absurd occurrence about how people who potentially had sexually transmitted diseases were persecuted in East Berlin. And near the end there was a meeting between two gays from the GDR arrange who hadn't seen each other for a very long time, since they got separated by police in a train back in the 80s. I'm not entirely sure how I liked that. It was quite unspectacular and I usually like it more emotional, but that's really just me and on the other hand it's good they depicted it the way it happened and didn't stage anything that wasn't authentic.
As a whole, I recommend the film. It's informative, sad, funny and has pretty much all the ingredients a documentary needs to succeed. I hope it will. It's definitely worth a watch for everybody who lives in Berlin, lived in the GDR or is simply interested in East German history in general and does not deserve to be put in the niche that it's not worth to be seen beyond the LBGT-community.
