The prize of last year's Duisburg Film Week was won by a man of 54 years. For Andreas Goldstein, this was by no means a matter of honor. He actually just started filmmaking. Or rather, to finish the films. Now it has become two, the documentary essay "Der Funktionär" about his father Klaus Gysi, who was awarded in Duisburg. And the feature film "Adam and Evelyn", which premiered in Venice and this week comes to the movies. A double debut, so to speak.
The question of why he took so long to meet, Goldstein now more often. He calls himself with a sense of humor a "precocious late developer": "People always liked me - I was shy and shy, but understood the matter well."
By the people meant is about the documentary filmmaker and Brecht pupil Peter Voigt. Goldstein began working for Voigt when, after studying cultural studies at Berlin's Humboldt University in 1991, he moved to the film school in Potsdam-Babelsberg. An idiosyncratic experience: "I've never met the GDR so badly as at the film school," says Goldstein, "provincial and authoritarian as the NCOs in the technical issue, who have snapped at you, if three blades of grass were still on the protection of the sound microphone . "
The nineties: misty
Later Goldstein worked for the film producer Laurens Straub. "I was able to do what I wanted, learn how to write calculations, and found the industry more enjoyable than the film school." Babelsberg was simply the wrong place for Goldstein: "At that time I did not even know what I wanted to do, I was searching, and to be on the look-out, film schools are bad places because it has always been about it, as successful as possible To make films. "
The fact that Goldstein has just come out with his films, but has another reason. "Coming from the GDR, the nineties were misty years, and I believe that I've just arrived in the present, that I had no relation to my time." That sounds odd at first glance, considering that both "The Official" and "Adam and Evelyn" are about history. But yesterday can only be told if you live in the present day.
DOK Leipzig
"The functionary"
In addition, both films are not sealed trips into a past; they open what was, rather, for the present time. In "Der Funktionär" (the film will also be released in the spring) Goldstein uses the example of his father to describe the long, rigid failure of socialist Germany. The setting is barren: Goldstein's text is spoken to photos from the "windless years" of the GDR decline and footage from the father, who was head of Aufbau-Verlag, under Ulbricht Minister, Ambassador in Rome and finally secretary for church matters. (And yes, also Gregor Gysi's father)
Goldstein is strict with the father; In the best scenes he comments like a theater critic, as the Comrade Minister writhes in television programs. How something does not come from the place, how the GDR always returns only to its founding myth as a legitimation of itself - that has rarely become as vivid as in the film text meandering in beauty and precision. "To be 37 years old when founding a state", says the filmmaker about the father, "everything is over there, because you do not change any more."
From the perspective of "Der Funktionär" the hope for a better GDR with Ulbricht has died. The Honecker period Goldstein therefore appears as a capitulation to the attempt to build a society liberated from capital - "that you have bribed the people with consumer goods that you could not afford at that time."
No rejoicing over the fall of the Berlin Wall
Unlike in the dominant West German film production over this period, the last two decades of the GDR Goldstein are characterized by the retreat into private: "It has clearly felt that there is no policy that the government does not act anymore, after all meets social democratic goals were: cheap housing and food, free health care, kindergartens. "
This perception can explain why Goldstein was interested in Ingo Schulze's summer novel "Adam and Evelyn". It is, as is so often the case with Schulze, a story of the transition into the new era and no jubilation about the fall of the Berlin Wall, which solves all pent-up problems. "With the turn, Adam loses his freedom," says Goldstein about his protagonist played by Florian Teichtmeister stoically.
New visions
Florian Teichtmeister and Anne Karis in "Adam and Evelyn"
Adam is such a figure who has settled in a private paradise - a dressmaker who makes the wishes possible, which are not fulfilled by the planned economy, and with his customers also has amorous affairs. Therefore, Evelyn (Anne Kanis) flees from him on holiday to Hungary in the summer of 1989. Adam he travels to her, they finally land him West, which looks here unimaginable: terraced houses, fitted kitchens.
He has severely reduced the talkative Schulze novel with his co-author, cinematographer and editor Jakobine Motz. Thus, "Adam and Evelyn" has become a silent, stage-like film that does not want to conjure "DDR" out of the fund, but rather understands it as a landscape, a mentality.
The denial of certain conventions is understandable, but it also gives the film something defensive. "I understand the objection," says Goldstein, "the film is very vulnerable and reserved." Goldstein attributes this to his origins, his imprints; During his studies he was enthusiastic about the strict, Brechtian-informed works of the director's song Straub-Huillet: "German theater film, that's just the roots, you can not get rid of it." I can not pretend that I'm a Frenchman and that lightness claim."
In the video: The review of "Adam and Evelyn"
New visions
French ease perhaps not, but a specific German roguish. After the sponsorship award from Duisburg Goldstein showed jokes about other possible awards. A success at the First Steps Awards - that would have to be in there.