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A selection of films:

blick . berlin . dok

Charm of the Andes

Confidence against violence

Escape to Mexico

A small piece of Germany

Home coming - From Berlin to Lima

Señor Turista - Encounters at the Lake Titicaca

 


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  A small piece of Germany  
     
 

Gerlinde Böhm Filmproduction & SFB, 1990
Documentary film, 93 min.
16mm, color
Script & director: Joachim Tschirner, Lew Hohmann, Klaus Salge
Camera: Claus Deubel
Sound: Paul Oberle
Editing: Gerlinde Böhm, Gabriele Schaetz

 
     
 

Today everything is in the open. Everything seems to be free for sightseeing: The strip of death, the wrecked watchtowers, the secret sealed documents. In January of 1990 three film makers from East and West meet. Each of them was involved in the events after the 9th of November 1989 in his own way, carried away by the pace of the history, almost suffocated by the images of the current media. To set a film against this pace of the chronicle, which hangs on to the memories, was the common starting point for the film “Ein schmales Stück Deutschland” (A small piece of Germany).

Joachim Tschirner: When school started on the 1st of September [Anmerkung: 1961], the wall was 18 days old. The soldiers in front of our house, which we photographed secretly from our children’s room, advocated our interests said our teachers and parents. And I am convinced that they believed in it.

Lew Hohmann: In our life as pioneers [Anmerkung: sollte vielleicht erklärt werden?] there wasn’t a wall yet, but there was the public enemy and the certainty, that the money would be abolished in communism. We listened to Jerry Cotton and Rock’n Roll. In Halle (City in the east of Germany) the West was as far as America.

Klaus Salge: When I came to Berlin from the West for the first time the wall was up for a year. My teachers were anti-communists and sometimes they showed films about concentration camps. That’s all.

Goethe-Institute 1991

There are sentences created, which an ingenious author couldn’t weave better: “We were quiet all the time”, repeats a deeply shocked and insecure mother about ten times: Her son was wounded at the border between the two Germanys during an attempt to escape and almost bled to death. To top the brutality the officials of the DDR demanded a compensation of 5.000 Deutsch Marks “for the damaged border fence”. Under this impression the formidable and esthetic pictures of the demolition of the watch towers give the viewer a true relief. You observe, how astonishing easy these symbols of confinement could be pulled down, and you think how long it took nevertheless until this time came…

Münchner Merkur, 04/06/1991
 
 

 

 
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© Gerlinde Böhm Filmproduktion 2011