My Wonderful West Berlin

INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

SCREENINGS:

November 18 – Cine Itaú Augusta 3 – 4 pm

November 21 – Cine Itaú Augusta 3 – 4 pm

ORIGINAL TITLE: Mein wunderbares West-Berlin

COUNTRY: Germany

YEAR: 2017

RUNNING TIME: 97′

DIRECTOR: Jochen Hick

CAST: Romy Haag, Maximilian Lenz, Ades Zabel / SCREENPLAY: Jochen Hick / CINEMATOGRAPHY: Alexander Gheorghiu, Jochen Hick / EDITING: Thomas Keller / SOUND: André Zacher, Jörg Theil, Michael Kaczmarek / PRODUCTION: Jochen Hick / PRODUCTION COMPANY: Galeria Alaska Productions, in co-production with rbb, Berlin

SYNOPSIS: In West Berlin in the 1960s it was possible to find bars where men could be left to themselves – a fact that was to turn the city into a magnet for young gay men. The protagonists of this film, all still active members of the community today, recall those early years in the city. Theirs are memories of a community that fought steadily for its existence, and of its change, right up to the fall of the Wall. Faced with considerable social repression in the 1970s, a collective gay identity began to emerge, and the ‘West Berlin homosexual campaign’ called for the abolition of paragraph 175 and the overthrow of patriarchy. Ruined buildings become the venues for new ways of living together such as all-male communes or the ‘queer house’. Cottaging, East-West affairs, leather bars, drag performances in the subway – an anarchic kind of joy outshines past suffering. A decade later, AIDS was to hit Berlin. After Out in Ost-Berlin (Out In East Berlin) Jochen Hick explores queer lifestyles in the West of the city and the roots of a fascination that the metropolis still holds as a refuge – and not just for gay men. A fascinating journey through time featuring previously unpublished archive material.

Official selection at Berlin IFF 2017.

ADVISORY RATING: 18 years

DIRECTOR’S FILMOGRAPHY:

2017 Mein wunderbares West-Berlin

2016 Der Ost-Komplex

2013 Out in Ost-Berlin: Lesben und Schwule in der DDR

2011 DDR unterm Regenbogen

2009 The Good American

2008 East/West – Sex & Politics

2006 Hallelujah! (short)

2006 Deutschland – Ein Herbstmärchen (short)

2005/II Rainbow’s End