When Unku was Ede's girlfriend
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | When Unku was Ede's girlfriend |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1981 |
| length | 72 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Helmut Dziuba |
| script | Helmut Dziuba |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Berlin" |
| music | Christian Steyer |
| camera | Helmut Bergmann |
| cut | Christa Helwig |
| occupation | |
| |
When Unku Ede was girlfriend is a German children's film from DEFA by Helmut Dziuba from 1981. It is based on motifs from the children's book Ede und Unku by Alex Wedding .
action
Berlin in the 1920s: Gypsies arrive with their circus on the outskirts of the city . People react with suspicion, mothers bring their children into the house and the laundry off the line. The twelve-year-old boy Ede Sperling, however, quickly makes the acquaintance of the girl Unku, shows her his fish and later saves them from the newspaper boys who hunt them. Unku slowly succeeds in rebutting Ede's prejudices against Sinti .
Ede's mother is no longer alive and Ede's father has no income because the workers go on strike and nobody wants to be a strike breaker . The older sister Lisa feeds the family as an usher in the cinema. The family is always on the verge of losing the rented apartment, especially since the neighbor as operations manager wants to win Ede's father as a strike breaker. At Unku's suggestion, Ede also tries to get a job. He would like to work as a newsboy, but he lacks a bike for that. Even a used one that he is marveling at in a shop window would cost 30 marks. Ede, however, only saved five marks. The sister adds 20 marks a week and together Ede and Unku try to earn the rest of the money, even if Ede buys a chain for a few pennies Unku.
Once they deliver the newspaper by horse and cart, which ends in chaos. At the fair they hire themselves out as a carousel turner and want in vain to win money by throwing the dice. They are even recruited as extras for a film, but Unku is said to be cliché to play a stealing gypsy girl and runs away. At Ede's home, the issue of the weekly wages causes unexpected problems. The father had to pay the rest of the saved money for the rent. There is hardly any food left in the house and Ede can no longer return the weekly wages because he has already paid the bike down. From Unku he surprisingly receives the missing five marks that the girl wants to have found and can buy the bike. When he proudly shows it off to the other newspaper boys, they claim that Unku stole the money. In fact, Ede Unku surprises when she steals several coins from a carnival visitor with a trick. He throws his bike at her and runs away. Also Max, the friend of Ede's sister, who has stood by him several times, can hardly convince Ede of Unkus' good character. She only wanted to help him and could hardly get money any other way, since Sinti were not employed by anyone. Ede argues that his father doesn't make money either, but still won't steal.
Ede's father appears at home with several rolls. A short time later the neighbor rings the doorbell and confronts his father for stealing the rolls from his breakfast bag on the garden fence. He wants to refrain from filing a complaint about mouth robberies if Ede's father voluntarily returns to work the next day. Ede realizes how bad things are for the family and how important it was to buy the bike that Unku had brought him in the meantime in the pouring rain and leaned against the fence. The next day he drives to Unku, but she has already moved on. On the ground, Ede only finds the chain that he once gave her.
production
The film premiered on April 3, 1981 in the Berlin cosmos . It was based on motifs from the children's book Ede und Unku by Alex Wedding, published in 1931 , but has been adapted in keeping with the times. The roles in the film were partly filled by amateur actors.
Production design: Production designer Harry Leupold found some film locations in the quarter around Pfarrstrasse in Berlin-Ostkreuz. With minor modifications and some contemporary additions, the Pfarrstraße looked like a street around 1920. The fairground rides were set up in the Gürtelstraße.
criticism
Contemporary critics praised the film for "the beautiful unobtrusiveness with which political situations and intellectual comprehension of the film characters are vividly captured, with which moral values are symbolized in general and also presently - friendship, solidarity, community spirit, solidarity, respect for one another."
For the lexicon of international films , Als Unku Ede's girlfriend was a "sensitive sheet of images based on a children's book that was widely read in the GDR, which brings anti-racist ideas thoughtfully and entertainingly to young viewers."
Cinema called the film "touching".
Award
At the Moscow Film Festival in 1981, the film received the Children's Jury Prize.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 27-28 .
- When Unku Ede's girlfriend was… In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (ed.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89487-234-9 , pp. 283-285.
Web links
- As Unku Edes girlfriend was in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- As Unku Ede's girlfriend was at filmportal.de
- Online documentation Harry Leupold, stage and production design 1952–1995
- As Unku Ede's friend she was with the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans-Dieter Tok in: Leipziger Volkszeitung. April 10, 1981.
- ↑ When Unku was Ede's girlfriend. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 21, 2018 .
- ↑ See cinema.de