Coming Out (film)

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Movie
Original title Coming out
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1989
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Heiner Carow
script Wolfram Witt
production DEFA, KAG “Babelsberg”, Horst Hartwig
music Stefan Carow
camera Martin Schlesinger
cut Evelyn Carow
occupation

Coming Out is a feature film from the GDR produced by DEFA from 1989 with a central homosexual theme.

action

The action takes place in East Berlin . The young teacher Philipp Klarmann gets to know his colleague Tanja, whom he still knows from studies, better after an accident in the school stairwell, and the two begin a relationship. An old friend of Tanja, Jakob, whom she calls Redford , turns out to be Philip's childhood sweetheart. Philip's parents had ended the relationship by giving Jakob a circle box and a bicycle as compensation. When they meet again, Philipp falls into a crisis and fled to a gay bar, from which he was finally brought home drunk by two bar visitors. Soon afterwards he met one of these helpers, the young Matthias, who was initially anonymous to him, in front of the theater and began a relationship with him.

Philipp has to deal with his own sexual orientation, but does not have the strength to do so. At a concert with the famous conductor Daniel Barenboim in the Schauspielhaus there is a scandal when Matthias meets Tanja in search of Philipp. In the end, Philipp can confess his homosexuality and risks an affront against the school administration.

background

  • The production made by the DEFA studio for feature films (Potsdam-Babelsberg), artistic working group "Babelsberg" was the only GDR film with a central homosexual theme.
  • Coming Out came about thanks to Heiner Carow , who worked in DEFA for seven years to implement the project.
  • The film premiered on November 9, 1989 at the East Berlin Kino International in a double screening. Immediately after the two screenings at 7:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., the premiere audience witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall . The premiere party took place in the Berlin restaurant Zum Burgfrieden , one of the filming locations and located in the immediate vicinity of Bornholmer Strasse , where the first border crossing was opened for East Berliners that evening.
  • The film shows skinheads from East Berlin who are xenophobic in the S-Bahn. The existence of skinheads in the GDR or East Berlin was always officially denied.

Locations

The opening sequence of the film shows a rapid drive of an ambulance. The protagonist Philipp rides his bicycle from Berlin-Mitte ( Alexanderplatz ) via Prenzlauer Berg (including Schönhauser Allee ) to Pankow . Some scenes of the film were shot at actual meeting places for homosexuals in the GDR, the fairy tale fountain in Friedrichshain or in the bar Zum Burgfrieden (Wichertstraße 69), which has no longer existed since January 2000, and in the Schoppenstube (Schönhauser Allee 44) in Prenzlauer, which has been closed since June 2013 Mountain. Charlotte von Mahlsdorf has a small supporting role. The school building of the film is today's Carl-von-Ossietzky-Gymnasium , a historic building in Pankow with impressive stairwells and corridors. The members of the film's school management were played in part by the school's teachers at the time. The choice of this school was not without piquancy, since around the same time as the filming in the actual school, students were evicted after public criticism of the NVA military parades (1988). The apartment scenes were filmed in the private apartment of the Lothar Bisky family . At that time he was the rector of the Babelsberg Film School .

Reviews

“If the topic were explosive enough even in a liberal society, the drama would be abundantly clear in a state like the GDR. The confident staging with calm camera work, the soulful soundtrack and above all the impressive cast let the audience literally empathize with the teacher's tragic situation. Even the erotic scenes are not voyeuristic ... "

- new-video.de

Awards

Berlin International Film Festival 1990

National Feature Film Festival of the GDR in Karl-Marx-Stadt 1990

  • National film award in the best director category for Heiner Carow
  • National film award in the best young actor category for Matthias Freihof

Further prices

Soundtrack

A soundtrack for Coming Out has not been released and the credits do not contain any information about the titles or artists of the music pieces used. The soundtrack can only be reconstructed by listening carefully.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ filmportal: Coming Out www.filmportal.de, accessed on September 13, 2016
  2. ^ Regine Sylvester: It was only a success: On the death of the film author Wolfram Witt . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 26, 2003.
  3. ↑ How the GDR perished in the "Burgfrieden" . In: Die Welt , November 9, 1999
  4. ↑ The anniversary of the coming out from the East on taz.de , November 9, 2009
  5. ↑ Premiere party in the "Burgfrieden" ; Bisky on the film and its premiere on freitag.de , November 12, 2009.
  6. ↑ New-Video.de