The dignity of the ball - or football against order

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In the absence of regulations, beer puffs behind the goal post are nothing unusual in the Wild League.

The dignity of the ball: Or football against order is a German documentary film by director Max Meis from 2017. The film deals with the phenomenon of alternative football that is widespread across Germany, using the example of what is probably Germany's oldest alternative league, the Wild League in Bielefeld . The 95-minute film premiered in March 2017 and has since been shown in selected art house cinemas across Germany, as well as being released on DVD in August 2018. The 15th Berlin Football Film Festival 11-mm 2018 also included the film in its program. The film was presented in the Babylon cinema by 11 Freunde - magazine for football culture .

content

The dignity of the ball accompanies three selected teams of the Bielefeld Wildlife League through the 2015/16 season and tells anecdotes from 40 years of the league's history. This creates two narrative levels, that of the 2015/16 season and that of historical reviews. The beginning of the film is based on Asterix comics with a quote :

“The year is 1975 after Christ. The entire republic is occupied by the DFB. The whole republic? No. A small as well as insignificant province goes into resistance. It is the descendants of the Cherusci who have once again risen to face the mighty. They did not want to win a victory. They simply had enough of paragraphs, chauvinism and paternalism from the football capital Frankfurt. "

The year 1975 refers to the presumably founding year of the Wilden Liga Bielefeld , the rest to the criticism of the German Football Association (DFB) , which contributed to the emergence of an alternative game operation in Bielefeld . With the "descendants of Cherusker" a humorous parallel is to the Varus Battle in the Teutoburg Forest pulled in a Germanic army led by Cherusker -Fürsten Arminius the Roman legions of the commander Publius Varus Quinctilius defeated.

Sporting ambition is only present for 90 minutes in the Wild League. Before and after, the players indulge in laissez-faire.

With a satirical undertone, the commentary leads through 40 years of Wilde Liga Bielefeld. From the founding teams from the youth centers in the 1970s (including teams from the workers' youth center in Bielefeld and the FlaFla social center in Herford ), to the satirical reports in the Bielefelder StadtBlatt, to the present day. The three teams that are accompanied in this very present (2015/16 season) are called the Huscher Löwen , Oh Ah Cantona and the 11 UMFaller .

While men in their late 50s also play at the Huscher Löwen , Oh Ah Cantona is more student-oriented. The 11 UMFaller, on the other hand, are a social project from Bielefeld-Bethel in which young refugees are cared for. The "UMF" from the name stands for " Unaccompanied Minors Refugees ". The minors from the 11 UMFaller team can take part in the Wild League games without bureaucratic hurdles. In the DFB Escaped often can not join a team, having no national passports have. The three teams from The Dignity of the Ball can be seen as examples of humor and self-irony in alternative football.

The film also deals with the battle between the Wild League teams and the city of Bielefeld and the Arminia Bielefeld football club for their own playing areas in the 1980s and 1990s. The freely accessible grass pitches at the Bielefelder Radrennbahn should temporarily be expanded to become Arminia Bielefeld's training area and closed to recreational footballers. In the early 1990s, the teams of the Wild League kept cutting up a fence erected by the city in order to gain access to the grass pitches. They also organized protest actions, which ultimately led to Arminia Bielefeld being assigned another area for the training grounds.

During the filming of The Dignity of the Ball , an error in the calendar of the Bielefeld Wildlife League was discovered. The organizers of the league, which to this day has no legal form (eVo, etc.), assumed that they played their 41st season in 2015/16. It was shown accordingly on the printed schedule. However, a contemporary witness from the Schwarz Rot Chaos founding team from the Bielefeld Workers' Youth Center was able to present director Max Meis with a circular from 1976 on which the founding meeting dated April 21, 1976 was noted. Further research revealed that the anniversary celebration for the 25th anniversary of the Wild League in 2000 was held a year too early. Since at that time no contemporary witnesses could remember a founding date and no documents were available, a majority decision by the Wilde Liga plenum (plenum = the grassroots organizational body of the Wilde Liga, with representatives of all teams) led to the year 1975 being wrongly set as the founding year has been.

In the 1970s and 1980s, long hair was often undesirable in DFB teams. A reason to join the Wild League. Game scene in Bielefeld.

In The Dignity of the Ball , the author and journalist Jens Kirschneck also talks about the connections between the Wild League and Bielefelder StadtBlatt , for which he designed the sports website in the 1990s. According to Kirschneck, the unique humor of the Wild League, between self-irony and satire, influenced a humorous sports report in the StadtBlatt , the elements of which can still be found in 11 FREUNDE - magazine for football culture . Kirschneck works there as CvD . The magazine was founded in 2000 by Philipp Köster and Reinaldo Coddou H. , who also have a Bielefeld past.

The dignity of the ball strikes a path from Bielefeld to alternative football in the rest of Germany with a visit to the 30th German Alternative Championship (DAM) 2016 in Bremen. The film accompanies the Bielefeld team Oh Ah Cantona there and shows the tournament away from the pressure to perform and commercialism with alternative teams from all over Germany.

At the German Alternative Championship DAM, the focus is on having fun, which is why players often compete in costumes. Here is a cow from the "F2 Sunk" team from Kassel.

Financed through crowdfunding

The dignity of the ball was funded entirely through crowdfunding . In a first round of financing, around 8,700 euros gross were raised by February 2, 2015. After filming for the 2015/16 Wild League season, a further 4036 euros gross could be collected for the film editing. Among the supporters were companies from Bielefeld, such as Neue Westfälische or Sparkasse Bielefeld .

Reviews

The Westfalen-Blatt wrote:

"A sunflower as a corner flag and a bottle of beer behind the post in case there is not much going on in your own penalty area: after just over 40 years, filmmaker Max Meis has won the game with" The dignity of the ball or football against order " Liga set a monument with its documentation. "

The Weser Kurier stated:

"You usually play without a referee and satirize professional sport with imaginative names like" Arminia Bierzelt "," Hinter Milano "and" Dieter Hoeneß Hirnverband ", in Bremen the teams call themselves" Energie Kopfnuss "," AS Coma "or simply" Talent-free ". Fun and creativity defeat the pressure to perform. Who wants to smoke at half-time? No problem."

Die Neue Westfälische wrote:

"Max Meis has made a very worth seeing documentary about a Bielefeld phenomenon with all sorts of sympathetic peculiarities."

11 friends wrote:

"On the surface, the film can be enjoyed as an entertaining panopticon of sometimes bizarre types, but it also shows the change in a league from its political beginnings to an almost pure fun society."

Film festivals

2019: Official selection at the 5th Floodlight Football Film Festival Basel

2018: Official selection at the 15th 11mm Football Film Festival Berlin

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ THE DIGNITY OF THE BALL - OR FOOTBALL AGAINST ORDER . In: DOWNSIDEUP FILM . May 11, 2017 ( downsideup.de [accessed October 15, 2018]).
  2. ^ Ansgar Mönter: Professional film about the Wilde Liga Bielefeld . In: Bielefeld Mitte . ( nw.de [accessed October 15, 2018]).
  3. ↑ WESTFALEN-BLATT: The »Dignity of the Ball« is now also available on DVD . In: Westfalen-Blatt . ( westfalen-blatt.de [accessed on October 15, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Super User: The Dignity of the Ball or: Soccer vs. the order. Accessed October 15, 2018 (German).
  5. ↑ downside-up film: Soccer YES - DFB NO: "The dignity of the ball" about Germany's oldest wild league. September 12, 2017. Retrieved October 15, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Müllender, Bernd., Nendza, Jürgen .: Give me the cherry, Germany! : Colorful league and alternative football . 1st edition Klartext, Essen 1992, ISBN 3-88474-019-9 .
  7. ↑ SWR. Sport under the microscope: The Wild League - alternative football. April 1993
  8. ↑ York Schäfer: Wild and worthy . ( weser-kurier.de [accessed on October 17, 2018]).
  9. ↑ About us | 11 friends. Retrieved October 16, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Udo Watter: Piranhas and Red Pants . In: sueddeutsche.de . June 7, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed October 16, 2018]).
  11. ↑ DIE WILDE LIGA Football with a difference - DOKU start-up financing - VisionBakery. Retrieved October 17, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Wilde Liga - Der Film I Wild Football League - THE MOVIE - VisionBakery. Retrieved October 17, 2018 .
  13. ↑ DIE WILDE LIGA Football with a difference - DOKU start-up financing - VisionBakery. Retrieved October 17, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Jan Handelmann: Football against order . In: Westfalen-Blatt . ( westfalen-blatt.de [accessed on October 17, 2018]).
  15. ↑ York Schäfer: Wild and worthy . ( weser-kurier.de [accessed on October 17, 2018]).
  16. ^ Ansgar Mönter: Professional film about the Wilde Liga Bielefeld . In: Bielefeld Mitte . ( nw.de [accessed October 17, 2018]).
  17. ^ Matthias Hörstmann (Ed.): 11 FRIENDS . No. 205 . 11FREUNDE Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin November 22, 2018.
  18. ↑ The dignity of the ball at the Floodlight Film Festival Basel. Retrieved January 17, 2019 .
  19. ↑ The dignity of the ball at the 11mm Festival Berlin. Retrieved January 17, 2019 .