The other home - chronicle of a longing

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Movie
Original title The other home - chronicle of a longing
Country of production Germany , France
original language German
Publishing year 2013
length 230 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Edgar Reitz
script Edgar Reitz
Gert Heidenreich
production Christian Reitz
Margaret Ménégoz (co-producer)
music Michael Riessler
camera Gernot Roll
cut Uwe Klimmeck
occupation

The Other Home - Chronicle of a Longing is a 2013 film by Edgar Reitz , based on the film series Heimat , also by Edgar Reitz . The film deals with the period of Vormärz from 1842 to 1845 and the wave of emigrations from the Hunsrück to Brazil at that time . The cinema release in Germany was on October 3, 2013. The film is almost exclusively in black and white and some elements are in color.

content

Jakob Simon is a romantic farmer boy in the Hunsrück village "Schabbach". He dreams of a life in the jungles of Brazil . He was modeled on the many emigrants of his time who left Germany for America. Jacob is even learning the languages ​​of the Indians of South America. Together with his great love Jettchen, he forges his new life plan. But when Jacob's brother Gustav returned from Prussian military service, the love between Jacob and Jettchen was shaken, and Jacob's life developed completely differently than he had planned.

background

After his three-part homeland saga , Edgar Reitz wanted to film another Hunsrück story and decided on the time of the wave of emigration in Germany in the middle of the 19th century. Reitz named a letter that he received while filming Heimat 3 - Chronicle of a Turning Point as a specific trigger for the new film ; In the letter a nurse from Brazil wrote that she had seen Reitz on television and that he looked very much like her boss, who was also called Reitz. This resulted in a longer contact, which eventually led to the idea for the film. However, the aspect of Brazil already plays a role in Heimat - A German Chronicle ("Heimat 1"): In the last episode, in which the main character Maria Simon dies, two men from Brazil appear who are also called Simon and are in Schabbach den Follow the traces of their ancestors.

Edgar Reitz did with the other home tell mainly a story about the exodus in the Hunsrück of the 19th century. Recourse to “Schabbach” and the Simon family was more a means and not an end for him. In a press conference in April 2012 Reitz expressed that he did not necessarily want to tell the history of the Simon family. Reitz said it was advantageous if fans of the Heimat trilogy went to the cinema simply because they hoped the film would enable them to see the ancestors of the Simons. In any case, the film only tells part of the prehistory of the village of Schabbach, as there are many places and squares that are known from homeland 1 to 3 (e.g. the church, the Wiegand house, the Schirmer house, the hall and the colonial goods -Laden) no longer appear in the film because they are in Woppenroth . Reitz had decided not to take Woppenroth into account for “Die Andere Heimat” and to shoot mainly in the neighboring village of Gehlweiler . The Schabbach, known from Heimat 1 to 3, is therefore only recognizable in “The Other Home” in the Simon smithy.

Filming

Reitz chose the smithy in the Hunsrück village of Gehlweiler, which was already known from the other home squadrons, as the filming location. Reitz made a conscious decision to shoot the film again in a real village and not in a pure setting. He wanted a historically grown local structure and not an artificially created one. Nevertheless, many backdrops were set up in Gehlweiler for the filming and the Simon smithy, which is known from the other home squadrons with its plastered house front, also received a presented half-timbered facade.

The residents of Gehlweiler were involved in the making of the film before filming began, and a large majority voted in favor of redesigning their village as a location.

Shooting began on April 17, 2012, and work ended in August 2012. The world premiere took place on August 29, 2013 at the Venice Film Festival; the German premiere was on September 28, 2013 in Simmern (Hunsrück).

Reviews

“With the new work Edgar Reitz gives us many great cinematic moments: a village festival in a barn, the start of the first steam engine in the village; or the death of grandfather at the loom when the clacking of the loom wood can be heard for minutes, the camera gently floats through the house and suddenly the clacking stops. Or when the mother reminds Jakob that it was time to get married and that there was Florinchen who sings beautifully. 'The other home' kindles a storm of longing for distance and melancholy for the ephemeral in the mind of the viewer, as it has seldom seen before in the cinema. "

- Deutschlandradio Kultur

“It's not a sweet homeland film happy ending. Too many children died for that in the course of the story. The images of the gaunt country doctor in his helplessness against the diphtheria epidemic stick in the memory as well as the silent, desperate farewells when families once again join the long emigrant treks. Hundreds of thousands were washed out of southwest Germany in just a few decades before industrialization swallowed up the masses of impoverished rural populations. To remember this often forgotten chapter of German and European history is by no means the least credit to the fourth 'home'. "

- The world

“To call this vision of individual longing amid collective compulsion a masterpiece would be a mistake. The film is much more: a social history, a study of slowness in front of the motorized world, a drama of collective life, a sophisticated psychological study before the invention of psychology. [...] You have to search for a long time, amid the frenetic, never-ending applause from the audience in Venice, to find a similarly successful epoch work in the history of cinema. "

- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“'The other home' is [...] not easy to consume and rather bulky. You have to get involved with these events, which, with one or the other length, don't always take the four hours of the film. And yet the 80-year-old Reitz succeeds once again in breaking down the big story into small stories. Through his characters Jakob and Gustav, the wave of emigrants to Brazil that was actually experienced can be experienced, the motivations of the people can be understood. "

- Aliki Nassoufis, dpa / Stern

“The term 'historical film' is being redefined. […] Cameraman Gernot Roll does a great job with his unmistakable imagery in cinemascope format: The grains of dust on the loom sparkle in the falling sunlight, the endless caravans of covered wagons on the horizon look like silhouettes, shoeing horses becomes a physical experience. The interspersed color scheme is magical - sometimes a flashing piece of gold, the German flag, flax blossoms. The film depicts the forlornness of the individual in a phase of upheaval, the longing for a place where one belongs. Some call it home. "

- Margret Köhler, Bavarian Television

"Here [...] the past and the vanished are not reproduced, but a time is filled with life from within. […] A good part of the size of 'Die Another Heimat' lies in a shift in perspective. Edgar Reitz takes a look at Germany and thus at a Western Europe that today likes to see itself as an immigrant region flooded by strangers and yet itself was once a continent of desperate, hopeful emigrants. "

- Anke Leweke : The daily newspaper

“It is precisely because of the almost unspectacular that this long but increasingly intense journey through time becomes such a great visual experience, a 225 minute long trance. It seems like the last rebellion of the auteur cinema of the late 20th century in the everyday life of digital images at the beginning of the 21st century, which are now also consumed on tablets and smartphones. Films like this 81-year-old director's last big 'home throw' will appear less and less on the big screen. This is exactly why it is worth looking at it several times. There is just so much to see. "

- Jörg Taszman, Deutschlandradio Kultur

“Reitz not only looks carefully, but also always knows exactly what to show and what not, where the ellipse or the quick cut to another scene help and where it is worthwhile to linger. In Heimat 3, for example, which was not lacking in soap opera twists, he was always able to avoid the feeling of emotional stripping without having to forego continuation dramaturgy and tension. In The Other Homeland it is the second half in which the events follow one another more closely, the gullet of the story soaks up the protagonists. Some will emigrate to Brazil or elsewhere, others will have to settle in this homeland. If they will populate a collective memory of earlier times, it will be because they dared to dream. "

- Critic.de

Awards

  • 2013: Bavarian Film Prize
    • Best script to Edgar Reitz and Gert Heidenreich
    • Best producer to Edgar Reitz and Christian Reitz
  • 2013: German Film Critics' Prize
    • Best feature film
    • Best camera to Gernot Roll
  • 2014: German Film Award
    • Best feature film in gold
    • Best script to Edgar Reitz and Gert Heidenreich
    • Best direction to Edgar Reitz

Others

  • For the role of Margarethe Simon, Edgar Reitz chose the actress Marita Breuer , who played the main role of Maria Simon in the first home season.
  • Andreas Külzer , who plays the role of the village pastor Wiegand, was seen in Heimat 3 as Dieter Simon.
  • Julia Prochnow, already seen as Moni in Heimat 3, plays the village midwife here.
  • Set builder was Anton ("Toni") Gerg, who also developed sets in films such as The Story of Brandner Kaspar and Luther . Gerg died on the night of the fourth day of shooting in April 2012. Later in the film, a camera panning across the Schabbach cemetery captures a tombstone on which Toni Gerg's name can be read. There are further hints in the film: During the recording, there was a picture of Toni Gerg on the top step of the school building, with a few burning candles around it. A third reminiscence of the deceased set maker is finally hidden in a dialogue: When Margarethe, who is suffering from the lungs, carried by her sons Jakob and Gustav, sits on the edge of the flax field to inhale the healthy air, she suddenly has a vision. All of her deceased children appear to her. First she mentions "Toni, who was lying dead in his bed". As you can see in the documentary “Making of Heimat”, Toni Gerg died in his bed at night, probably as a result of a heart disease. The “Making of Heimat” shows Edgar Reitz how he informs the entire team about Toni Gerg's death.
  • Edgar Reitz has a cameo : Towards the end of the film he appears as a farmer in the field, who is asked by the scholar Alexander von Humboldt (played by Werner Herzog ) where Schabbach is. Humboldt is looking for Jakob Simon, who has started correspondence with him about Brazil. This brief joint appearance by Reitz and Herzog can also be seen as an allusion to the different careers of two German filmmakers: one (Herzog) went out into the world, the other (Reitz) stayed at home.

literature

  • Edgar Reitz: The other home. Chronicle of a longing. My personal film book. 2nd Edition. Schüren, Marburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-89472-868-7 .
  • Edgar Reitz: The other home. Chronicle of a longing. The book of pictures. Schirmer and Mosel, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-8296-0661-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Other Home - Chronicle of Desire . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2015 (PDF; test number: 140 572-a V).
  2. ↑ The other home - Chronicle of a longing. In: Zelluloid.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on September 21, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Edgar Reitz in an SWR interview in 2012
  4. ↑ Reitz in a press release about the "other home" as a prelude to the "home trilogy"
  5. ↑ Reitz interview in SWR
  6. ^ Location of the new Edgar Reitz film. (No longer available online.) In: Gehlweiler.de. Archived from the original on December 30, 2012 ; accessed on September 21, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gehlweiler.de
  7. ↑ Deutschlandradio, September 2, 2013
  8. ↑ Die Welt, August 28, 2013
  9. ^ FAZ of September 3, 2013
  10. ↑ Jacob's longing for Brazil. In: Stern . October 1, 2013, accessed October 6, 2013 .
  11. ↑ The other home - Chronicle of a longing. In: Bavarian television . September 20, 2013, archived from the original on October 5, 2013 ; Retrieved October 6, 2013 .
  12. ↑ Anke Leweke: Film start “The Other Home”. Tortured Germany. In: Culture / Film. The daily newspaper , October 2, 2013, accessed on March 21, 2015 .
  13. ↑ A cinematic trance. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . October 2, 2013, accessed October 6, 2013 .
  14. ^ Film review. In: Critic.de. August 30, 2013, accessed October 15, 2013 .
  15. ↑ Article about Anton Gerg (Merkur Online, 2008)
  16. ↑ Making of Heimat ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Documentary by Anja Pohl and Jörg Adolph, Germany 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ifproductions.de
  17. ↑ Article in the "Tagesspiegel", August 30, 2013