Fariaho

Movie
Original title	Fariaho
Country of production	GDR
original language	German
Publishing year	1983
length	99 minutes
Rod
Director	Roland Graef
script	Roland Count Martin Stephan
production	DEFA
camera	Jürgen Brauer
cut	Monika Schindler
occupation
Franciszek Pieczka : Sebastian Fußberg André Hiller : Achim Lobau Arianne Borbach : Marianne Heide Kipp : Mother Lobau Marylu Poolman : Mrs. Sammet Karl-Heinz Welzel : Bruno Hans-Uwe Bauer : Magnus Joachim Nimtz : Spot Werner Godemann : Butcher Achim Schmidtchen : host Jaecki Schwarz : Schiebow Fred Delmare : Dog Dealer Eckhard Becker : Mr. Sammet Arnim Mühlstädt : Bigger Anne Wollner : Isolde Ernst-Georg Schwill : Landlord in a village pub Hermann Beyer : Speaker behind the hall door Hanns-Michael Schmidt

Fariaho is a DEFA feature film by Roland Gräf from 1983, based on a story by Martin Stephan .

action

In the 1950s, the old puppeteer Sebastian Fußberg still roams the country with his EMW - as a representative of an art that seems to be about to die out and whose revival and renewal is still a long way off. He lacks a second man for his puppet show in order to be able to realize his performances. That's why he wants to advertise the grandson of his former partner. His mother is not at all enthusiastic about it, as Achim Lobau works as a waiter in his parents' restaurant. But Achim is no longer at home and he joins Sebastian. They live more badly than right from their performances, for which there are actually only children and old people as interested parties. There is only the familiar repertoire, the highlight of which “Genoveva” does not want to fit so much into a cultural-political landscape in which tractorists and activists are more important than old knight stories. Sebastian Fußberg has bad behind him, was for many years in a concentration camp because the fascists and Itinerant people did not fit into their national community delusion. But what he is least able to cope with is that his partner perished in the concentration camp while he was released early.

Achim is working well and becoming a good puppeteer. When the car breaks down again, after a performance in front of workers at a construction site, they get to know the girl Marianne, who, when she is not cleaning, lies in the beds of the builders. The only condition to go to bed with her is to wear the red soccer jersey of her boyfriend, who is in a home and whom she wants to marry after his release. She joins the puppeteers. Achim now wears the red jersey quite often. But these three have little in common. The individualist Fußberg has evidently reached the limit of human shock, but the passion for art, the naivety of his dolls, and some of their strength still live in him. He has not disclosed anything of his ideals. This gives him the ability to find the right answers for the two young people and to show them an attitude. There is a lot that they accept from him: self-respect and dignity, emotional power, feeling and sensitivity. The two young people separate from Sebastian, first Marianne, who pretends to want to go to her parents, and a little later also Achim. Origin and life experience are too different. Sebastian comes to terms with his past by burning dolls with the appearance of well-known Nazi greats that were stored in his basement. The last pictures show him thoughtfully entering a new big city.

production

Fariaho was shot on ORWO color by the Babelsberg Artistic Working Group and had its premiere on September 1, 1983 in the Berlin Kino International . The first broadcast in the first program of the GDR television took place on November 22, 1985 and on March 6, 1986 it was shown for the first time in the cinemas of the Federal Republic.

criticism

The lexicon of international film described the film as a stylish and profound film with tragicomic features, which shaped the encounters of people and generations with caution and sensitivity; not only as a reflection on the unresolved past under fascism, but also on the indispensable individuality of man. In New Germany , Horst Knietzsch finds that Roland Gräf has now returned to the arms of narrative cinema with his films, but the dramatic is not yet his strength, even in Fariaho. Here, too, mostly a flat figure design. The where from and the emotional distress of the characters are often only communicated verbally. Die Neue Zeit notes that Fariaho is a film of thrifty wealth and in it there are three people, one old and two young, equally searching for the meaning of their lives.

Web links

• Fariaho in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Fariaho at filmportal.de
• Fariaho at the DEFA Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fariaho. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .  
2. ↑ Horst Knietzsch in Neues Deutschland, September 6, 1983
3. ↑ Helmut Ullrich in the Neue Zeit of September 2, 1983