whisper & SCREAM - A rock report

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title whisper & SCREAM - A rock report
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1988
length 120 minutes
Age rating FSK without age restriction
Rod
Director Dieter Schumann
script Dieter Schumann
Jochen Wisotzki
production DEFA
camera Udo Breß
Christian Lehmann
Michael Lösche
Sebastian Richter
Bernd Schadewald
Steffen Sebastian
cut Inge Marszalek
Karin Schöning

whispering & screaming - a rock report is a documentary film from the GDR that director Dieter Schumann planned and shot for DEFA from 1985 to 1988 .

The film offers insights into the underground music scene of the GDR. It was shown in the GDR cinemas in 1988 and was a novelty there, as it realistically portrayed the contradictory worlds of the time before the reunification. The film made the alternative music of the GDR known beyond its borders.

In 1994 and from 1997 further parts were created which further document the stories of the bands, their members, fans and subcultures in reunified Germany.

Part 1 (1988)

The first part consists of interviews and live clips of concerts, including from very different bands like Silly , Sandow , Feeling B , The company with André Greiner-Pol , pop generation and chicory ( Dirk Zöllner / The tax collector ).

In addition to the musicians, the film also shows the fans of the bands and young people from different living environments and subcultures.

The portrayed musicians and bands were part of a music movement in the GDR that became known as “ The Other Bands ” .

Origin and reception

The film was commissioned by the state-owned GDR film company DEFA in response to a study published by the Central Institute for Youth Research in the mid-1980s, which revealed that young people between the ages of 14 and 18 listened to three to four hours of rock music a day. From 1985 DEFA provided the filmmakers with extensive human, financial and technical resources for research and realization. According to the internet platform filmernst, an initiative of the Brandenburg Film Association and the Berlin-Brandenburg State Institute for Schools and Media , 35 employees were part of the team, and the production costs were around 1.2 million Ostmarks . The actual filming took 65 days.

According to the then co-screenwriter Jochen Wisotzki, the face and character of the film were strongly influenced by a coincidental development through which the amateur punk band Feeling B from Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg was included as a protagonist. Originally the band was not intended for whispering & screaming . The film team had actually wanted to shoot performances by the group Chicorée and a local band called Glocke und Pohl in Schwerin as part of an annual bathtub regatta and an associated rock night . But the rock night was canceled at short notice. Feeling B was supposed to play there at noon during the regatta and was therefore already there. The band, first and foremost Feeling B singer Aljoscha Rompe , sought contact with the film crew. This then decided to shoot with Feeling B and introduce the group as a musical and social alternative to the rock band Silly , which was already established in the GDR .

The first rough cut of the film was four hours long. In order to assess the effect of the film, there were first test screenings in front of school classes before the film, after a required censorship cut, on August 19, 1988 in a length of 120 minutes by the DEFA studio management, by the deputy minister for culture and head of the main film administration , Horst Pehnert , as well as by a member of the Central Committee .

The film premiered on October 20, 1988 in the Colosseum cinema on Schönhauser Allee in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg . At the official first screening, the bands involved were not allowed to appear in order not to disturb the character of the official act. At the second premiere - intended for spectators and bands - on October 27, 1988, there was unrest and assaults when several police units surrounded the cinema and searched the visitors. Representatives of the Ministry for State Security tore off posters and banners with quotes from the film, which the film team had hung up in the foyer according to a statement by dramaturge Jochen Wisotzki. The team was threatened with criminal proceedings for denigrating the GDR, even though the quotes relating to the film had previously been released.

The film received - also because of this - a lot of public attention and was shown with 33 copies in all GDR districts. Around 500,000 viewers then watched the documentary. Whisper & SCREEN was also shown at the 1989 Berlinale . The film team then received invitations to numerous international film festivals around the world.

Part 2 (1994)

The so-called sequel film officially bears the title whispering & screaming 1988/1994 - Feeling B and Sandow - two East Berlin bands between past and present. It was a pure TV production and was only broadcast twice - first on May 1, 1995 on MDR and a second and last time on June 12, 1995 on ORB . The film had a length of 104 minutes and was divided into two parts: The first 40 minutes consisted of a compilation of the film from 1988. In the second part, the documentary focused on the development of Feeling B and Sandow after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also shown the founding phase of the band Rammstein .

According to the book authors Ronald Galenza and Heinz Havemeister, the approximately one-hour post-turnaround material sent there was entitled “whisper & SCREAM Part II” and was again directed by Dieter Schumann. Roland KG Gernhardt was responsible for the script. The latter later shortened his name to Carl G. Hardt and is the director of the “third” part entitled Achtung! We come (...) .

The production sent in the MDR and ORB - and thus also "whispering & screaming part II" - is "legally blocked" according to the Telepool company in Leipzig, responsible for the audience recording service at the MDR. For this reason it may no longer be copied or sent.

Part 3 (various versions: 1997–2002, 2008, 2015)

Attention! We come. And we get you all is a documentary that at least in part ties in with the two "whispering & screaming" works. That is why it bears the subtitle screaming and whispering and laughing with (...) . Different versions of it appeared between 1997 and 2002 and in 2008 and 2015.

The director and producer of the work is Roland KG Gernhardt (Carl G. Hardt) - he was already active as a producer and screenwriter for whispering and screaming . Gernhardt / Hardt accompanied the musicians from Feeling B and Sandow - both were protagonists in the previous films - with the camera. He captured the end of Feeling B and the beginnings of Rammstein .

Gernhardt / Hardt also wanted to portray groups from East Germany that did not play a role in the previous productions. These included - depending on the version - Rammstein , but also Freygang , Santa Clan, The Inchtabokatables , Blind Passengers , Die Skeptiker and In Extremo .

There were various reasons why Gernhardt / Hardt had to edit the finished film several times. On the one hand, the Rammstein management had forbidden him to use material for the film, some of which had been created years before. According to Gernhardt / Hardt, among other things, because he refused to indicate the age of the pictures with year numbers. However, details of the reasons for the ban are not known.

Further new versions of the film were made due to the sudden death of two musicians who played a role in the storyline of the band Feeling B : In 1999, one of the early bassists in Feeling B, Christoph Zimmermann, died in a plane crash. In November 2000, Feeling B singer Aljoscha Rompe died of an asthma attack - and with him an important protagonist of the entire film. Gernhardt / Hardt did not want to disregard the death of the two.

Originally, according to an ex-band colleague from Rompe, he planned to organize a memorial concert in honor of Rompe and let the various bands from his film perform there. But this failed due to opposition of the musicians of New Feeling B . They wanted to invite the real companions and friends of Rompes, including bands like the Bolshevik Kurkapelle schwarz-rot and the others , but also the original musicians of Feeling B (today Rammstein ), to the stage. Some of the bands from Gernhardts / Hardts film did not belong to the friendly circle of Rompes. Organizing and filming this in this way was again rejected by Gernhardt / Hardt. The memorial concert took place on December 19, 2000 in the Berlin Kulturbrauerei without Gernhardt / Hardt's organizational involvement.

There are few reviews of the different versions of the film. A Tagesspiegel journalist described the film in 2001 - thus the version at that time - as "confused". In addition, the author of the article suspected, in view of the longstanding legal dispute with the Rammstein management, that the latter could have taken offense at the portrayal of the musicians. They would be presented as "nice guys" in the film, which would not fit the band's image.

An interview he gave in 2016 shows that Gernhardt / Hardt apparently continued to re-cut the film beyond 2008 - the reasons for this are unknown. Here he reports that the last cut of the film was only shown once, on September 11, 2015, in the Berlin Kulturbrauerei. Rammstein keyboarder Christian Flake Lorenz sat in the audience .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ filmernst.de: whisper & SHOUT film Ernst accompanying materials retrieved on April 25, 2017
  2. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister : Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , pp. 188/188.
  3. ↑ filmernst.de: whisper & SHOUT film Ernst accompanying materials retrieved on April 25, 2017
  4. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister : Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , pp. 195f.
  5. ↑ filmernst.de: whisper & SHOUT film Ernst accompanying materials retrieved on April 25, 2017
  6. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister : Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 641.
  7. ↑ schnitt.de: Recycling , accessed on March 15, 2017
  8. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Attention! We come. Whisper and Cut , March 31, 2001, accessed March 18, 2017
  9. ↑ Email information Telepool Leipzig from March 1, 2017
  10. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister : Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 641.
  11. ↑ artdisc.org: Exclusive interview by Robin Valtot with Claus G. Hardt , 2016, accessed on March 15, 2017
  12. ↑ youtube.com: Carl G. Hardt: Crab - ATTENTION! WE COME. AND WE WILL GET ALL OF YOU. The very first day of shooting with Rammstein: It was August 4, 1994. , published by artdiscOrg on September 30, 2016, accessed on March 18, 2017
  13. ↑ youtube.com: Carl G. Hardt: ATTENTION! WE COME. AND WE WILL GET ALL OF YOU. Russian Trailer 1 , published by artdiscOrg on June 13, 2016, accessed on March 18, 2017
  14. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Attention! We come! Whispering and Cutting , March 31, 2001, accessed March 15, 2017
  15. ↑ artdisc.org: Exclusive interview by Robin Valtot with Claus G. Hardt , 2016, accessed on March 15, 2017
  16. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister : Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 558.
  17. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Attention! We come! Whispering and Cutting , March 31, 2001, accessed March 15, 2017
  18. ↑ artdisc.org: Exclusive interview by Robin Valtot with Claus G. Hardt , 2016, accessed on March 15, 2017

Web links