Berlin - Ecke Bundesplatz "Die Aussteiger"
Detlef Gumm and Hans-Georg Ullrich began working on their long-term observational documentary BERLIN – ECKE BUNDESPLATZ twenty-four years ago. Their plan was to make a series of short and longer films documenting the fortunes of several inhabitants of an ordinary Berlin neighbourhood as they moved towards the year 2000. The protagonists were a typical cross-section of people living an old quarter of West-Berlin, and so, in their film, widows, a high-flying lawyer, drop-outs, owners of small businesses and a single mother became chroniclers of their Wilmersdorf world.
The filmmakers paid another visit to their protagonists for five new episodes of their opus. In MÜTTER UND TÖCHTER we meet a woman who brought up her daughter on her own and became dependant on social welfare as a result; this episode compares their lives, then and now. DIE AUSSTEIGER relates what has happened to the dreams and plans of a gay couple. At the centre of SCHÖN IST DIE JUGEND … are an 89-year-old woman and the man who later became her carer and set up his own business. DIE KÖPKE-BANDE is about a family whose members almost all have artistic jobs, while DER YILMAZ-CLAN tells the story of an upwardly mobile family of immigrants. Everyday stories and contemporary history merge on Berlin’s Bundesplatz to provide an authentic picture of Germany.
The filmmakers paid another visit to their protagonists for five new episodes of their opus. In MÜTTER UND TÖCHTER we meet a woman who brought up her daughter on her own and became dependant on social welfare as a result; this episode compares their lives, then and now. DIE AUSSTEIGER relates what has happened to the dreams and plans of a gay couple. At the centre of SCHÖN IST DIE JUGEND … are an 89-year-old woman and the man who later became her carer and set up his own business. DIE KÖPKE-BANDE is about a family whose members almost all have artistic jobs, while DER YILMAZ-CLAN tells the story of an upwardly mobile family of immigrants. Everyday stories and contemporary history merge on Berlin’s Bundesplatz to provide an authentic picture of Germany.