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The German divide Two films at the Goethe illuminate the nation's dark side by MATTHEW HAYS
Empowered with 20/20 hindsight, it's easy to see how shortsighted all the hope and hype was. East Germans were bound to resent the wealth and prosperity of those in the West. West Germans were going to be equally angry at being an economic crutch for the financially stilted East. Andreas Voigt's insightful documentary Faith, Love and Hope explores the underbelly of Germany's reunification. The film is a series of interviews with youths living in Leipzig, a city in former East Germany. One youth insists he doesn't want to end up like the German masses, with their petty materialism and bourgeois ways. He moonlights as a Santa, handing candy out to children, then slips out of his suit and heads to the disco in the evening. He casually sucks on a beer during a subsequent interview as he declares his admiration for Hitler. Voigt's camera captures these sentiments in matter-of-fact black and white; the style is a perfect answer to the absurdity of what the youths in the film opine. Even when Voigt calls them on their lame logic (and he does throughout the film) they stand by it defiantly. One youth thinks another genocide might just be the answer to saving German forests (I didn't know there was an enviro-Nazi movement; apparently so). He sings a little number he wrote himself, in which he says gassing immigrants would keep the German nation warm and save the trees. Little Angel is Helke Misselwitz's poetic film about an alienated woman (played by Susanne Lothar) living in East Berlin who's drawn into an enticing romance and soon finds herself pregnant. Her sense of identity begins to slip away, and Lothar's performance as a woman on the verge of some kind of breakdown is a wonder to behold. Faith, Love and Hope plays this Thursday, May 15 at 8 pm and Friday, May 16 at 6:30 pm at the Goethe Institute (418 Sherbrooke E.) in German with French subtitles. Director Andreas Voigt will be present for both screenings and a discussion will follow the film. Little Angel plays the Goethe next Thursday, May 22 and Friday, May 23 in German with English subtitles |
There wasn't a soul with a television who could have missed the falling of the Berlin Wall. This widely publicized event held the fascination of the world--the Cold War was finally coming to an end without bloodshed or bombs, and the West had apparently won. The scenes of parties on the Wall were euphoric. The German people, united again, had nowhere to go but up.