Based on a True Story: Tracking What Is Queer about Queer German Documentary

Summary

THE 2012 DOCUMENTARY Unter Männern—Schwul in der DDR (Among Men: Gay in the GDR, 2012, dir. Ringo Rosener and Markus Stein) begins with a kind of cinematic overture.1 This overture introduces the viewer to three of the film's interviewees whose comments set the stage for the biographical and documentary nature of what follows as well as the themes that will surface in the subjects’ narratives: the gay experiences of a bygone time and place and under a nowextinct social system. The first man, Jurgen (b. 1932), calls himself old and is amused that his life now involves working in the garden; Christian (b. 1934), the second man, reveals that he long debated whether to participate in the film and to out himself, since he says that part of his life is over; the third, Frank (b. 1959), also reflects on his current situation and ponders the fantastical thought of waking up and no longer being gay.

At this point, the film's first act begins. Accompanied by music with an electronic feel, the film cuts to establishing shots of Berlin, a tracking shot of a young man on a bicycle (who we come to find out is one of the directors, Ringo Rosener) and a cut to this same man's entrance into a gay club replete with flashing disco lights and go-go boys. The tracking shot both quotes and foreshadows the use of footage from the landmark film Coming Out, the only East German feature film to focus on homosexuality. A voice-over narration by Rosener addresses the viewer, introducing us to his on- and off-screen presence, informing us that he was born in rural East Germany, not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall and Reunification, and dared to be openly gay only after fleeing this more remote part of the country. This first act, in which Rosener positions the film in the present but consciously in juxtaposition to an historical past, gives us a reason for this film: a contemporary German gay man expresses his surprise at what he does and does not know about the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), the land in which he was born, and also at how his life would be different if the Berlin Wall had not come down and the GDR had survived.