LOVE DEUTSCHMARKS AND DEATH
Not only did the 1961. agreement between Germany and Turkey bring in “guest workers” to Germany, but their music as well. This documentary film essay represents a tutorial on Turkish and German recent history which tells a story about jobs of turkish emigrants on the assembly line, nostalgia and reunification of a family, Berlin’s Bülowstraße train station bazaar, xenophobia and racism, melancholic songs of the early years and the hip-hop period after the unification of Germany.
This is the world of the Radio Yilmaz, with all kinds of music genres, wedding bands that sing in Kurdish and Arabic in order to meet the demands of the market. In the film Love, Deutschmarks and Death, Cem Kaya has created a rhythmic and vividly told film encyclopedia of Turkish music in Germany.
Cem Kaya was born in Schweinfurt in 1976. He is the author of feature-length documentaries Arabeks, dealing with the music culture of internal migration in Turkey, and Remake, Remix, Rip-Off, that had an extraordinary success. Cem Kaya uses extensive found footage and archive material of various kinds. This colourful mix of material and his own documentary observations are the ingredients for his extremely insightful, sometimes bizarre and often hilarious docu-essays.
Panorama Audience Award for Documentary film, Berlin International Film Festival 2022
Indiemusic Schweppes Award, IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival 202
LOVE DEUTSCHMARKS AND DEATH (doc.)
Director: Cem Kaya
Country: Germany
Year: 2022.
Runtime: 96’
Language: German, Turkish
Cast: Alper Aga, Orhan Amuroglu, Imran Ayata
Production: Filmfaust Filmproduktion, Film Five
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PROGRAMME: FIRST TWO STEPS