Films by Markus Stein

Germany 2024, 90 min
by Markus Stein

West Berlin, 1979. Jürgen Baldiga, son of a miner from Essen, has just arrived in the city and decides to become an artist. Working as a rent boy and cook, he writes poems and a diary. After learning that he has HIV in 1984, he discovers photography. He intends his images to stop time and capture reality. They reveal his friends and lovers, wild sex, life on the street and the camp queens from the SchwuZ gay club who become his adopted family. Oscillating between despair and desire, rebellion and the will to survive, Baldiga becomes a chronicler of the queer West Berlin subculture in the face of his own imminent demise. When he died at the age of 34 in 1993, he left behind thousands of photographs and forty diaries – a unique artistic legacy.Using poetic diary excerpts, stark images and memories from companions, BALDIGA – ENTSICHERTES HERZ depicts not only a ground-breaking photographer but also an AIDS activist and committed fighter against the stigmatisation of gay people’s lives. [74 BERLINALE, Panorama]202474 BERLINALE – PanoramaBFI Flare London Film Festival64 KFF – Krakow Film FestivalPremio Mariposa – Festival Mix México #mix28Seal of Approval ‘highly recommended’

Germany 2012, 91 min
by Ringo Rösener, Markus Stein

More than two decades ago, a country in Europe existed that marked the border to a different political and economic system, yet was the very heart of the continent. This country, called the German Democratic Republic, made Socialism a reality and was home to 17 million people. Born in the deep eastern provinces, Ringo Rösener merely witnessed the collapse of East Germany as a nation.Ringing in the new millennium, he leaves his home town of Anklam to live out his homosexuality – something he had never dared to do. Would an openly gay life even have been possible in the real Socialist system?Ringo Rösener meets six gay men who lived in the GDR. Some of them speak openly about their sexuality for the first time in their lives. Little by little, they open up, begin to share their own personal stories and talk about their lives in the supposedly uniform state.With Jürgen Wittdorf, Christian Schulz, Helwin Leuschner, Eduard Stapel, Frank Schäfer, John Zinner,Jürgen Lemke.