Films by Martin Farkas

Germany 2019, 79 min
by Annekatrin Hendel

Sven Marquardt might be the most famous bouncer worldwide. But beside standing in front of the legendary techno club Berghain in Berlin, he is also a well-known and skilled photographer. Long before the Berlin Wall came down, Marquardt portrayed the subcultural East-Berlin scene. His black and white photography illustrates it as voluptuous, laid-back, dirty and existential. Even if shot by daylight, his work is permeated by darkness, ecstasy and night.with: Sven Marquardt, Dominique Hollenstein und Robert Paris

Germany 2017, 90 min
by Charly Hübner, Sebastian Schultz

“Wildes Herz” is a film about “Feine Sahne Fischfilet”, one of the most successful German punk rock bands, and their lead singer, Jan “Monchi” Gorkow. A young band who are under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which gives them the right to call themselves the most dangerous band in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. A film that shows how musicians fight against Nazis and feelings of emptiness and frustration, in a region where home means the beautiful flat countryside. With music that’s quite unlike their home: strong, loud, joyous.As this film examines Jan “Monchi” Gorkow’s life in home movies and interviews with his parents we gradually begin to understand that it is a parable on, a coming to terms with and an answer to what happened in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern after the reunification. When a refugee centre in Rostock-Lichtenhagen was on fire, the population applauding and the police looking the other way. That is the time Monchi grew up in. His path – or his rage – took him via the ultras of F.C. Hansa Rostock to the moment when his punk band realised at the end of the noughties that Nazis enjoyed their gigs. Taking a stance was called for. The leftist movements of the 1990s failed, Gorkow says, and that this must never happen again. An important, almost normal, poetic and rough film – exactly like the band.( DOK Leipzig, Leopold Grün)

Germany 2017, 90 min
by Martin Farkas

“After all, these are not good memories, fun memories. And really, that time is buried.” Between 30 April and 4 May 1945, several hundred civilians commited mass suicide in the Pomeranian town of Demmin. There was desperation between the ideological void and the fear of the Red Army. Whole families drowned, hanged or poisoned themselves. The nervousness of the old citizens of Demmin whom Martin Farkas visits is still noticeable: not a hand that stays motionless during the interview – they are rubbed against skirts or twitch all over the place. One inhabitant describes the perfection of the city before the war and the “tinkering” that began after it was over and is still going on today. “Tinkering” is not a bad term for what is going on in Demmin and what Farkas is looking to illustrate in his film. There are the right wing extremists who abuse the consequences of that mass hysteria as an occasion for an annual funeral march on 8 May, the anniversary of the German surrender. There are the citizens of Demmin who turn away, part disgusted, part indifferent. There are counter-rallies and a few mostly contemporary witnesses, who open up about their memories for the first time after 70 years. (Carolin Weidner, DOK Leipzig)

Germany 2012, 90 min
by Dominik Graf

One of the most influential German television directors remembers another TV personality, thus reflecting on German television history and German history in general. The leitmotif for this film portrait is Oliver Storz’s autobiographical novel Die Freibadclique, which tells the story of a group of friends drafted into the army as fifteen-year-olds just before the end of the Second World War. Again and again, Dominik Graf reads passages from this account and, by juxtaposing them with clips from Storz’s films, reveals the echoes of the past they contain. Whether in his more experimental television plays or his Willy Brandt film IM SCHATTEN DER MACHT, Storz always provided new perspectives on the war and on Germany itself. Via a series of personal interviews Graf held with the journalist, director and producer shortly before the latter’s death in summer 2011, we are introduced to an analytical, unconventional man who witnessed the course of history. Graf takes up Storz’s reflections in his commentary, throwing light on an unexpected history of German television. Like the young woman in the red bathing costume in Storz’s novel, you just want to call out to him “Hang on in there!”

Germany 2009, 92 min
by Matthias Zuber, Martin Farkas

Ruediger was a child, Aki two months old and Kurt the deputy of the pedophile leader of the sect. In 1961 they came to chile together with 500 other German sect members and for over 40 years they lived secluded from the rest of the world. The film tells about the attempt to survive as a collective after decades of crimes such as torture and murder. This film depicts the effort to survive as a community after an extreme human tragedy - showing different ways in which the individual copes with the history of the community. These are german stories of displacement, desire, romantic enthusiasm and despair. It is a film about guilt, victimisation and coming to terms with them.