Films by Patrick Protz

Germany 2010, 95 min
by Eva Wolf

Different countries, different customs. Every year, young people from all over the world go to a foreign country to familiarise themselves with an alien culture. What they experience there is sometimes funny and sometimes tragic. But it is always about finding one’s own borders and about finding a place for oneself among foreign people and their patterns of behaviour: what should be understood without having to say it, when people live together? What can be seen as normal behaviour, and what borders on being weird? 12 Months Germany accompanies four exchange students from three different continents living with their German host families allows us to share in their frustrations, their conflicts and in their successes while living in this foreign country. Kwasi from Ghana was sent by his mother on this journey into the unknown, but in the beginning, he is bored to death from dawn to dusk in the provincial East German countryside. Nairika from the USA is looking for real family life, something that she cannot get from her hard working single-parent host mother in Berlin-Neukölln. Constanza from Chile cannot find a way to communicate with her host family despite the fact that they always have a dictionary at hand. And Eduardo from Venezuela, who now lives in Hamburg-Ottensen, is supposed to start reading real German books instead of just the sports section of the newspaper. The film’s director Eva Wolf accompanies these four protagonists through their exchange year in Germany and through their ups and downs with their host families, she shows that conflict can result in real understanding and closeness, not just alienation. Her film is about the tensions that sometimes arise from cultural differences and sometimes just from the fact that human beings are simply different - everywhere in the world. We do not only find different customs in different countries, but also sometimes in the house next door.

Germany 2009, 810 min
by Detlef Gumm, Hans-Georg Ullrich

Detlef Gumm and Hans-Georg Ullrich began working on their long-term observational documentary BERLIN - ECKE BUNDESPLATZ twenty-four years ago. Their plan was to make a series of short and longerfilms documenting the fortunes of several inhabitants of an ordinary Berlin neighbourhood as theymoved towards the year 2000. The protagonists were a typical cross-section of people living in an oldquarter of West-Berlin, and so, in their film, widows, a high-flying lawyer, drop-outs, owners of smallbusinesses and a single mother became chroniclers of their Wilmersdorf world.These films are, like their authors and the people portrayed in the films, a part of this area of Berlin.BERLIN - ECKE BUNDESPLATZ is a declaration of love to generations of people who have never stoppedstruggling and dreaming.The titles of the Episodes are©2009MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERSTHE DROPOUTSIT IS BEAUTIFUL TO BE YOUNGTHE KOEPCKE GANGTHE YILMAZ-CLAN©2013A BAKER ON THE BREAD-LINELIFE OF LEISURECHIMNEY SWEEPSHAPPY FAMILY