East Germany. Summer, late 70’s. After her boyfriend Wassilij’s apparent death, Nelly Senff decides to escape from behind the Berlin Wall with her young son Aleksej, leaving her traumatic memories behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life in the West. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij’s mysterious disappearance. Is he still alive? Was he a spy? Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.
This is the story told by our European Union Film Festival selection 2014, Christian Schwochow's award-winnning "West". Schwochow based his latest film on his own experience of escaping the GDR as a child as well as the much lauded 2003 novel "Lagerfeuer" --camp fire-- by Julia Franck. When asked what fascinated him about the book, the filmmaker replied: "This very special place:
We knew that those West German emergency camps that housed GDR refugees existed, nut not what it meant to live there for so long. To me that was totally new and exciting.
Hardly anyone knows that the secret services were in those camps, interrogating people. And that people had to more or less strip naked before being let in."
See "West" on 21 November, 6pm, at the Royal Cinema, one night only & free at EUFF. Meanwhile, get a taste of the tense atmosphere in the story with this excerpt from the book, describing the moment where Nelly, Aleksej, and her West German boyfriend Gerd are driving across a bridge and get stopped by East German police:
"Cool air seeped in from outside, smelling of gas and a little bit of summer, more of night and impending chill. Twilight. A man in a police uniform came up to the car and leaned over on Gerd’s side to get a better look inside. His flashlight scattered a little light across our faces, glowing weakly, flickering as though about to go out any moment. He checked names and faces one by one. I looked back into a wan face with a low, broad forehead, deep-set eyes thrust back into their sockets by the cheekbones, a Pomeranian face that no longer looked young, though it still was. He knocked on the back door with his flashlight and said that we couldn’t stand here with the windows open. The windows had to stay shut for security reasons. After checking Katja’s and Aleksej’s documents as well he said: “Get out.” My door stuck, I rattled at it until it sprang open and got out.
“No,” the man in the police uniform called to me across the roof, “not you, just the children.” I got into the car again and turned around: “You have to get out,” I repeated, reaching for Aleksej’s hand and holding it tight. He broke away. My hand slipped into empty air. Only now did I realize I was trembling. The doors slammed. The man said something to my children that I didn’t understand, he pointed to our car, shook his head and patted Aleksej on the narrow shoulder, then I saw them follow him and disappear into the low building. A neon lamp burned over the dark window. I waited for a light to go on, but the window remained black. "
Abridged from: Julia Franck: “Lagerfeuer”. DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag. Köln, 2003. Translated excerpt by Isabel Cole. Litrix.de – German Literature Online
Don't miss Eleanor Wachtel's CBC Radio interview with Julia Franck for "Writers & Company" this Sunday, 9 November and Tuesday, 11 November, about the Berlin author's life and work straddling East and West.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
