Documentary: Strategy: Curiosity | nd-aktuell.de

A showcase of Gerd Kroske’s films begins this Saturday in the Armory Cinema in the German Historical Museum. It is the first German comprehensive overview of his work. The beginning of his career was breathtaking: The documentary “Leipzig in Autumn” (1989, together with Andreas Voigt) offers a broad panorama of the revolutionary events in the city – from the Monday demonstrations to the Leipziger Ring to interviews with people’s police officers, incredibly honest and fast shot, quickly edited. A documentary film about those years in Germany has rarely been hotter or more exciting, nor has it been closer to the time.

With this film, with the experiences he gained (especially with a so-called plebeian view) and the material, Kroske founded his future work. Here he met Leipzig street sweepers who cleared away the demo trash at night. He then encountered them several times over a longer period of time as long-term observation (until 2006); This is how his Leipzig “Kehraus” trilogy was created, which is still worth seeing today. He followed their individual fates – growing impoverishment and isolation in the middle of the big city and resistance to it – “because I wanted a happy outcome,” as Kroske said. In 1996 he founded his own production company Realistfilm, which from then on produced his films.

At the beginning of the noughties he again put together a film package that was closely linked geographically and personally: “The Boxing Prince” about the professional boxer and actor Norbert Gruppe (2000) and “Wollis Paradies” about a slightly different pimp (2007). Around Hamburg’s Reeperbahn he finds all sorts of bizarre existences, cranky, sleazy, yet lovable and humorous neighborhood figures. The films offer an entertaining mix of milieu studies and personal psychograms. They show the sensitivities of marginalized people, which they exemplify with quirky stubbornness and sarcasm.

In his film “Woksal” (Russian, The Train Station, 1994) he researches the peculiarities of this junction between Poland and the Soviet Union in the border town of Brest, shows the residents there and captures connections between the Gulag, the Soviet era and the present. In “Barriers” (2009) he analyzes how NVA officers and technicians wanted to make GDR border installations “safe.”

The film “Drawing Strokes” (2013) is his most original to date: a group from the Weimar punk scene gradually travels to West Berlin in the 80s, then during an art event they paint a thick white line on the wall as a sign of protest; Suddenly a door opens and one of the painters is arrested by GDR border guards and only ransomed by the West a year later. It later turns out that one of them has betrayed the others, which is also a family drama. The way Kroske films these people makes a great impression: patiently, with calm and justice for everyone.

His method: He takes a current episode, shoots with those involved as contemporary witnesses and then delves into the historical background – very detailed, with respect for the people, without releasing them from their responsibility. He interviews in a quiet voice, giving his partners and himself time – you can watch them think and struggle for appropriate answers. Very memorable.

An idiosyncratic, very film-like and offensive documentarian with a great instinct for such stories and protagonists, with whom he offers a coherent connection between the present and the recent past that fascinates every viewer. A notable exception in current German documentary filmmaking. His strategy remains curiosity.

From March 2nd to 30th, Armory Cinema in the German Historical Museum, Berlin.