Surviving Berlin

When the directors of The Celluloid Closet headed back to the Berlin International Film Festival with Paragraph 175, their new documentary about Nazi persecution of gay people, they feared a hostile response, But as filmmaker Jeffrey Friedman relates in his diary of the trip, they were in for a few surprises

Saturday, February 19

Berlin must be the coolest city in the world right now. Things are changing so fast, especially in the former East, where creativity seems to burst from the cracks in the streets.

I'm here with Rob Epstein, my filmmaking partner, for the European premiere of Paragraph 175, our new film about the experiences of gay people in Europe under the Nazis, as told through the stories of the handful of men and one woman we were able to find who were still living and willing to talk about that time.

We've been here often enough to be aware of the head-spinning rate of change. Our first visit was to show our film Common Threads in 1990, when the Berlin Wall was being dismantled (you could buy graffiti-colored fragments of it from street vendors) and Westerners were speculating grimly about the inevitable reunification with the East. That year we used our film festival accreditation to pass through Checkpoint Charlie to East Berlin to visit a couple of gay bars. One was a dark, tiny stand-up bar under train tracks with a bunch of dour, dark men not talking; the other was an anonymous door on a typically dark street that opened into a bunch of rooms filled with friendly guys at tables and at bars drinking beer and chatting. You had to wait in line for five minutes for someone to come and unlock the door when you wanted to leave.

When we came back in 1997 to start shooting Paragraph 175, even as foreigners we could easily tell who was from the former East and who was from the West--by the clothes, by the slightly dazed look in the eyes of the newly capitalized. That was still true as recently as 1998, but now it's all mixed up, and there's great energy as one new hip neighborhood springs up farther east than the last one. The usual pattern: Young hipsters move into amazing old buildings with no heat, fix them up, start funky little shops and restaurants in alleyways, prices go up, the hipsters and artists move on.

Sunday, February 20

Today we had our press screening, followed by a press conference. Rob and I were both nervous about how Germans would respond to American filmmakers' bringing this film about an ugly chapter in German history to the scene of the crime, as it were. So we were braced for hostile reactions, but it all went off pretty smoothly.

A question about finding gave us the opportunity to complain about not getting any German financing for the film. A young woman's comment about the way we used archival footage in new ways gave our Austrian-American (Jewish, gay) producer Michael Ehrenzweig the opportunity to vent his pet peeve: Not only did we get no financial support from Germany, but we actually had to pay the German government a hefty license fee to use footage from their old Nazi propaganda films. Both these points were enthusiastically picked up by the German press over the next few days.

Tuesday, February 22

We had our posse over for cocktails at the hotel before heading over to the premiere. The Zoo-Palast is a true movie palace, a vast expanse of seats sweeping back from a giant screen. Before the festival moved to its new home at Potsdamer Platz, which wasn't built a year ago, this was where the big-budget movies in the festival competition section had their premieres. The screening of Paragraph 175 would be the first time that a documentary would premiere there. The place was full and buzzing.

We had been warned not to expect a lot of emotional response from German audiences. Indeed, we screened Common Threads here ten years ago, and when it got to the really sad parts, the audience started coughing. And this time we were also concerned about how German audiences would respond to the humor we had worked into the early sections of the movie, before the Nazis come to power. So when the first light moment came, just a minute or so into the film, and the audience erupted in laughter, we started breathing easier. And when the coughing stalled, Rob whispered, "That's a good sign!"

Two of the men who tell their stories in the film, Pierre Seel and Gad Beck, both 77 years old, were in the audience that night. This would be the first time any of the interviewees would see the film, and we had no way of knowing how they would react. We were especially concerned about Pierre, a French citizen who had been brutally tortured in a Nazi concentration camp. His interview had been very difficult: He would swing with volatility from sweetness to bitter rage. His anger ended up being an essential element in the film, but how he would react to seeing it on the big, big screen was anyone's guess.

We introduced Pierre from the stage after the screening. It took him a couple of moments to get out of his chair (because of his age? Nerves? Anger?). This is the man who in the film swears he will never shake hands with a German again. Then he was standing, and within seconds the entire audience was on its feet as well, loudly applauding. The applause continued long after Pierre had made his way down the aisle and up the steps onto the stage. He took the microphone and began speaking, shakily but with conviction. He called our film a monument to a terrible time, and in what seemed a gesture of conciliation, he quipped that if he were a rich man, he would like to build himself a house in Berlin right next to the Brandenburg Gate (but the French wouldn't like that), and he said he must kiss every person standing on the stage who had helped make the film. By that time there was quite a lineup of us, including our German production crew, and each of us, straight or gay, got a kiss on each cheek.

Relieved and elated, we walked through the winter night air to the bar where we were throwing a party for our German crew and friends. Pierre and Gad made a lovely little tableau, having met for the first time this evening, ensconced in a booth and chatting.

Wednesday, February 23

With the big screening out of the way and the important press taken care of, we were free to concentrate more seriously on partying. Rob went off for an authentic German dinner with friends and to check out Berlin's thumping drum-and-bass scene. I went to check out the party that was being thrown to promote the American film Magnolia, in the health spa of the Grand Hyatt, and, like the film, it was way over-the-top--a bar in the reception area, sushi in the massage room, ice cream in the sauna, Euroglitz glam trash, lots of money, lots of Armani, liquor flowing from the model-bartenders, babes in little black dresses ducking into a door marked TREATMENT ROOM 3.

A flight of stairs led up to the rooftop swimming pool, glass-enclosed, candlelit, looking out over the city. Floating in the pool were canvas-covered inflatable boats decorated with neoncolored lights. Two devilishly handsome actor-model types and two babelicious actress-model types came out of the locker room, dropped their bathrobes, and dipped their perfect 90210 bodies into the sparkling stainless steel hot tub--to the flash of paparazzi and videozzi buzzing lecherously around file specimens. It was like some kind of heterosexual theme park ride, and like most rides, this one was thrilling for a while, and then it started to get nauseating, so I left.

Saturday, February 26

Friday night is a little bit of a haze. Our German friend and guide Pari took me and Rob way out east, and we wandered by chance into a tiny Afro-Cuban club, with a DJ spinning Latin dance music and a bartender pouring wicked caipirinhas. After a couple of these we found our way next door to Pfefferbank, a huge, friendly queer club where they also conveniently served caipirinhas and played music and flashed lights and flashed smiles and spun and danced.

I was awakened at 4 P.M. Saturday by a call from the festival saying we'd won an award. I was confused at first, thinking we were talking about the Teddy awards, which were to be given that night for the best gay and lesbian films in the festival. But turns out it was the festival-wide FIPRESCI award, given by the Federation Internationale de la Presse Cinematographique--an international society of film critics and journalists--to the best film in each of the three main sections of the festival. Paragraph 175 was chosen as best of the Panorama section. Again, because we were Americans telling a European stow, it felt like a significant honor to be receiving this critics' award at our first European festival. Rob and I were scooped up by a festival car and taken to a theater to receive the FIPRESCI on our way to the Teddys.

When The Celluloid Closet won a Teddy four years ago, the ceremony was a drag show in a basement club. Now it's a televised German kitsch variety show in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), a huge hall built in 1957 in the style of an airport terminal (the locals usually refer to it either as "the pregnant oyster" or "the smile of Jimmy Carter"--it bears a striking resemblance to both). The highlight of the awards ceremony was a juggling act in which two very sexy men, a blond and a brunet in dress suits, stripped down to boxer shorts and got dressed again while keeping half a dozen batons in the air.

By now it felt like we were on a roll. Paragraph 175 won the Teddy for best documentary, and it seemed appropriate to use our acceptance speech to explain that our coproducer Michael had left earlier in the day for Vienna to participate in the massive protests against the new conservative-fascist Austrian government. The crowd gave enthusiastic approval.

Then another mammoth party: two dance floors, lights, booze, smoke, chatter, and the usual debauchery. Somehow we ended up back at the hotel in time to pack for an early-morning flight back home for a couple weeks of catching up on sleep before heading off for the second Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Jerusalem--where yet another audience is sure to have strong and unpredictable feelings about a film dealing with "other victims" of the Nazis. Too tired to start worrying about that now.

Through Telling Pictures, the San Francisco-based production company they formed in 1986, Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein produced and directed the Oscar-winning Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt as well as Where Are We? (Our Trip Through America) and The Celluloid Closet.

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