G 1925, directed by Gerhard Lamprecht, DCP, OV w/English subtitles, 115 min
Cast: Aud Egede-Nissen, Bernhard Goetzke, Arthur Bergen, Paul Bildt
THE FIFTH ESTATE – DEPICTING THE MILIEU OF HEINRICH ZILLE ON SCREEN
Introduction: Guido Kirsten (Chair, Emmy Noether Project ‘Filmic Discourses of Scarcity’ (DFG), Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF)
Small-time crook Gustav and engineer Robert Kramer are released from prison. While Gustav can seamlessly resume his old life, Robert’s bourgeois existence is in ruins. Eager to work, he can’t find a job because of his shady past. Only Gustav and his sister Emma show compassion and take him in. He earns some money with a sewing machine. When the two siblings are involved in a robbery and murder, they manage to escape with Robert’s help. He finds work in a factory and finally succeeds in working his way up again.
This study of a social setting, for which Gerhard Lamprecht cast several amateur actors, and filmed in original locations, focuses on the living conditions of the underclasses, based on observations by the Berlin painter and draughtsman, Heinrich Zille. For Lamprecht, the film became the prelude to further studies of social settings in which his sensitive powers of observation and talent for staging are demonstrated. The topics dealt with in these so-called Zille films—social exclusion, poverty, and precarity in urban areas—are still relevant today.
→ Admission: 8 €