TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Sport and cinema

This Ain't California

Marten Persiel
2012 - Germany - 1h40

Screenings : friday 26 - 10:00 pm - Pathé - 1

Three kids discover their love of skateboarding on the cracked pavements of the GDR. From their childhood in the 70s, through their turbulent adolescence in the 80s, to the autumn of 1989... Now they are 20 and everything they have ever known is about to change for ever.

Skateboarding culture began to spread rapidly outside the US in the mid-1970s. With This Ain't California, German director Marten Persiel (himself a skateboarder in his spare time) takes us back to the beginnings of this subculture on the German side, in the GDR, against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War. This docu-fiction, interwoven with eye-witness accounts, super-8 footage, audiovisual archives, fictional scenes and fragments of animation, revolves around the retrospective journey of three kids united by a shared passion for skateboarding. Much of this coming-of-age story is entirely made up. “Backed by a raucous soundtrack (from punk to eighties electro pop), this perfectly representative dive back into the divided Berlin of the 80s has an undeniable nostalgic charm”. (Pierre Vedral; À voir à lire)

CAST AND CREW

Cast : David Nathan, Anneke Schwabe, Kai Hillebrand
Screenplay : Marten Persiel, Ira Wedel
Cinematography : Felix Leiberg
Editing : Toni Froschhammer, Maxine Goedicke, Bobby Good
Music : Lars Damm

Production : Neue Heimat Filmproduktion, ARTE, MDR, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB)

French distributor : Wide