“How long have you known each other?” – “Six funerals.” Having grown old as a gay man is a privilege in the wake of the Aids crisis. At “Lebensort Vielfalt”, a Berlin housing project for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual persons, lived experiences are exchanged among three generations. They used to be pigeonholed, today children might just be allowed to learn to speak before they define themselves. A wild kind of growing up and ageing. All residents share the desire to be safe, even from having-to-explain-themselves. The camera roams the house, crosses the corridor, moves from one balcony to another, looks out of the window onto the street, develops new perspectives. Social backsliding is registered; sometimes new happiness is found. On deceased persons’ birthdays, the raspberry cake is cut. Falling asleep, the sound of riot rises again.

Jan Künemund

The screen is filled with the lightness of a summer’s day. A lake tempts people to swim and have fun, the sun sparkling on the water. A young woman is wavering on its banks, another reaches out her hand to her. The exuberant scenes are overlaid by the narrative of another woman recalling early, painful sexual experiences. At first, the words and the images seem to stand in contrast to each other. But the longer the sun shines, the more the narrative and the images overlap. The offscreen narrator speaks more and more freely, reporting how she suppressed the wishes and needs of her body at first. An encounter with a woman makes her discover her desire and pleasure. The impressions of the lake bring her increasingly beautiful descriptions to life – this day could not have a more romantic ending.

Anke Leweke