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About ONE LIFE UNDER FOUR GERMAN FLAGS
Over a period of more than five years, I've conducted interviews with my - now eighty years old - father. In his lifetime, he has experienced four radically differing political systems without ever leaving Germany. Born in 1928, he was 17 years-old when the Nazi regime collapsed, then spent half his life under the socialist East German regime, only to end up happily embracing the former "enemy" government. The documentary presents interview footage in which my father, both concisely as well as at length, shares amusing and sad recollections of his life and German history. The interview footage is intercut with archival footage covering important historical events as well as with surveillance video material filmed by the former East German Ministry for State Security. AN INDIVIDUAL FATE OR THAT OF MANY? DO WE CREATE HISTORY OR DOES IT CREATE US? I began these interviews in an effort to preserve an interesting life story outside the memories of my family. During the interview process, however, I realized that my father's fate is a common one and how much it has shaped and influenced me. An interesting discovery that led to a larger-scale film project exploring the various ways that history, through both large and insignificant events, be they planned or coincidental, can change and influence a person's life. What would have happened if...? ACCEPTED CULTURAL HISTORY AND FAMILY MEMORIES The interviews additionally demonstrate how much family memory, in this case, my own recollections within the private sphere, made up of individual memories as well as verbal history, can differ from official historical accounts presented in history classes, distributed by the media and collectively acknowledged by society as a whole. I've personally experienced this phenomenon when comparing my own accounts of the events of 1989 with those distributed by the media and other official sources. The distinction between accepted cultural history and family memory is the fabric on which the s
