Abstract
This chapter examines intercultural experience in Marten Persiel’s film This Ain’t California (2012). This ‘hybrid’ documentary defies simple categorisation within traditional borders, such as those between national and international film, and between fiction and non-fiction. I argue that the film’s particular, affective mode of remembering the GDR has broad appeal that extends beyond national film-viewing contexts. The case of This Ain’t California demonstrates how intercultural and international dialogue happens not only in conversations between domestic and international audiences of German films; intercultural exchange occurs on the level of the text itself, in the filmmaking processes and in the affective experience of the embodied spectator. Studies which seek to account for embodied responses on the part of the spectator offer the means to understand the appeal of films such as This Ain’t California. The portrayal of transcultural experience between East German youths and the Western pursuit of skateboarding resonate with the film’s potential for opening up new avenues for discussing life in the GDR, and the legacies of re-unification. With an understanding of the phenomenology of the spectator’s film experience, we can illuminate pathways for future, productive interdisciplinary studies of films and their impact at film festivals.
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Notes
- 1.
Das geschieht so sonnig und so heiter, dass man fast vergessen kann, um was es in ‘This Ain’t California’ geht: ostdeutsche Geschichte.
- 2.
Wenn Denis so in Panik-Mode geschaltet hat, denn war er echt sogar irgendwie cooler als die Westdeutschen. Er hat die beeindruckt.
- 3.
Ich musste den Film machen, weil das meiner Geschichte erzählt, weil es die Geschichte meiner Kindheit ist. Meiner Jugend. Weil ich aus einer Zeit komme, oder aus einem Land komme, was es nicht mehr gibt.
- 4.
Von diesem Ansatz, etwas Komödienhaftes oder was Luftiges zu machen, ging es dann sehr schnell in die Richtung einer richtigen deutschen Geschichte, die es sich vielleicht sogar lohnt, ernsthaft zu erzählen. Natürlich ist von dem Luftigen und Lustigen viel übriggeblieben. Der Film ist an den Stellen ernst, an denen er nicht über Skateboarden erzählt.
- 5.
Sobchack’s terminology seeks to describe two key dimensions of perception and expression. Firstly, the film’s body is ‘the instrumental mediation necessary to cinematic communication between filmmaker and spectator’. Secondly, it is considered ‘as a direct means of having and expressing a world’ (1992, p. 168). Sobchack summarises her meaning of the term thus: ‘I use the phrase the “film’s body” very precisely […] to designate the material existence of the film as functionally embodied (and thus differentiated in existence from the filmmaker and spectator). The “film’s body” is not visible in the film except for its intentional agency and diacritical motion. It is not anthropomorphic, but it is also not reducible to the cinematic apparatus (in the same way that we are not reducible to our material physiognomy); it is discovered and located only reflexively as a quasi-subjective and embodied “eye” that has a discrete—if ordinarily prepersonal and anonymous—existence’ (2004, p. 66).
- 6.
Bewundernde, mehr aber noch skeptische, wenn nicht scharf-ablehnende Äußerungen zur “Amerikanisierung” der eigenen Welt setzten in Deutschland nach der Jahrhundertwende ein. In den 1920er Jahren verdichteten sie sich zu einem viel verwendeten Topos. So unterschiedlich die Akzente gesetzt wurden, so präsent waren Hoffnungen—verbreiteter jedoch Ängste und Sorgen.
- 7.
Das war der Knaller! Oh Mann, diese Rollen. Durchsichtig war die Lieblingsfarbe im Osten. Und wie die geschnuppert haben, wie das Paradies, das man am liebsten mit ihm hab’s verputzt.
- 8.
Skateboarden … roch’ nach großer Welt… das war so das einfachste Amerikanischer was man sich zusammenbauen konnte.
- 9.
Wir wollten in die Unendlichkeit gucken […] andere Mentalitäten, andere Geräusche, was Anderes zu schmecken. Ganz banale Sachen im Prinzip.
- 10.
See Jonathan Bach, What Remains?, for an example of this in the form of the ‘Intershop’—a chain where goods could be purchased with foreign currency (not East German Marks).
- 11.
Die haben auch nicht damit gerechnet, dass man damit Tricks machen kann. Das war einfach nur ein Ding, wo man sich draufstellt und irgendwo lang rollt.
- 12.
Befahren öffentlicher Verkehrsflächen verboten.
- 13.
‘Turnvater Jahn’ is a reference to Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who in the nineteenth century was a teacher of German gymnastics and is considered the father of the patriotic, social Turner movement (Eisenberg 1996).
- 14.
Mit diesen Typen… konnte man einfach nicht klar kommen.
- 15.
Er selber hat immer darauf bestanden, dass es genauso passiert ist. Wie in einem Traum.
- 16.
Originally published in ‘Der Mauerspringer’ a tale by Peter Schneider published in 1982, this phrase has become a common metaphor in discussions of Germany’s post-unification circumstances: ‘It will take longer to tear down the wall in our heads than any demolition company would require for the wall we can see’ (Die Mauer im Kopf einzureißen wird länger dauern, als irgendein Abrißunternehmen für die sichtbare braucht) (1982, p. 102).
- 17.
Der Film war nie für den Kopf gedacht, sondern für den Bauch.
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Cleverley, J. (2021). Intercultural Experience Through Affective Encounters: Marten Persiel’s This Ain’t California (2012). In: Herrschner, I., Stevens, K., Nickl, B. (eds) Transnational German Cinema. Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72917-2_8
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