Having won the Audience Award for Best Documentary in the Panorama section of Berlinale and currently nominated for the German Film Academy Award, the Turkish-German director Cem Kaya‘s film “Love, Deutschmarks and Death” brings a never-before-seen insight into the vibrant history of the musical culture of Turkish immigrants in Germany.
Similar to our guest workers, for Germans Yugos, due to the signing of interstate agreements, in the 60s of the last century, a large number of Turkish migrant workers began to flow from rural Anatolia to the much-desired “Alemannia”, the land of honey and milk, the mythical West Germany. From the beginning, the settlers were accompanied by their music as an unavoidable part of their culture – a piece of home in a foreign land. Over the years, independent music trends that did not even exist in their homeland are developing in Germany. The new scene was also commercially important, so it generated huge profits in the golden age, and local clubs like the cult Türkische Bazar in Berlin, although completely unnoticed by the media, were “bursting” with visitors on weekends, and the money from the program was “bought with a broom”. The violence caused by racism towards the Turkish community culminated in the 90s, and for the second and third generations who grew up in Germany, who no longer had a homeland to return to, rap and hip-hop became the voice of resistance.
Fun, full of rhythm, composed of never-before-seen archive footage and accompanied by a frenetic soundtrack, Cem Kaya’s film not only depicts the spirit and energy of a time in a special way, but also provides a historical account of a forgotten vibrant migrant culture of resistance built on anti-racism and worker solidarity.
Distributed by Restart, the film will be released in Croatian cinemas on April 20th, with guest appearances and interviews with director Cem Kaya in Zagreb (Dokukino KIC) and Pula (Rojc Social Center).
