If a parent is missing from a child's life, the foundation for the future is altered. People who experience this absence in childhood feel a special connection to each other when they meet. That's how it was when I first met Erika Gregor over 30 years ago. We had a long conversation at a small festival that sadly no longer exists on the Baltic island of Poel. Our conversation was about films, but even more it was about family, about the disappearance of fathers in Erika's case and the disappearance of mothers in mine. Erika's mother was present at the time, Erika's husband Ulrich too, and he was—this should be taken literally—a sincere bystander.
I didn't know at the time that this conversation, during which I became friends with Erika and her mother, would one day form the initial moment for the production of a documentary about the Gregors. I was a student at the “Konrad Wolf” Academy of Film and Television in Babelsberg, I wanted to make documentary films and I was curious about the world, life, films, and people above all. That is still the case today. What has developed is my knowledge of the craft of cinema and the awareness that as a documentary filmmaker I am a seismographer and chronicler of our times.
Erika and Ulrich Gregor devoted all their senses to one mammoth task: "to show unusual films from all over the world to an audience here". Tirelessly, for decades. In doing so, they took stock of the relevant issues of their time. Their choice of films was never random, the program they created—whether at the Arsenal cinema or for the Berlinale Forum—was always curated with the social and political situation in mind. They were contemporary witnesses who shaped culture, and not only film culture, in Germany and Europe more broadly between 1957 and 2000. Born in 1932 and 1934 respectively, they belong to an age group that experienced National Socialism as children and with this as their background, as the so-called "post-war generation", wanted to build a different Germany, a Germany that was democratic and accepted responsibility for the horrors of the past rather than deny them. To follow their convictions with such a sincere commitment makes the Gregors not only special human beings, but also important contemporary witnesses. As a documentary filmmaker, I felt that it was essential that Erika and Ulrich Gregor's life's work be recorded on film for us and, to put it bluntly, also for posterity, as long as the chance was there.
These days, oral narration is rarely trusted to create a cinematic arc.
Without funding, under the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also a firm belief that we had to tackle this film now—that's how the cameraman Jan Kerhart, the sound engineer Ivonne Gärber and I shot the first takes with the Gregors in June 2020: two days of interviews at the Arsenal cinema (closed due to Covid-19), where we also watched a surprise film, and a visit to the Gregors’ home, where they recited a poem by Else Lasker-Schüler—“Come with Me to the Cinema”—to us in their study.
That was the beginning of a cinematic journey, sometimes a ride by force, that took us through several hundred films selected by the Gregors; countless hours of archive material from the then SFB and GDR television; conversations with companions; all icons of German film, including Edgar Reitz, Wim Wenders, Michael Verhoeven, Jutta Brückner, and Helke Sander; and to many more conversations with Erika and Ulrich Gregor.
Many fear that a film whose protagonists essentially talk about their lives could be long-winded or boring. The times when Eberhard Fechner made his great interview films as oral history for television are over. These days, oral narration is rarely trusted to create a cinematic arc. Thanks are due to the RBB (commissioning editor Rolf Bergmann), WDR (commissioning editor Andrea Hanke), the BKM jury, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and DFFF, as well as to our crowdfunding community and my co-producer Sandra Ehlermann. They all made it possible to make this film the way I thought that it should be made. The Gregors told us about their lives. We selected clips from 40 films that were representative of their lives or associated with them. We discovered real treasures in the archival material and wove all the elements together in an elaborate and associative montage (thanks as well to editor Silke Botsch).
It was especially important to me not only to describe the spirit of Berlin in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but to bring it to life in the film.
If there is a secret to documentary film, it is this: Developing a sense for what is true and making the rapid decision to capture it, in picture and sound, the moment it reveals itself in front of the camera. It's a challenge for the film team, as it requires permanent attentiveness. But it is essential. That's how I see it. That's what I learned from Klaus Wildenhahn and his direct cinema documentaries. For me, it is irrelevant whether these moments are purist—i.e., whether they would also take place without the presence of the camera, in direct cinema style—or whether they have been set up for the day of the shoot. What's important to me is that the moments are true. That's how we kept it, the Gregors, my team, and I. It was especially important to me not only to describe the spirit of Berlin in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, but to bring it to life in the film. We did stage some scenes with a young couple exploring Berlin on a Vespa, just as Ulrich Gregor and Erika Steinhoff—later to become Erika Gregor—had done in East and West Berlin before the wall was even built.
More than once, I feared that I would not be able to do justice to this task. The Gregors' sphere of activity was so great, so many films and so much archive material had to be sifted through, as well as thousands of photos, programmes, posters, and newspaper articles. I often had the feeling that I was drowning in the life of the Gregors and the abundance of material, and that I couldn't find my way through it, let alone make the one "right" film about it. The life and activity of the Gregors are as complex as the perspectives on this life are diverse.
How can one succeed in reproducing a life lived while the protagonists are still alive in a biographical film? How can one do justice to two icons of the film industry? How can one tell a cultural history—and above all 100 years of film history—against the background of private lives? How much is private and must remain so? It was a balancing act. One that we negotiated with Erika and Ulrich Gregor, starting from scratch each day. Trust between us grew over the course of a year and a half of filming. It became possible to shoot moments that allowed a glimpse into the private lives of this couple, married for over 60 years, who continue to enjoy living and working together, beyond the sphere of their mutual activity. "Come with me to the cinema"—that's what "The Gregors" say to us—true to the motto: "A life without cinema is possible, but pointless.”
Alice Agneskirchner
Translation: Anne Thomas
