This Ain’t California

This Ain’t California

Marten Persiel, 2012, 90’

Presenting a different portrait from East Germany, this dynamic documentary premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in the section “Perspektive Deutsches Kino” which aims to showcase thematic and artistic trends among next-generation filmmakers. A group of young people in East Germany in the 80s discovers skateboarding. They begin to practice and have fun using skateboards they make themselves. They are aliens in their own country; not only does the American subculture they borrow not suit the regime, but because they are not politically motivated they cannot find themselves a place among anti-regime groups either. But they do struggle against their having their skateboards and fun taken away from them… until 1989 when the Wall falls and their community scatters… “This Ain’t California” combines archive footage from that period and interviews shot in 2011.