Happy birthday - the Mainzer will be cleared - DVD

Film: After the fall of the Wall, the area around Mainzer Strasse in East Berlin became the stronghold of the squatter scene. Groups of different political and cultural backgrounds came together everywhere and formed a kind of parallel society, which was repeatedly exposed to attacks by neo-Nazis and visits by the police. In November 1990, the police arrived to clear the occupied houses. But the action quickly escalated, police, squatters and sympathizers engaged in a street battle, the consequences of which can still be felt today by many of those involved. More than 3000 police officers moved in against nearly 500 squatters and over 10,000 sympathizers, making the eviction of Mainzer Strasse the most massive police operation in Berlin's post-war history.

Katrin Rothe's documentary "Happy Birthday - the Mainzer is being evicted" lets several contemporary witnesses have their say, telling what life was like in the squats, how they experienced the eviction and what personal consequences the events had for them. What makes this barely 40-minute film so worth watching is Rothe's sensitive staging. She relies solely on the statements of the interviewees, letting them tell their stories without intervening in a judgmental way or overly emotionalizing the whole thing with highly dramatic footage. The documentary remains factual, yet moving, it is actually completely unspectacularly staged, and yet highly exciting.

All the questions raised by the massive police deployment and the violence on both sides, the political and social consequences for Berlin, are admittedly not answered here. But nevertheless the film creates a good and in every respect worth seeing picture of the events, which everyone who is interested in recent German history should definitely watch. Recommendable!

Picture + Sound: The interviews are partly recorded very well understandable, but at times there is also by reverberation in the homes of the interviewees arising quality drop, which makes it a little more difficult to understand the respective speakers. The picture is clear and clean and is thus on a good level for a documentary.

Extras: In addition to a 14-minute interview with Bärbel Bohley from March 2010, the DVD also includes the 89-minute bonus film "Die Ex bin ich". This drama by Katrin Rothe, staged in 2009 for ZDF in the series Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, is also set in the squatter scene and, with its mixture of feature and animated scenes and the authentically acting actors, is a more than worthwhile addition to the documentary.

Conclusion: The documentary "Happy Birthday - the Mainzer wird geräumt" provides an interesting look at the events of November 1990, whose traces have not really faded even twenty years later. The DVD can convince especially because of the bonus material, which offers a 89 minute long, very worth seeing bonus film by Katrin Rothe

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp