Coal Country Song. Gundermann

Singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann became more well-known in western Germany through the biographical feature film “Gundermann” by Andreas Dresen, which was released for cinemas in 2018. In eastern Germany on the other hand – during the time of the German Democratic Republic and also after its collapse – Gundemann was a star, lauded as “Bob Dylan of the mines” or simply as “the voice of the east”, who, for many, sang straight from the soul. Grit Lemke’s documentary portrait delivers a sophisticated counterpart. She approaches the singing laborer, known by most as “Gundi,” via the recollections of his closest companions, via widely unknown archive material that shows him in performances and at work, and via pictures of the mining district of Lausitz, which was the basis of the rock poets artistic life and livelihood. His texts lived from the region, which – as excavator driver – he turned into a moon landscape. The territory as both a cure and a wound. Retrospectively, his hard work in the development and defense of real socialism, which he carried out obsessively, appears double-edged. Lemke depicts “Gundi” as a brilliant figure with tireless commitment for the good, whether he is singing, laboring, or entertain children. Yet he is also torn with contradiction; to save the “best country in the world” by means of environmental destruction, and the betrayal of his close friends through his association over many years with the Stasi. After German reunification, and after he lost his work and moved to the countryside, he develops an ecological awareness and becomes a vehement advocate for the cause in his songs and in talk show appearances “The word consumption needs to be eliminated if we still want to be walking around here in 2030.” – “But you just have to see the realities,” protests Regine Hildebrandt, politician of the Social Democratic Party in Brandenburg, Germany. In Lemke’s film, the mining precinct Lausitzer Revier and the former “socialist city” Hoyerswerda serve as the backdrop. “Like in a concave mirror, global questions are brought together in the region and in his work: homeland and industry, the end of work, utopia and individual responsibility. A teacher, a companion from the political/musical club Brigade Feuerstein, and a sound engineer all have the opportunity to speak. So too, do two musicians from the German rock band Silly, Uwe Hassbecker and Ritchie Baron, as well as Andy Wieczorek from the band Seilschaft and Conny Gundermann. The town choir Hoyerswerda sings Gundermann songs and casts him into the present of the district, which needs to reinvent itself.” An important contribution 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.… >>>