Events

Germany, 1992, 87min., 35mm, Director: Helke Misselwitz, Cast: Claudia Geisler, Nino Sandow, Ben Becker, Eva-Maria Hagen, Günter Lamprecht, Tatjana Besson

In the little town of Herzsprung (whose name can mean either “heartbreak”, or “heart leap”) almost nothing has changed since German unification. Nothing, that is, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, is one of the unemployed and has to live on social welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with Manuel, a dark-skinned, roving adventurer, and the whole village is talking about it.

Helke Misselwitz was born in Planitz, East Germany, in 1947. She studied at the Academy for Film & Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg.  When director Heiner Carow accepted her as a master student at the East German Academy of the Arts in 1985, she created a key documentary about women in the final years of the GDR, Winter Adé (1988). Based on this documentary, she became a director at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films. She currently works as professor of directing at the Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg.