The Latest at Goethe

The German film scene has gained a new luminary since career changer Marten Persiel’s film This Ain’t California became a sleeper hit. The skateboarding documentary is only the beginning, the director is certain. A portrait of a generalist. By Lisa Mayerhöfer

Snow-white, steep untouched slopes being navigated at breakneck speed by a single skier... A liberally tattooed cutter is sitting at the screen watching the scene. The walls are hung with portraits of other athletic daredevils with untamed beards and mad looks in their eyes. Everything in the spacious offices of the Cross-Media advertising agency is aligned to business with nature adventures. The film that Marten Persiel is presently working on with his editor is a clip for an outdoor brand and not a documentary cinema film. Ever since his breakthrough on the German film scene with This Ain’t California, Persiel has been working in two worlds. The more lucrative – advertising – helps him afford his real passion: making films “in rough strokes about big characters.”

This Ain’t California is about young skateboarders in the GDR. It’s about friendship that goes beyond mere convention, DIY attitudes, about creating your own world and what it brings about. Stretches of super-8 shots lend the film the perfect retro look and give the subliminal melancholy its aesthetic. The film always brings former East Germans to tears because it reminds them of their own childhoods while West Germans learn that life in the east also had its wild and unconventional sides.

His sleeper hit has sent Persiel around the world a number of times to international festivals and film screenings. The strain of the last tour to Asia is still discernible on his face as he interrupts postproduction and swaps the skiers for the summer heat to talk about the film and its makers in a small café near Munich’s former plague cemetery. He takes off his shoes before the first beverage even arrives. His cordial nonchalance is contagious and the server takes extra time to find just the right cake for him. The result is a Russian chocolate cheesecake that he generously shares.

Up and away

Persiel was a globetrotter long before This Ain’t California. Born in Berlin in 1974 and raised in Hanover, at the age of nineteen he began constantly moving about. He studied mixed media art in Portsmouth, film editing in Hamburg and film directing at Westminster University in London. At graduation he and a friend made a vow. “Five years is the goal, first to earn some money, no matter with what content, and learn as much as possible and then we’ll make our own first film. We both did it simultaneously, too, but it took ten years and not five.”

Persiel followed the Internet boom, designed digital advertising banners and other web products. He finally returned to directing through his work as a film editor. He lived in Spain, in Brazil off and on and for a year in the Philippines where he made two short films for development cooperation. Another commissioned film, Mimi, la Joie, took him to Ivory Coast in 2007. It is about women who live with AIDS in a country still suffering from the consequences of civil war. During shooting, Persiel came down with malaria and suffered a nervous breakdown. His time in the Philippines and in Africa led him to rethink things. “It dawned on me that you can achieve a thousand more important things with filmmaking than just making money.” Persiel therefore returned to Germany where funds are available to realize such projects.

Back in Berlin he met producer Ronald Vietz, and This Ain’t California was made. For Persiel it is a film that “closes many circles.” He followed up on his lifelong passion for skateboarding and his first attempts at filming his friends doing their tricks on Super 8.

No problems with pop culture

Persiel is a generalist, which allows him to make films in a very different way. “The thing that I have very clearly in my mind’s eye is the mood, even clearer than the actual content.” Before and during shooting he creates “mood edits” to give the crew a feel for the finished film. The aesthetic of the short clips is more like music videos. But, he has no qualms about hip labels. “Go ahead and call it pop. I don’t have any problems with popularity. In my opinion, that’s the best thing about films: if a film attracts many people it’s automatically also genuine cinema.”



In Germany, This Ain’t California was correspondingly polarizing. “Some said that’s exactly how documentary films ought to be made today; the others rapped on our fingers and said, ‘that’s not allowed’.” Critics objected to the extent of simulated scenes, which are not necessarily recognizable as such at first glance. For someone coming from advertising like Persiel, the debate over the genuineness of the images is astonishing. Persiel calls his film a “documentary narrative” and admits somewhat mischievously that he should have done that from the very beginning. Yet he also points out that many film festivals do not have this category for submissions and refers to his role model Werner Herzog who directed the protagonists in his documentary films like actors as early as the 1960s. Persiel considers the conventional categories in documentary films outdated. For him, the perceived truth is what matters as well as transporting emotions and human values.

Holding his own as a voice

Persiel still seems surprised by the worldwide audience enthusiasm for his film. Visits to international festivals and a number of tours for the Goethe-Institut have made their mark. “It’s a brand new thing for me to be perceived as a filmmaker. To notice that you have a voice and therefore the opportunity to be heard by a mass audience – that’s completely new for me and it makes me want to continue to work with genuine content and perhaps even make a contribution with it.”

His next project, a science fiction film, will focus on “environmental issues, love, sex and wildlife conservation.” It is a concern that is very important to him. Persiel can now finally use his own subject matter. If it doesn’t pan out, though, he can always pursue boatbuilding.