A documentary about four gay men trying to live a fulfilling life in a rural German town.
This film series is part of
Queer as German Folk, a project celebrating the intersectional histories of Germany’s and America’s diverse LGBTIQ+ communities. A digitally modified version of the exhibition
Queer as German Folk and a full program of virtual events is presented by the
Goethe-Institut in North America in collaboration with its
Goethe Pop Ups and the
Schwules Museum Berlin (SMU).
The film will be available to stream from September 11, 10AM CST to September 13, 12AM CST. Please register below to receive the streaming link by email. Advance registrants will receive the link on September 11, 10AM CST.
Registration
About the film:
Documentary | Germany | 2000-2003 | 99 min
In
Talk Straight, Jochen Hick travels to the Swabian countryside to investigate: did some gays actually manage to stay there or did they all flee the hostility and narrow-mindedness of their rural origins? He asks people and the answer is: “I don’t know any.” His insistence shows that this is never really the case. A kaleidoscope of sensitivities between gays and heterosexuals ensues. The film says a lot about social processes and can serve as a guide to understanding any culture, whether in Swabia or anywhere else: the principles are the same. It’s terrible, yes, but it can also be funny and encouraging!
Film summary by Wieland Speck; Translation by Sara Stevenson
About the filmmaker:
Jochen Hick (1960) grew up in the Taunus region, in Munich and Stuttgart. He studied film from 1981 to 1987 at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (with Helke Sander and others) and in Bologna. Since graduating, he has worked as a film director, author, journalist and producer for cinema and television, specializing in socio-cultural, especially LGBTIQ+, issues. In 1994, he founded his own production company Galeria Alaska Productions and has produced numerous reports and documentaries for ARD, ZDF/ARTE, 3sat and Spiegel-TV, in addition to realizing his own material. From 2007 to 2010, Hick was also deputy program director and editor-in-chief at TIMM, the first TV station for gay men in the German-speaking world. Hick's films have been shown at over 300 international festivals and have been awarded the Förderpreis der Deutschen Filmkritik (1987) and the Teddy for Best Documentary (2003), among others.
PLEASE NOTE: This film is only available to audiences in the US, Canada and Mexico.
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