HEIMATFILM, an except of new work made with my own footage on the topic of home, belonging and home-making.

What the Heimatfilm promises is an inner happiness, peace and harmony, green grass, blue skies and no Fremdkörper disturbing this peace. It is a yearning for a world that never was, a non-place. A fantasy held up for purposes of rightwing ideologies offered as an escape in times of upheaval and economic hardship - a false promise of a Making [insert any country name] Great Again. It is idealised idyll as refuge, as an Alternative for [Insert any country name] (referring to the party 'Alternative für Deutschland'). It’s also identity, but it’s fabricated. No Fremdkörper is to blame when that illusion of peace is 'disturbed'. We all yearn for a homecoming and a home-making. It is what groomers prey on. The other side is the fear of the loss of what was once perceived as familiar - as home. As long as home is equated with this particular, rosy cheeked illusion of harmony and as long as harmony is equated with notions of sameness, unity - a 'purity' and as long as this 'purity' is equated with familiarity and familiarity with certainty, a Heimat of multiple cultures and people alongside each other and not one subordinate to the other, can not exist. The Other who has come from somewhere, will forever be a 'Dorn im Auge' - an eyesore in the eyes of those who were already there. What is thus needed are notions of belonging that can account for and accommodate the already existing diversity of contemporary Germany and other countries that see their 'Heimat disturbed'. Can you 'do' Heimatliebe AND plurality? When can one call one’s country Heimat? What are the preconditions to be allowed to call Germany Heimat? These are questions I am exploring in this film using my own experiences.

Inspired by Max Czollek's call for De-integrating, De-heimatizing, as well as Zygmunt Baumann’s 'Die Angst vor den Anderen' (2016) and Julia Reuter’s 'Ordnungen des Anderen' (2015).

WALD - The nostalgic role that the sea plays for the maritime nation of England is played by the existential metaphor of Waldeinsamkeit for the Germans. Two thirds of Germany are covered by forest, and it has the most forest of any country in the European Union. We love 'our' forest. It is, like the sea to the Brits, a longed-for-place. But whose is it? Who moves through it as if he owns it? Who doesn’t? Who can take root in 'our' forest and who can’t? Which birds are 'heimisch' and who decides? Who is allowed space to grow and from what point?