Asoziale

ASOZIALE Poor people are often described as “asocial.” In his film of the same name, Gernot Eigler lets some of these people tell their stories: welfare recipients, street urchins, ghetto dwellers, and those whose lives never recovered after the war. In doing so the film has already taken a side, in contrast to the talk from those who tend to the “problem” in an administrative way. Social issues are discussed, and in the commentary, the concept and history of the “asocial” are critically dissected. The only early film by Gernot Eigler to have survived, ASOZIALE was made in 1970 as part of the “Armut in Deutschand” (Poverty in Germany) TV series of the SWF network. The editor was Jörg Dattler, who gave Gernot Eigler carte blanche. Eigler, a Mannheim-born doctor, psychiatrist and specialist in occupational health, spent a great deal of time in Aachen and Cologne during that period of 1969 to 1970, for both personal and professional reasons. He was encouraged to make films via his friendships and connections around the film studio at the Technical University of Aachen. In Cologne he lived with filmmaker Hans-Peter Kochenrath, a co-founder of the Cologne XScreen group, whose influence in the student film club in Aachen in turn encouraged the circle around Rolf Thissen, Cyrus Kube and Werner Sünkel to turn to provocative, experimental cinema. While making ASOZIALE, Eigler was able to draw upon the equipment of the relatively well-supplied Aachen film studio, as was presumably the case for his earlier short films as well. He was helped in the process by Cyrus Kube, amongst others, who also made a film for the aforementioned SWF series entitled ALLEINSTEHENDE MÜTTER (Single Mothers). During breaks from work, Gernot Eigler continued to make films for ZDF and SWF until the mid-1980s. The fact that ASOZIALE has been preserved while the rest of Gernot Eigler’s early works must be considered lost is due to the fact that the film was shown at the Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1971 and awarded a prize there by the jury of the Filmothek der Jugend. After the festival, a copy remained in the archive at Oberhausen. Its file card shows that it was regularly requested during its first years at the archive, mostly by municipal youth offices and youth educational institutions. An additional copy in Cologne’s Leo Schönecker Film Archive had to be discarded not long ago due to vinegar syndrome. Text and research: Peter Hoffmann