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Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand

Under the Pavement Lies the Strand
Retrospective 2019
© Deutsche Kinemathek / Helma Sanders GmbH, Anne Sanders
Grischa and Heinrich are actors in West Berlin, who become a couple after spending a night together backstage. Soon, however, Heinrich’s desire to have children drives a wedge between them. Grischa is involved at the margins of the women’s movement and initiates a project surveying working women about their everyday life, abortion, and domestic violence. Heinrich, on the other hand, still mourns the unrealised utopia of the student movement and sinks into self-pity and lethargy. Grischa doesn’t believe he could handle the responsibility of a child. But then she becomes pregnant … In the film, made seven years after the upheaval of 1968, Helma Sanders-Brahms parses the attitudes of a generation. While a feeling of political impotence drove frustrated street protestors to withdraw or, as in Heinrich’s case, to embrace a sense of hope for a “revolution a deux” in love, it motivated women to tackle Marx’s “second contradiction” of women’s repression. The clash between the political and the personal is also reflected in the film’s aesthetic. Intimate scenes of cosy togetherness are juxtaposed with documentary footage, for instance of a demonstration against Germany’s anti-abortion law.
by Helma Sanders-Brahms
with Grischa Huber, Heinrich Giskes, Ursula von Berg, Gesine Strempel, Traute Klier-Siebert, Barbara Finkenstaedt, Heinz Hoenig, Günter Lampe Federal Republic of Germany 1975 German 103’ Black/White Rating R16

With

  • Grischa Huber
  • Heinrich Giskes
  • Ursula von Berg
  • Gesine Strempel
  • Traute Klier-Siebert
  • Barbara Finkenstaedt
  • Heinz Hoenig
  • Günter Lampe

Crew

Director Helma Sanders-Brahms
Screenplay Heinrich Giskes, Grischa Huber, Helma Sanders-Brahms
Cinematography Thomas Mauch
Editing Elfi Tillack
Sound Georg Lehner
Producer Helma Sanders-Brahms
Commissioning Editor Eckart Stein

Additional information

DCP: Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin

Helma Sanders-Brahms

Born in Emden, Germany, in 1940. Following university, she worked as a TV announcer and trained in Italy with directors Sergio Corbucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini. After directing political, critical TV programs, she turned toward more subjective forms of expression with Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand (1975). The central themes of her films include the women’s movement (Shirins Hochzeit, 1976), literary history (Heinrich, 1977), and Germany’s past (Manöver, 1988). Her films have been successful in many European countries.

Filmography

1971 Die industrielle Reserve-Armee 1974 Erdbeben in Chili 1975 Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand 1976 Shirins Hochzeit 1977 Heinrich 1980 Deutschland, bleiche Mutter 1981 Die Berührte 1984 Flügel und Fesseln 1986 Felix. Episode 1: Er am Ende · Laputa 1988 Manöver 1992 Apfelbäume 1994 Jetzt leben -– Juden in Berlin 1997 Mein Herz – Niemandem! 2003 Die Farbe der Seele 2008 Geliebte Clara

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2019