Übergang

The opening shot of ÜBERGANG shows the platform of a Berlin S-Bahn station. With disarming directness, the sign on the other side of the rails tells us exactly where we are: “Schönhauser Allee,” in the district of Prenzlauer Berg. The film returns again and again to the station and its immediate vicinity. The German word “Übergang” suggests a point of crossing and transfer: tourists and locals appear from one side of the screen and disappear out of another. For Thomas Heise, though, Schönhauser Allee was also home, and ÜBERGANG narrates his life through interview fragments and recollections assembled around these documentary images and sounds. Foregrounding the meaning of “Übergang” as “transition,” Heise’s life becomes a means for narrating not only the shift from East Germany to the contemporary Federal Republic, but also transience and historical change as such. The static camera placed at the station exit or on a tram recalls the actualities and phantom rides of early cinema and their mute registration of facticity and the passage of time. Meanwhile, the film embodies one final interchange: the transfer from Heise to his collaborators Peter Badel and Chris Wright, who completed the film after Heise passed away in May 2024. (Nicolas Helm-Grovas)

In the presence of Peter Badel and Chris Wright.

Peter Badel: TAGE IN BERLIN (1981), ERFINDER ’82 (1982, CO-DIRECTOR), GRAUGUSS (1990), IN SCHWARZE PUMPE (1991, CO-DIRECTOR), IM SCHÖNSTEN WIESENGRUNDE (1991, CO-DIRECTOR)

Chris Wright: TECHNIK DES GLÜCKS (2003, CO-DIRECTOR), DAS BLOCK (2007, CO-DIRECTOR), KLEINSTHEIM (2010, CO-DIRECTOR), KEVIN AUF DEM WACHSTUMSPFAD (2010, CO-DIRECTOR), PFARRER (2014, CO-DIRECTOR), MUTTERGLÜCK (2016, CO-DIRECTOR), ANMAßUNG (2021, CO-DIRECTOR)