He went on a bender with Motörhead’s Lemmy and spend some night in jail. He was a street musician, a working class hero, a thug, a fairy and most of all a rebel – Jürgen Zeltinger is a Cologne icon. With his band he covered Lou Reed and the Ramones in the Kölsch dialect in the 80s, and his social justice anthems against the rich and powerful and for the little man are being bellowed by rowdy crowds to this day. Documentary filmmaker Oliver Schwabe accompanies the now elder statesman of Rock on tour, digs up old live footage and interviews friends and colleagues like musician Wolfgang Niedecken and actor Heiner Lauterbach. So emerges the fascinating story of the stout, bald street kid with the short fuse who would go on to influence a whole generation.
When Conny died at the age of only 47, his son Stephan was just 13 years old. Twenty-five years later, together with co-director Reto Caduff, he went in search of the man he often only experienced behind the mixing desk as a child. At the same time it became the search for the artistic legacy of his father.
Joseph Komalschek was sentenced to 30 years in prison for cruelly murdering a young mother and her newborn baby. He never confessed his crimes and the bodies could not be found. After being released from prison, he returns to his hometown. People there treat him with distrust and disdain.
Berlin 36 is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in the 1936 Summer Olympics. She was replaced by the Nazi regime by an athlete later discovered to be a man. The film is based on a true story and was released in Germany on September 10, 2009. Reporters at Der Spiegel challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not learn Dora Ratjen was male until 1938.
