This Ain't California (2012)

This Ain't California (2012) (DVD) (*)

~~$30.99~~ $24.97

Screened, competed or awarded at:
Berlin International Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )
English ( Subtitles )
Finnish ( Subtitles )
Italian ( Subtitles )
Portuguese ( Subtitles )
Spanish ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Germany ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
109 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
2-DVD Set
Interactive Menu
Making Of
Photo Gallery
Scene Access

Movie filmed in 2012 and produced in:
Germany ( Germany, Central Europe )

Directed By:
Marten Persiel

Written By:
Marten Persiel
Ira Wedel

Actors:
David Nathan ..... Nico
Anneke Schwabe

Synopsis:

This Ain't California is a celebration of the lust for life. A mind blowing movie that seamlessly mixes archive footage, home movies, animation and recreated scenes from the lives of one group of teenagers and their subversive leader, anti-hero and skateboarding legend Panik, in the last oppressive years of communist East Berlin. This punk fairy tale is a story about the subversive power of fun behind the Iron Curtain, charting the underground following of banned western pop culture - skat-ing, hip-hop and break dancing through the 80's, ending in the last summer of the GDR in 1989, when the wall finally fell, and lives changed forever.

A hymn to the subversive power of vitality, this fast-paced documentary takes us on a trip through the strange unknown world of the "Rollbrettfahrer" (the translation means something as "boardroller driver") as skateboarders were known in the GDR, a country where besides those loyal to the regime, there was also an avowed political resistance. Apart from this, there was also a movement of young rebels whose only reason was the illusion of staying young, immortal and non-committal. In THIS AIN'T CALIFORNIA three kids discover their love of skateboarding on the cracked asphalt of the GDR - a mad-cap, even unacceptable sport that was perhaps so incredibly exciting because of its nuttiness. This punk fairy-tale created by a bunch of kids who luckily possessed sufficiently manic levels of energy to record their lives on a super 8mm film, shows us life in GDR life as it has never seen before. The film follows its three main protagonist from their childhood in the seventies, through their turbulent teens in the eighties right up to that autumn of 1989, when they were already twenty and suddenly everything they had known up to that point was about to change forever.

This Ain't California is a celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary documentary trip into the world of roller boarding in the German Democratic Republic. A coming-of-age tale of three teenagers and their passionate love for a sport on the crumbling tarmac of the streets in the German Democratic Republic, which was considered very ill-fitting. The punk fairy tale is a story of the subversive powers of fun in that part of Germany, which had lost touch with its citizens. The film follows its three heroes from their childhood in the seventies through their teenage rebellion in the eighties, ending in the last summer of their life in the German Democratic Republic in 1989, when their life changed forever, and follows them to 2011.

This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 18 March, 2020.