GUNDERMANN – ENDE DER EISENZEIT
Germany 1999. Director: Richard Engel. Documentary film. 98 mins. digital
Germany 1999. Director: Richard Engel. Documentary film. 98 mins. digital
More than a decade after GUNDI GUNDERMANN (GDR 1981/1983), Richard Engel returns to the Scheibe open-cast mine to work with the excavator-driving songwriter Gerhard Gundermann on a documentary follow-up of their encounter. Engel shows Gundermann, to whom Andreas Dresen dedicated a biopic of the same name in 2018, at a turning point: after the final closure of the open-cast mine, Gundermann loses his job as well as his excavator and is henceforth in search of work. GUNDERMANN – ENDE DER EISENZEIT accompanies the worker/musician until his sudden death in 1998 and also makes the end of an industrial region in the “post-reunification period” tangible by looking at the people and landscapes living there.
