Q&A with UPSIDEdown Director and Filmmaker Bernd Sahling
The director will visit campus Oct. 17
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DEFA Film Library and the German and Scandinavian Studies program will host a film screening of the documentary UPSIDEdown, alongside a Q&A and talk with Bernd Sahling, director on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. in Isenberg SOM 137. The event is free and open to the public.
A German with English subtitles, UPSIDEdown follows 10-year-old Sascha who struggles with reading and writing at a new special school. When diagnosed with ADHD and given medication, his academic performance improves, but the changes in his personality strain his close friendships. The film explores the impact of medical intervention on childhood, identity, and relationships.
Ahead of the event, Chloe Borgida '25 interviewed Sahling about his work, inspiration, and what comes next. The Q&A interview below was translated by Hiltrud Schulz and Victoria I. Rizo Lenschyn, DEFA Film Library.
Q&A with UPSIDEdown Director and Filmmaker Bernd Sahling
Q: Your upcoming trip to UMass Amherst is packed with a variety of events, including a screening of your film UPSIDEdown. What are you most looking forward to during your time in Amherst?
A: The last time I came to UMass was in 1997. Together with a group of famous East German (GDR) filmmakers, I participated in the first North American DEFA conference, The Cinema of East Germany: View from North America.
I'm very curious to see how the university and especially the DEFA Film Library have developed since I last came. I am also interested in learning about the mood of the people so close to the important elections. I'm especially looking forward to the conversations with students that will be inspired by my film UPSIDEdown. It is always an important question for a filmmaker: How do viewers receive a film over time in which we, as directors, invested so much work and thought?
Q: UPSIDEdown raises multiple questions about dignity, (dis)ability, acceptance, and support. What was the inspiration behind the film? What do you hope viewers take away from it?
A: In 1995/96, I took courses at Columbia College in Chicago leading to a major in screenwriting. After my return to Germany, I had a hard time earning enough money with my film work to make ends meet. The Potsdam Youth Welfare Office was desperately looking for male family helpers because so many boys had gotten into trouble in the post-unification period. Suddenly, I was a social worker and accompanied a 10-year-old boy who couldn't properly read and write. So, the film UPSIDEdown is based on my diaries from those years.
It was very hard to finance the film. The reasoning for this was that the conflict was too complex for a younger audience and too much of a children's film for an adult audience. There were countless discussions as to whether this movie is suitable for children at all. But reaching a multi-generational audience was exactly what interested me most: There are conflicts in childhood for which we adults cannot offer solutions. We can only help children learn to deal with these difficulties, to accept them as they are and support them in finding their own way in life. This approach is not exactly popular in the children's film sector. Until this day, German television has not screened the film—neither for children nor adults.
Q: Many of your films feature children who experience difficulties or conflicts. When developing scripts and screenplays, what steps do you take to portray these feelings authentically? What draws you to these themes?
A: As a children's and youth film director, you can't make a living from filmmaking only. So in my case, I have to look for additional work that earns me enough money. Through the many different jobs I worked, I heard interesting stories and encountered many conflicts that brought me back to my screenwriting.
For example, every year I supervise film workshops in which children or young people develop their own projects. At one of the workshops in a little town in the northern part of Brandenburg, the young people decided to make a film about their first love. I was surprised about the many first love disappointments the 12- or 13-year-olds had already experienced. I could not stop thinking about their stories and at the end I wrote a script that also reflects on my very own first love experiences. Recently, I directed the film, and it will be out next year.
Q: Your photo exhibition, It’ll Be OK, co-presented by Deutsches Haus at NYU and the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst, highlights punk Stummel’s experience with two political systems and radical change in Germany. What steps did you take to capture this experience in still images? Are there any differences in how you approach photography vs. film?
A: The East German punks were very skeptical of a photographer or filmmaker who entered their closed scene and said: I want to shoot something here. We had to spend many months with them and had to show them that we were interested in them, their conflicts, their hopes, the situations they found themselves in. After much hesitation, but earning their trust, were we able to get our 16mm camera out and carefully shoot material.
As far as photography goes, it was much easier for me because I was only dependent on myself and didn’t need a team. I had met punk Stummel in1985, when I worked on a portrait series of young East Berlin people who had chosen to be different and make a statement with their appearance. I allowed them to choose how and where they wanted to be photographed. Stummel led me to an East Berlin backyard where a lot of bulky trash had accumulated. It was here, amidst a heap of rubble, that he wanted to be photographed. This was my first photo session with him. When I was allowed to shoot my first major documentary at the film school, I invited Stummel to participate, and this became my long-term observation documentary It’ll Be OK. By the way, you can see this photograph and others at the eponymous exhibit at the Deutsches Haus in New York until October 31 or read the catalog and access the film on the DEFA Film Library’s website.
Q: You’ve held many roles, including filmmaker, writer, and photographer. What has it been like to shift between these roles and creative spaces, and which has been most fulfilling?
A: I have to say that this versatility is my survival concept. If there is no work as a film director, I write, if there's nothing to write, I take photos. Taking pictures is actually part of my daily life. Photography is a bit like a competitive sport. If I don't do it for a while, I'm not good enough. That's also how I managed to get through the Covid the years. It was not possible to work with children for a long time and all the projects were canceled. This was truly not a good situation for a freelancer. Luckily, my friend Ralf Ollertz, who runs the Toula Limnaios dance company in Berlin with his wife, asked if I would like to make short documentaries for the company. They were not allowed to perform because of Covid, but they wanted to maintain their virtual visibility. So, I started the series INMITTEN (WITHIN). I have produced 14 episodes by now. But it was only possible because I had learned to do everything myself through the film workshops: camera, sound, editing and, of course, directing
Q: Though Germany is the common setting in your projects, your works have a global impact and you have received international recognition for your creations. How does it feel to create films viewed by audiences across the world?
A: Children's films of the kind that interest me as a filmmaker are rarely made, if only because they are hardly ever financed. But the countless children's film festivals all over the world are waiting for precisely these films. For me, this allowed me to go on trips that I would not have been able to afford: I got to know India, Egypt, Singapore, Russia and almost all European countries. And of course, it's a good feeling when a youth story set in Germany touches children and adults on other continents just as much as it does in your own country.
Through the years, you have held international film workshops for children and youth to foster creativity in young people. How do these workshops influence your own filmmaking?
Bernd thinks that we could delete this question because we already talked about it earlier.
Q: Your student film, Aber wenn man so leben will wie ich (Living My Own Way, 1988), was quite powerful and made a lasting impact as the first GDR film that put East German punk culture at the center of a film story. What advice would you give to young people looking to take a creative risk?
A: I don't like giving advice, even in my film workshops. Creativity doesn't come about when the old master lectures and the students listen in awe.
Good film stories are created on eye level, mutual respect and curiosity. This applies to working with children as well as dealing with colleagues on the film crew.
I want to know how they see the story, which costumes, which make-up, which images, which rooms they suggest. I often just let go, even if I would have done the details differently, as long as it serves the story and its diversity.
Q: You studied in East German times and your professional career started after the fall of the Berlin Wall in a new society with very different film making structures. How did you master this extreme change?
A: I think I can also speak for my friends and colleagues: None of us really mastered this unification. Many East Germans, including me, have scars, insecurities and experiences that still affects them today.
You can see that in the most recent election results in the East German states or in the attitude towards the war in the Ukraine. And, of course, East German filmmakers reflect precisely on these experiences in their film stories or the way a story is told.
I have my doubts about the image of East Germany that is conveyed to the young people I work with. Two years ago, I taught a film workshop to a 10th grade class from a Berlin high school with the topic What If.... One group wanted to make a short film: What If the GDR Still Existed.
We brainstormed possibilities and I offered to let the young people interview me on any topic they wanted. After all, I had spent my entire childhood and youth in the GDR and had taken a lot of photographs. The young people’s reaction was: “No, no. We know exactly what we want to do.” Their film was a guided tour through the Stasi prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. There was absolutely no curiosity about a contemporary witness, about everyday life in the East, the facets, perhaps even things that went better in East Germany than in West Germany.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I've always wanted to make a movie with cats in it. Finally, I thought of a story in which a cat chases after a boy at the end of second grade and messes up his vacation because the next day it's in his closet with kittens. A refugee story, so to speak. It's still unclear whether we will be able to secure the financing and shoot it next year.
Translated by Hiltrud Schulz and Victoria I. Rizo Lenschyn, DEFA Film Library