This Ain't California

2012 [GERMAN]

Action / Documentary / History / Sport

1
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 81% · 19 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 81% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.3/10 10 1110 1.1K

skateboarding berlin wall german democratic republic 1970s extreme sports male friendship

Plot summary

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.

Director

Marten Persiel Photo
Marten Persiel

Top cast

Zaneta Fuchsová Photo
Zaneta Fuchsová as Luzie Krause
Bill Clinton Photo
Bill Clinton as Self
Helmut Kohl Photo
Helmut Kohl as Self
David Nathan Photo
David Nathan as Nico
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
881.13 MB
1280*694
German 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
25 fps
1 hr 35 min
Seeds ...
1.77 GB
1920*1040
German 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
25 fps
1 hr 35 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Dirk_van_den_Berg

This is NOT a documentary

This film is great - but the producers find it OK that many websites continue calling it a documentary, which it is not. This is docu-fiction, very well-done docu-fiction, perhaps too well-done. Because it blurs the borders between what is real (documentary and archive material) and what is fiction. The main plot-line of the film is written and created, exactly as you would do writing a script for a feature film. The main protagonist - PANIK - is a composition of three real-life characters - and I am not inventing this, I am quoting the words of one of the film's producers. During a recent film and television festival, he and the film were heavily attacked by the jury of the documentary section, where the film was inscribed, for not revealing the truth and actually declaring the film to be a documentary. Ultimately, the film was excluded from the documentary category. What is so bad about this whole thing is not the film itself, which is quite brilliant. It is the tactics around it, and the fact that the producers are not at all forthcoming with the truth about their film. They prefer to feed the "mystery" around it instead of saying once and for all: "This ain't a documentary!"
Reviewed by CharlieGreenCG 6 / 10

The first skating movie ever cared for...

Is it a documentary? Is it a feature? First time writer and director Marten Persiel tells us that it is actually both, more of a 'documentary tale' of sorts. This description of the German subtitled feature is quite fitting.This Ain't California introduces us to a group of friends who are gathering for a funeral after-party, following the death of their once close friend 'Dennis 'Panik' Paracek. What follows is a reminiscence session of old memories and footage showing the rise of staking, hip-hop and break dancing all throughout the GDR controlled 1980's.Split into several subheadings and with an additional back story, this ain't a normal documentary. It is an entirely fresh approach. Director Marten Persiel describes the films ethos was the keep away from the politics – especially the Berlin Wall. Instead the film fundamentally follows the subjective mind-set of a 17 year old of the era. This is reflected heavily, what with the shaky cam, youths doing a ton of impressive skateboarding tricks. All of that, but mixed with a mash of funky-techno music. Very unique in a sense, however it deeply echoes as just a blend of German sport advertisements merely with the brand logo missing. Sadly it is nothing more than that.Filled with footage because it can, not because it should, Marten Persiel's first feature film still stands as an original take on a documentary and it is perhaps the first skating movie ever cared for.
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