| Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Uli Edel |
| Produced by | Bernd Eichinger Hans H. Kaden Hans Weth |
| Written by | Herman Weigel Kai Hermann Horst Rieck |
| Starring | Natja Brunckhorst Thomas Haustein |
| Music by | Jürgen Knieper David Bowie |
| Cinematography | Jürgen Jürges Justus Pankau |
| Release date(s) | 1981 |
| Running time | 138 minutes |
| Country | West Germany |
| Language | German |
| Budget | $2.7 million |
Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo is a 1981 film that portrays the drug scene in West Berlin in the 1970s, based on the non-fiction book of the same name written following tape recordings of Christiane F.
Contents |
12-year-old Christiane Felscherinow lives with her mother and little sister in a small apartment in a typical multi-storey concrete apartment building in a dull neighbourhood in the outskirts of West Berlin. She's bored and lacks things to do and is sick and tired of living there. She hears of Sound, a new disco in the city center, labelled as the most modern discothèque in Europe. Although she's legally too young to go there, she dresses up in high heels, wears makeup, and asks a friend from school, who hangs out there regularly, to take her, too. At the disco, she meets Detlef, who is a little older and is in a clique where everybody experiments with various drugs. At first she takes pills and LSD, but gradually becomes drawn deeper into the drugs, eventually ending up as a heroin-addict and prostitute. Christiane falls in love with Detlef, and begins using heroin on a regular basis, soon becoming a junkie like the rest of the group.
As the movie was first shown theaters in Germany, the movie and the book acquired cult status and pushed ahead junkie fashion allowing Christiane to earn a semi status of fame for a short period.
However the real and most important effect it had on popular culture, starting from Berlin and later spreading to Western Europe, was a growing concern towards heroin consumption.
All songs written by David Bowie except Heroes/Helden written by Bowie/Eno/Maas, Boys Keep Swinging and Look Back In Anger written by Bowie/Eno. According to the book, the real Christiane F. had had her first experience with heroin at a David Bowie concert some years earlier; this is told in the film with David Bowie starring as himself. The concert scene was filmed in October 1980 at New York's Hurrah Club, which was redressed to resemble a Berlin nightclub (Bowie was appearing nightly on Broadway at the time so director Ulrich Edel had to shoot the sequence in New York). [1]
|
||||||||