German film puts human faces on post-unity upheaval

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN (Reuters) - A documentary tracking how German unification affected the lives of nine East German women who took part in a beauty pageant just before the Berlin Wall fell offers a glimpse into 19 years of upheaval.

Yet "Sag' mir, wo die Schoenen sind?" ("The Beauties from Leipzig") is more than a "before and after" look at the women who competed for the "Miss Leipzig" crown in May 1989 months before Communist East Germany imploded.

The 90-minute film illustrates the wider story of how the turbulence that quickly swept away East Germany and the Berlin Wall, and the turmoil that followed reunification in 1990, radically changed the lives of easterners.

"I call it our 'second life'," director Gunther Scholz told the audience at the world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

"Something completely crazy and complicated swooped down on our lives and changed everything," he added. "We stumbled into a whole new life in a whole new world. Many of us had hard but oddly similar experiences. I wanted to dig deeper into that."

The film features still photographs, grainy film clips and taped interviews of nine young beauty contestants along with their Socialism-tinged dreams and ambitions in 1989 -- and contrasts those with what happened since.

Scholz's film takes some of the sad statistics that followed German unification -- soaring unemployment, plunging birth rates, and depopulation -- and puts names and faces to them.

"I was fascinated by the great 'Miss Leipzig' pictures from '89 and curious about what happened to them," said Scholz of the contest that itself reflected East Germany dropping its disdain for such "decadent" Western pageants.