Film

Movie “Alaaf you”: the carnival from the inside

A documentary, produced hundreds of sequences, filmed with mobile phone cameras. Here is the real carnival, beyond the colorful Clowns, and pompous parades. A Declaration of love to a crazy city.

The Band “Querbeat” does hard work with up to ten performances a day

The unvarnished face of the carnival – the wanted the two Cologne-based filmmaker Eric Benz and Baris Aladag in your project. They called the Cologne under the Motto “Show us your carnival”, the carnival of films, as you experience it. So, as the television programmes it does not show: little stories, surprising moments, joy, effort, even the misery at the edge.

To happen that way. Two years ago, have Karnevalsfans into the crowd and crashed into the with their cell phones out filming, what you encountered is. The result, over 500 minutes of Material. This is the first documentary film in Germany, consisting of “user-generated Content” (of users contributed content). “Alaaf you” is now in cinemas.

No script afford

Party area “Zülpicher Straße”: it was here since the morning celebrated. This image offers itself in the morning around 3, 4 PM

Shot by a street in Cologne’s student quarter “kwartier, located Latäng”. It is late in the evening. Dressed people strolling up and down, some stagger. A young woman leans forward and passes out on the tarmac. A man falls, the others pull him back up. On the ground garbage: plastic cups, paper, leftover food, lost parts of costumes. Most of the pubs have already, from other blaring music – for those who have not yet late want to find.

The minute opening sequence should show more than just the sad Rest of a fabulous party. Says Eric Benz, the producer of “Alaaf You”: “We found this scene just incredibly beautiful, because you the viewer right into the action pure pulls. There is so much happening, something you can not stage. That’s the Great thing about this user-generated Content, we look through the eye of the beholder, authentic it’s not.” The beauty of this scene lies above all in Interpersonal. “In the crash, you see there, I see a lot of love. Although you are all already completely destroyed, but they still go together in love to – by you in your misery to help each other. This with each other I just think is beautiful.”

A Massenbesäufnis in the name of the Church?

Pop star Clueso makes street music

The audience experienced the Karnevalsprinzen and his entourage behind the stage. A Karnevalsband, from entrance to entrance rush. The pop singer Clueso with a wig, with his colleagues, and a few instruments on the road and enters between the revelers and play Reggae. People in jam-Packed pubs. Celebrating young people on the streets. The Nubbelverbrennung – the Symbol for the end of the carnival, an eerily beautiful ceremony with a funeral March and a burning doll.

Crowd scenes alternate with short Interviews. A Exilkölner tried early in the Morning of the Weiberfastnachtsdonnerstags with the train from Berlin to Cologne through. He wants to be on time to 11 PM 11 to the opening party at the Altermarkt, it manages to be not quite celebrating yet go for it. Be rising alcohol level is left to the audience, not hidden.

A woman from Norway, wants to find out what this carnival really is. And asking questions: How can carnival is a Catholic custom to be, if all is so, so drunk? And: Why is the virgin from the triumvirate shown by a man? Travesty, and the Church – how do they fit together?

The Ghost train takes place only at the Karnevalssamstag instead

With the camera plunges you into the fray, but even after several days could not figure out what the people here really celebrate. Until they are in the Ghost train, the alternative anarchic offshoot of the Cologne carnival, your answer can be found: carnival is anarchy and freedom.

Applause in a movie theater

The carnival has many faces. Above all, this is the Film wants to show, so producer Eric Benz. “The Nice thing about the carnival is that all these different faces exist side by side. The carnival is more versatile than he is usually portrayed.” In many scenes takes place in Cologne again. Gets the mirror and has much already experienced. In the cinema, laughed, sometimes there is even Applause.

As the scenes from Cologne Central station, it will be one or the other spectators but uncomfortable. Is shown, as thousands of happy people from the trains sources, in bulk, by the train station. On the square in front of the celebrants are close together and pushing towards the Cathedral and old town. These scenes were two years before the riots in the new year’s eve shot. “Now you see these scenes with other eyes”, says Benz. The scenes rauszuschneiden, about Benz and Aladag although thought. But you did the only right left inside. “This gives the Film strength. These scenes are now even more like a contemporary document. Two years ago, people have still seen quite differently, light-hearted.”

When the Nubbel brennt, be the revelers all Karnevalssünden forgiven

The 90 minutes long documentary is through Crowdfunding, and with the help of the Funding originated. “Alaaf you” works only in a few cinemas in Germany, mostly in the Rhineland, in a few Berlin cinemas and in Baden-Württemberg. The goal of “the world, the Cologne carnival, to show how he really is”, so should hardly be reached. A pity, because many of the Rhenish carnival, with a lack of understanding encounter, could the movie perhaps understand why hundreds of thousands of five days in the year, completely freak out.