Germany / Israel 1997
Ulrike Ottinger Filmproduction
in Coproduction with Transfax Film Productions,
Marek Rozenbaum, Tel Aviv.
16mm color 275 minutes
German or English subtitles
Premiere: February 18, 1997, Berlin Filmfestival, International Forum
Six life stories of German, Austrian, and Russian Jews which intersect in exile in Shanghai. Out of narratives, photographs, documents, and new images of the biggest and most contradictory metropolis of the Far East an entity develops in which the historic exile takes and turns on a completely current power and appeal.
About the film
Fascinating and rich with dry humour; EXIL SHANGHAI is an extraordinary cultural
odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai, the
most fabulous city of the Far East.
from: Moving Pictures at the Berlin Filmfestival, Feb. 18, 1997
Clippings
Friday, April 25, 1997
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
Jews found refuge and pain in China
By John Krich
Special to the Examiner
IF SAN FRANCISCO and Shanghai are sister cities, Ulrike Ottinger knows why.
When the veteran German documentarian sought out Jews who once found both refuge
and misery in China's version of a wild Barbary Coast, the Bay Area provided
her with more than enough testimonials - 4½ hours of finished film. The
U.S. premiere screening of Ottinger's "Exile Shanghai" (12:30 p.m.
Sunday, Castro Theatre; repeating 1 p.m. May 4 at Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley)
is one of the Film Festival's truly cross-cultural events - and a kind of double
homecoming for five "shanghaied" Bay Area residents who will be on
screen and in the audience.
"But Shanghai is the real star," says Rena Krasno of Mountain View,
whose story dominates the movie's first hour. "These aren't interviews
in the normal sense. Each person shows a different facet of Shanghai, but you
can't reflect all of them."
A true child of fate, Krasno was born in Shanghai when her father, fleeing Russia
via China with a group of Zionists, suffered an appendicitis attack that left
him trapped and stateless. While Sephardic Jewish traders from India had come
to Shanghai as early as 1845, the Ashkenazi Jews from Russia were more typically
like Krasno's father, the editor of a cultural journal published in three languages.
"Of course, we had servants, but even the prostitutes had servants."
observes Krasno, who says of her upbringing, "Looking back, especially
from Mountain View, it was very exciting. Somehow, life was stable even though
no one knew about the future."
She has maintained a lifelong interest in the land of her birth, writing a memoir
called "Strangers Always" and leading the Sino-Judaic Institute, an
organisation that encourages research on a history that goes back to Marco Polo's
mention of Jews, helps support China's "amazing" seven centers for
Judaic studies and publishes a newsletter.
"Somehow, when I left and got distance," says Krasno, "I realized
that I had absorbed knowledge that made China close to my heart - even though
there was only one Chinese girl in my school and our courses never mentioned
a word about China. The bad part of the colonial system was that I had no social
contact with the Chinese."
That certainly wasn't the case for Geoffrey Heller, a long-time administrator
with UC-Berkeley, whose boyhood tales conclude "Exile Shanghai." Arriving
in 1940 to rejoin parents who had escaped Hitler's ovens by way of the Trans-Siberian
Express, Heller was one of an estimated 20.000 German Jews sent to a "restricted"
area by the Japanese to satisfy their Nazi allies.
Forced to live amongst Chinese in the crowded Hongkew district, surviving without
running water and with the constant fear of being deported, Heller came to "greatly
admire my Chinese neighbors for being able to maintain such civilized ways under
adverse conditions."
Says the retired Heller, "I always hoped to be part of the rebirth of a
free China" - at least, until he landed in San Francisco, which he considers
"the world's most heavenly place." Still, he recalls fondly when "we
Jews and Chinese shared a common enemy and celebrated a common victory."
After escaping the Nazis, Theodore Alexander, now "Rabbi Ted" of Danville,
found employment with one of Shanghai's large banking firms and was relatively
comfortable "until the Japanese 'exchanged' my home for a hovel."
Alexander notes with pride how Jews reconstructed "a little Vienna, a little
Berlin" by starting coffee houses, theaters, cultural groups, even synagogues
amidst the bombed-out ruins of the Hongkew neighborhood ringed with barbed wire.
One-day passes out were allowed for medical treatment, but residents first had
to endure beatings from the Japanese commander who dubbed himself "King
of the Jews."
Newborn babies died of the cold in the ghetto's unheated hospital. Recalls Alexander,
"You could be sent to prison for the slightest offense, like not bowing
low enough to a soldier. And since the jail was infested with typhus, even a
single day there was like a death sentence. People came out and began saying
goodbye to their friends and relatives."
Of immense historical value, Ottinger's real-life epic, praised as both "perfectionist"
and "kaleidoscopic," aims at larger themes by interspersing the Bay
Area's survivors with period music and poetic imagery of Shanghai today.
"While Ottinger began with German Jews, her interest grew to include all
conditions of exile," observes Krasno. "And since all the people shown
were young at the time, we see how youth finds something to be enthusiastic
about no matter the circumstances. In this sense, the film is very optimistic."
As a result, the movie balances the common impression of old Shanghai as a place
of un-bound evil and corruption by highlighting the better aspects of the city's
fabled openness. "Since this was a place where the entry was free and people
didn't ask questions, there were a lot of political refugees and also a lot
of criminals," Krasno admits.
"Exile Shanghai" is a paean to colonial Shanghai's brief moment as
what Krasno calls "a microcosm to the world." Even San Francisco's
vaunted tolerance and multiculturalism pales before a place where, as Krasno
describes, "you could walk from street to street and come under a different
form of government and law."
Stressing the Chinese city that has survived all various European encroachments,
the visuals of "Exile Shanghai" also emphasize the interconnectedness
of history and individuals. Through an experimental approach that Geoffrey Heller
likens to "a classical Chinese poem," Ottinger shows how time and
place link people as though in the long strands of some master noodle maker.
Lange hat man Zeit, die Gesichter zu betrachten, viel Raum wird dem gewandten
Ausdruck gegeben, in dem diese Mehrfach-Emigranten erzählen, die von Geschichten
übersprudeln
EXIL SHANGHAI weiß viel und kommt daher ohne Didaktik aus. Kein erklärender
Text aus dem Off stört den Betrachter, man darf sich selbst ein Bild machen
vom Ort und den Menschen, die dort leben und lebten. Fragmente, Details geben
Einblick in Strukturen. Der Film hält die poetische Cinematographerführung,
die Ottingers Arbeit auszeichnet, in den Interviews wie in den Aufnahmen der
gegenwärtigen Stadt, als ob jene strenge Ordnung der Dinge fernöstliche und
europäische Ästhetik mischte. Vorsichtig werden Tagebücher auf einen roten Tisch
gebreitet, auf dem sich, wie zur Zierde, ein Kakadu tummelt; so sorgfältig wie
die Photographien ausgepackt werden, cadriert sie die Cinematographer.
Der Film leitet sein Publikum zärtlich, er läßt uns in die Bilder gleiten, die
eine Originalmusik aus den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren wunderbar ergänzt.
So stellen sich ungeahnte Verbindungen her, Trauer paart sich mit Melancholie,
denn es ist nicht nur eine Geschichte des Leids und der Flucht, die EXIL SHANGHAI
erzählt. Manch einer, so stellt insbesondere das Ende klar, wäre gern in der
exterritorialen Stadt geblieben, hätte das Transitäre zugunsten einer Bleibe
im Exotischen aufgegeben. Diese Faszination im Präsens eingefangen zu haben,
macht Ottingers Film zu mehr als einem historiographischen Dokument, nämlich
zu einer Sinfonle der Großstadt, in der sich das Fremde und das Eigene
klangvoll mischen.
Veronika Rall, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, Feb. 20, 1997
[...] Nüchterner, ergreifender ist Ulrike Ottingers Dokumentation über das EXIL
SHANGHAI, einen bisher kaum bekannten Ausschnitt der Geschichte. Shanghai war
bis zur japanischen Besatzung 1942 der weltweit letzte Zufluchtsort mit offenen
Grenzen. Hier lebten Angehörige vieler Nationen in friedlicher Koexistenz, hierher
flohen viele europäischen Juden und versuchten, ein neues Leben aufzubauen,
bis sie von den Japanern 1943 ins Ghetto gesperrt wurden.
Daneben gab es eine alteingesessene Schicht sephardischer Juden, meist steinreiche
Kaufleute, die der spätkolonialistischen Elite zugehörten. Mit den Exilanten
kamen sie nur selten in Berührung. Aus Interviews mit ihnen, mit deutschen,
österreichischen und russischen Juden, aus Photos, Dokumenten und Filmaufnahmen
vom heutigen Shanghai entsteht das Bild einer vitalen Stadt und eines nur wenig
bekannten Kapitels der Exilgeschichte: ein Leben zwischen Dekadenz und Ghetto.
Die Bilder aus der Gegenwart - Straßenszenen, Marktgeschehen oder Schiffe im
Hafen - wirken dabei wie eine Oberflächenhaut, die erst in den Erzählungen der
lnterviewpartner ihre historischeTiefendimension gewinnt. Der Film funktioniert
als Medium der Erinnerung, und die Erinnerungen sind Türen in eine unbekannte
Welt. Ottinger findet eigene, eindrucksvolle Bilder. Sie spürt auf, trägt zusammen
und blendet die verschiedenen Zeitebenen virtuos übereinander, so daß Geschichte
sichtbar und stofflich fühlbar wird. Die Music dient ihr nicht [...] als Gefühlsquetsche,
sondern ist ein autonomerTeil des Geschichtsmosaiks, manchmal auch ironischer
Kommentar. Etwa dann, wenn zum Bericht vom Hafen das alte Lied erklingt: ,,lrgendwo
auf der Welt gibt's ein kleines bißchen Glück, und ich träume davon jeden Augenblick."
So gelingt Ottinger etwas ganz Seltenes: Erinnerungen vielschichtig und lebendig
zu machen. Sie beschwört keine Gespenster sondern öffnet und weitet den Blick.
Jörg Magenau, in: Freitag, Berlin 10/97
Staff/Cast
Director, Cinematographer: Ulrike Ottinger.
Music: Originalmusic from the 20th and 30th from different archives and
the collection of Raymond Wolff.
The Interviewees:
Rena Krasno (Mountain View, CA, November 1995),
Rabbi Theodore Alexander und Gertrude Alexander (Danville, CA, November 1995),
lnna Mink (Kentfield, CA, November 1995),
Georges Spunt, 1923-1996 (San Francisco, November 1995),
Geoffrey Heller (Berkeley, CA, Dezember 1995).
Team San Francisco
Production/Set Manager: Erica Marcus.
Sound: Sara Chin.
Assistant Cinematographer: Caitlin Manning.
Team Shanghai
Recherche: Katharina Sykora
Assistant Cinematographer: Bernd Balaschus.
Translator: Ting I Li.
Team of the Shanghai-Filmstudios
Bao Qicheng, Catherine Fu, David Su, Benny
Zhu, Chen Yong, Shao Zhiyu, Xu Chengshi, Ni
Zheng, Xu Xiushan,Yi Akou.
Team Israel
Rostrum
Cinematographer: Yossi Zicherman.
Executive Producer: Uzi Cohen.
Set Manager: Madeleine Ali.
Team Berlin
Executive Producer: Ulrich Ströhle.
Sound: Bettina Böhler.
Mixing: Hartmut Eichgrün
Supported by
Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg,
FiImförderungsanstalt Berlin,
The New Foundation For Cinema & Television Tel Aviv,
the Israeli Film Center,
the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Tel Aviv.
Distribution:
Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V.
Potsdamer Str. 2
D-10785 Berlin
Germany
Contact: Karl Winter
fon +49-30-269 55 150
fax +49-30-269 55 111