Artivels Undescribable Perfection

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "This Ain't California" is a 100-minute documentary from 2012, so this one has its 5th anniversary this year. Do not be fooled by the English title as this one is a German production in the German language. Writer and director of this one we have here is Marten Persiel and it is also his only work as a filmmaker, at least by now. He received some awards attention for it, not just at the German Film Festival, but even in the United States. I personally do not really share the praise though. I believe it is a somewhat interesting reminiscence by the characters involved in here, but I feel as if that's it basically. It is about skateboarders from the GDR and how their approach to this activity was pretty much not really conform with the ideals and basic concepts of the GDR. On a weak note, I thought the people in here were almost all interchangeable really and honestly I think they were too full of themselves at times. One example would be when they talk about GDR citizens watching them and how they see their own unfulfilled desires in these skateboard activities. This is incredibly exaggerated and over the top and there are more moments like these to be honest. The attempts of the filmmaker and the people in it to add relevance to the project did not work out well at all and I had to cringe at times. Apart from that, the film still stays too irrelevant and too personal at times where I would say that this is only a good watch for relatives and friends of the people we see in here. I may be a bit biased as I have never been into skateboarding at all, but I think that these 100 minutes are nothing that will motivate you to buy a skateboard and also it will not really get you curious into life at the GDR if you haven't been curious before watching this one. And if you have, then I feel that it will teach you very little new, if anything at all. I give this one a thumbs-down and I think Persiel's lack of experience clearly shows in here. Then again, the subject as a whole may not have been a great choice to be honest. In any case I am not curious about his future works if there will be any at all that is. Watch something else instead.

fritzbrause I am sorry, but upon seeing this I had the suspicion it couldn't be quite accurate and by later finding out it probably is a complete fabrication, scripted and acted out, I was feeling played with and lied to. Who likes that? I would think not a great deal of people. A simple information at the beginning that the story and the material are mostly fictitious would have prepared the viewer that he was watching something of an idealized, wanna be past, that did not happen as presented at all.I hope those filmmakers will not continue in making "documentaries" but use their imagination more accordingly in different settings. Better luck next time. For a mockumentary it just isn't funny or interesting enough.

Dirk_van_den_Berg 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!"

fb-31-949637 I grew up in the former GDR (East Germany) and I am about the same age as the skaters in the movie.There have been quite a few movies about that time. None got it right in my opinion. Some portrait it as a dull place - some exaggerated it as a comedy. So, this movie about the Skater scene in East Germany is very close to how life was at the time (as far as I can trust my memories). It is a movie about young people that share the passion for skateboarding. They have to live with the boundaries of the GDR.Also interesting, it tells a clear story but on the other hand it is a documentary as well.Besides, I also liked how the movie is made. The pictures, the music, the cuts, ... it simply fits.