After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Esther Zimmering makes the acquaintance of relatives in Israel she had previously never met. What remains today of the diverse ideas of her ancestors? A multifaceted, personal reflection on the Jewish experience in the GDR, the socialist experience in Israel, and what has become of both following German reunification.
Whilst one half of the family constructed socialist kibbutzim, the other helped to build the GDR. After 1989, the Zimmerings were able to travel to Israel for the first time. And thus into the world of a group long designated as the enemy in the GDR, namely the "Zionists". For Esther, then 12 years old, the new era held an unpleasant surprise in store as neo-Nazis appeared as if out of nowhere. Her family, which had consciously made the decision to go to the GDR after the war to help construct an anti-fascist state, found themselves vilified as both Jews and communists. Esther delves deeply into her family's past: only Grandma Lizzi and her cousin Lore survived the Shoah. Lizzi returned to East Germany from exile in England in 1945 while Lore went to Palestine. Lizzi's husband, Josef, became the GDR's first permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva. The family didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays. Lore's husband, Max, was one of the Zionist founding fathers of the State of Israel. In the 1990s, Esther finds a second home in Israel, as she is united with her family there. And yet here, too, ideals crumble, and with them the idyllic world she discovered as a teenager.
"Zimmering succeeds with astonishing precision in closely linking collective history, in the form of the post-war reconstruction utopia of Israel and the GDR, with her own development and retracing a complex family history from 1933 through to the present day". (Wolfgang Hamdorf, in: filmdienst.de [accessed July 26, 2018]).
Text: Bernd Buder, adaption/ edit of the Arsenal-Filmverleih-press material
The screening on May 6th will be followed by a Q&A with editor Friederike Anders.
The screenings om May 10th and 11th will be followed by a Q&A with the director Esther Zimmering.
Credits
original title Swimmingpool am Golan
international title Swimmingpool am Golan
german title Swimmingpool am Golan
JFBB section Break or continuity? "Anti-Zionism" and anti-Semitism under socialism and afterwards. Part II: Anti-Semitismus in Post-socialism
country/countries DE
year 2018
duration 88
Esther Zimmering
BIO ESTHER ZIMMERING was born in Potsdam in 1977. After graduating from high school, she studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. This was followed by her first engagements at the Staatstheater in Cottbus, as well as on stage in Dessau and Senftenberg. From 2002, she performed at the Hamburg Kammerspiele under the direction of Didi Danquart.
In 2009 she was awarded the Artistic Achievement Award and the Best Actors Prize. Since then, she has served on various film juries and is a member of the German Film Academy.
In 2010, she was awarded an acting scholarship by the FFA for a residency in Los Angeles. Esther takes advantage of her stay and begins intensive research work for “Swimming Pool am Golan”, traveling to New York to the Leo Baeck Institute and the Holocaust Museum in Washington. In the same year, Esther receives support for the project from the DEFA Foundation and the Ursula Lachnit-Fixson Foundation for the first time.
Since 2012, Esther has been shooting preliminary footage in Israel, sifting through lots of material and further developing the concept for her documentary.
