1991 Documentary film about The Tuntenhaus, a gay squat on Berlin's Mainzer Strasse
The Battle of Tuntenhaus is a 1991 documentary film directed by Juliet Bashore. The documentary follows the inhabitants of the Tuntenhaus ("house of queers") a gay and drag queen squat on Mainzer Strasse in East Berlin.
Synopsis.
The first part of the documentary introduces the Tuntenhaus ("house of queers") – a gay and radical drag queen squat on Mainzer Strasse in East Berlin, in 1990; the occupation is one of many on the street, which was known as a "hotbed of revolutionary and anti-fascist activity." The film follows the inhabitants as they go about their daily lives: communal dinners, love relationships, fortifying the squat against Nazi attack. The squatters face ongoing violence from neo-Nazi gangs, and are evicted by West German police in November 1990 as part of the Battle of Mainzer Strasse. In part two of the documentary, two years later, Bashore revisits some of the locations and interviews some of the former squatters again.
Production.
The Tuntenhaus was a gay and drag queen squat occupied at Mainzer Strasse 4 in East Berlin following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. The documentary depicts life in the Tuntenhaus. It was directed by Juliet Bashore for British Broadcaster Channel 4. Part one is 25 minutes long and part two is 20 minutes.
Critical reception and legacy.
Critic Kevin Thomas, writing for "The Los Angeles Times" in 1992, called "The Battle of Tuntenhaus" "a tender, angry account." "Die Tageszeitung," writing in 2022, said ""The Battle of Tuntenhaus" is about left-wing dreams and utopias and how they burst" and called the film "a wonderful contemporary document about Berlin shortly after reunification and the autonomous squatter scene, and above all about queer people who tried to create their very own ecosystem."
"The Battle of Tuntenhaus" has been discussed as an important documentation of radical queer history and as a unique artifact of autonomous and squatter movements. The Tuntenhaus itself was recreated as a squat on Kastanienallee and later legalized.
A 2022–2023 installation at the Schwules Museum in Berlin, curated by Bastian Krondorfer, featured sequences from "The Battle of Tuntenhaus" throughout the exhibit, and included a life-sized simulacrum of the squat recreated by installation designer Bri Schlögel, based on scenes from the film. The "Exberliner" reported that the documentary was also screened at the open air cinema in Friedrichshain.
References.
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