E-Mail This Article to a Friend Dream or nightmare? ‘Young Turks of the German Cinema’ at the HFA BY PETER KEOUGH
	"Young Turks of the German Cinema" Presented with the cooperation of the Goethe-Institut at the Harvard Film Archive February 20 through 25.

America isn’t the only nation of immigrants. As Fatih Akin points out in his autobiographical documentary Wir haben vergessen, zurückzukehren/We Forgot To Go Back (2000; 59 minutes; February 20 at 7 p.m. and February 24 at 9 p.m.), more than 55 different nationalities live in his home town of Hamburg. The Turkish population in Germany alone has grown to two and a half million in the past 30 years.

Akin — whose Gegen die Wand/Head On just won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival — is one of the directors featured in the HFA program "Young Turks of the German Cinema." To judge from his film, the Turkish immigrant experience in Germany is a lot less traumatic than, say, that of illegal Mexican laborers crossing the Rio Grande. His parents arrived in Germany in the ’60s, started from nothing, worked hard, and achieved comfort and security and opportunities for their children. Akin has inherited the German Dream.

True, his parents recollect some early communication problems upon first arrival in the new country, but no overt prejudice. There was a little tension about traditional gender roles when mom decided to be more than a housewife and go to work, but the transition was made, and now dad can’t remember what bothered him about it in the first place. And when Akin visits his father’s Turkish village, the nostalgia for his own culture and the modern note of anomie creeps in. But all in all, it’s a pretty rosy picture.

Not so in the fictional features by Akin’s compatriots, which depict a German nightmare. An inspiration for some of these directors is Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose sympathy for the downtrodden and the outsider — the hero of his brilliant Angst essen Seele auf/Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a Turkish immigrant — and whose flair for melodrama can be seen in their work. Fassbinder’s In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden/In a Year of 13 Moons has echoes in Kutlug Ataman’s Lola + Bilidikid/Lola and Billy the Kid (1998; 93 minutes; February 20 and 22 at 9 p.m.). Lola (Gandi Mukli) is a Berlin drag queen in a happy-go-lucky transvestite revue; Billy (Erdal Yildiz) is a macho leather boy and hustler who wants to marry him. Billy wants Lola to get an operation; Lola’s not so sure. Billy offers a promise of a normal family life, which is tempting since Lola’s traditional Turkish family tossed him out long ago. And Lola has never even met his younger brother, a tormented teen who’s also drawn to the wild side.

There’s a lot going on in this movie: class conflict, a red wig, horrible family secrets, gay bashing, gay-basher bashing, a 13-year-old Pomeranian named Frau Schmidt, and a climax that will make you say, "Yikes!" Fassbinder would be pleased.

Fassbinder has a hand in Ayse Polat’s Auslandstournee/Tour Abroad (1998; 91 minutes; February 21 at 7 p.m. and February 23 at 9 p.m.), but it’s also an homage to Wim Wenders’s Alice in die Städten/Alice in the Cities (1974). When a friend dies, Zeki (a splendidly shopworn and wry Siir Eloglu) gets saddled with the deceased’s redoubtable 11-year-old daughter Senay (Özlem Blume). They travel around Europe in search of the girl’s long-lost, belly-dancing mother, along the way stopping at various bistros where Zeki performs. His singing, and his wryly melancholy asides, are more endearing than Senay’s constant complaining.

Along the way, Zeki searches a French town for a woman to educate the newly menstruating Senay (the "doctor" he finally finds is a mini-skirted prostitute). And there’s a song by a transgendered chanteuse that, as Zeki explains, touches the hopeless love without which we’d all go mad. Like the best road movies, Auslandstournee resonates with whimsy, exuberance, and despair.

Despair is all you’ll get in Thomas Arslan’s Dealer (1998; 80 minutes; February 21 and 25 at 9 p.m.). As hard-bitten and generic as the title, it’s the story of a young illegal immigrant in a bleak Turkish neighborhood in Berlin who pursues the title profession. His connection distrusts his loyalty, his girlfriend wants him to clean up his act and care for his young daughter, the local narc won’t stop hassling him. Familiar material, with an edge of Bresson’s Pickpocket and Scorsese’s Mean Streets. It’s about people who have forgotten for so long, there’s no more home to go back to.