Verrückt bleiben, verliebt bleiben

Verrückt bleiben, verliebt bleiben is a documentary portrait in which Torsten Ricardo (31) talks about his horrific past. He grew up in an outer suburb of Berlin, where he was locked up in a dark broom cupboard for eight years. He then spent years in children's homes and psychiatric institutions. At the age of twenty, he started working as painter, of both houses and canvas. His friends, an aunt and the theatre group Thikwá, partly with handicapped people, become Torsten's 'family'. Having grown up like a kind of Kaspar Hauser, Torsten becomes an Orpheus (he plays both characters on stage) and goes in search of happiness in the underworld: Torsten becomes a metro freak. After his unfortunate experiences with psychiatry, the metro stations, the trains and the lines turn out to have a positive effect on his life. The rails, the lights, travelling through tunnels for ever... Torsten: 'I could marry the metro, she is always faithful to me. She never leaves me. The metro always arrives.' In search of love and happiness, Torsten leaves for Budapest and Vienna. This soon turns into a quest for things he has never had: a mother, love, a wife, himself. And anger is always just round the corner.With this video report transferred to 35mm film, film-maker and camerawoman Elfi Mikesch wants to hold up a mirror before us. Torsten's story tells all of us - handicapped or not - something about the art of life in uncertainty.