Red Stars Upon the Field

“If the ghosts can visit our time, we can visit theirs”. This freewheeling tour of German history of the 20th and 21st centuries follows a postmodern artist back to her East German village birthplace – where a discovered skeleton opens up mysteries both personal and political.

“If the ghosts can visit our time, we can visit theirs”. This freewheeling tour of German history of the 20th and 21st centuries assumes an almost supernatural agency, concentrated in its plucky heroine, Tine. A member of the ‘Aesthetic Left’ – which hopes to bring social change through daring acts of art and imagination – Tine hides from police by taking refuge in her East German birthplace of Bad Kleinen, a rural village seemingly stuck in a previous age. But history becomes unfixed when a skeleton is dredged up from the lake. Is it related to Nazism? Terrorism? And how does it entangle the family histories of the local inhabitants? When Tine begins making a short film with teenagers, further layers of speculation are added to the ever-widening puzzle.

Filmmaker Laura Laabs, who has previously made shorts and worked in television, delivers this story through a bold, upbeat mixture of styles. Realism is frequently violated: some scenes play out in a pastiche of generic TV formats, whilst quotations from philosophers including Walter Benjamin provide a poetic narration. The ambition of Red Stars Upon the Field is large, but grounded in charming details of interpersonal interaction and the close observation of a place.

– Adrian Martin

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