This Ain't California

The film tells the story of a group of young people who skated in East Germany in the 1980s. It goes from their childhood through their rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989 up to the present. At the centre is a boy nicknamed Panik, described by his friends. What could be done on a skateboard behind the Wall, where it was possible to skate, and how the state looked at it are all part of the story. Marten Persiel's film was presented as a documentary and won a prize at the 2012 Berlinale. The director then revealed that most of what was taken for archive footage had been shot in the present and that Panik was a fictional character; the film was removed from the documentary category. There really was a skate scene in East Germany, and that part is true. The argument is about how far it is legitimate to tell a real history through fiction.