Christiane F.

Deutscher Punk und Underground im Film
German with English subtitles
Free Admission
Info: +1 323 5253388
Info@losangeles.goethe.org

Germany (BRD), 1981, 131 min., German with English subtitles, digital. Dir. Uli Edel, Cast: Natja Brunckhorst, Thomas Haustein, and David Bowie.
Music: Jürgen Knieper, David Bowie
Followed by Q&A with Filmmaker Uli Edel

Berlin-Gropiusstadt, 1975. 13 year old Christiane (Natja Brunckhorst) lives with her mother and younger sister in a high-rise housing project on the outskirts of West-Berlin.
Only the music of David Bowie offers her a sense of escape from an otherwise lonely and alienated existence.
Sneaking out one night to join her older friend Kessi at the nightclub “Sound,” Christiane meets Detlef (Thomas Haustein), an older boy, who introduces her to a world of drugs and the rebellious nightlife of the city.
Driven by a need to escape her chaotic home life, and her growing infatuation with Detlef, Christiane’s initial experiments with pills, marijuana and LSD quickly lead to heroin, a drug that all of her new friends use.
Soon Christiane and her friends are drawn to the seedy “Bahnhof Zoo” railway station, notorious for drugs and prostitution, where they sell their bodies to feed their ever-growing addiction.

Based on the shocking autobiography of the teenage heroin addict turned prostitute Christiane Felscherinow (“Christiane F”). Complemented by a soundtrack including songs from Bowie's Berlin years (1977–1979), Edel’s film achieved almost immediate cult status for its hauntingly realistic portrayal of the underground drug scene that plagued Germany and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Felscherinow would later become an artist in the Berlin underground music and film scene, appearing in the underground cult hit film Decoder, as well as performing with Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten) as the duo Sentimentale Jugend at the now legendary Festival Genialer Dilletanten in September 1981 in Berlin.

$1 validated parking (for events only) on weekdays after 6:00 pm and all day on weekends in the Wilshire Courtyard West underground garage-P1.