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Glück auf und davon

Documentary "Glück auf und davon" by Oliver Neis

Synopsis

Director Oliver Neis is standing in a smoky cloud of tobacco at the counter of his grandmothers country pub, a counter that is over a 100 years old in a small village in the countryside of the Saarland. He is watching a men’s choir while their tears are running down their bearded cheeks. These men are the symbol for the rise and fall of a whole region and its culture. The Saarland, a region in Southwestern Germany, has experienced dramatic changes over the last 150 years: from a bleak farming side, on to a sudden industrialisation through coal mines and steel mills, ending in the penniless present. These men have won excessive abundance, risking their life every day in the dusty mines, and they went into raptures on it during their youth. Today everything is emptied, the coalbeds are plundered. In these blues the choir starts to strike up the old songs. And suddenly we get an idea how deep the feelings of these men can reach, what being home, beeing bound to something and the loss of it could mean. This film is a personal search for these feelings, a search for traces all along the sound of these miner’s voices.

Producer’s note

In a world that revolves more and more about individualisation, the term home and the associated feelings have served their time. The poetic documentary „Glück auf und davon“ by director Oliver Neis, whose roots go back to the Saarland, is a gentle approach to these lost emotions. The film wants to commemorate a piece of common history that still characterizes the region and its culture today as well as bringing the rough beauty and melancholy of the people and their environment to a wider audience.