Swingpfennig/Deutschmark (1994)

Ten people - all young, mainly musicians, a photographer, a D.J., artists, who work part-time in a snack-bar, a record shop, and a bar. They live and move through the everyday happenings of Hamburg-St.Pauli, a region of Hamburg where many different lifestyles and attitudes co-exist, meet, and weave together. Trying to combat racist and nationalistic tendencies with courage and general ignorance with humor, they uncover and stumble upon the St. Pauli of the 1930's: the swing-youth, whose forbidden music embodied their cultural opposition and their love of life; a woman painter from the Reeperbahn who lived and worked against and outside the social conventions of the time; the story of the Chinese in Hamburg; of the king of the tattoo artists; documents from the extensive social consensus carried out by the Nazi authorities on the people in this particular part of the city. Throughout all of this, they themselves are being observed by undercover policemen, whose limited awareness makes it difficult for them to come to grips with the young group's way of life.