Product Description Hailed as the first--and only--feature film about gay life ever produced in communist East Germany, and winner of the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, Coming Out is the "passionate and moving, honestly told" (Planet Out) story of a young high school teacher named Philipp. As a boy, Philipp was strongly attracted to his best (male) friend, but as an adult, he puts that behind him in order to live within the "norm." Philipp meets a shy girl who falls hard for him, and soon the couple is sharing an apartment and starting a family. But when Philipp meets a young man in a concert ticket line, he really falls in love and cannot deny his true, passionate desires any longer. "Coming Out captures the push and pull of conflicting desires and repressions as well as any other film we've ever seen." (Bay Windows)Heiner Carow made Coming Out as a plea for tolerance-- not only for gays and lesbians, but for all minorities in the German Democratic Republic. He wanted his film to be about love and honesty. Carow, a gay man himself, wanted to avoid sensationalism and was committed to authenticity; he sought to portray reality as he knew it. Hence many of the film's supporting characters are actual members of the (mostly male) underground gay scene of East Berlin essentially playing themselves. The gay locales were real hangouts and clubs, and much of the background action is genuine, not staged. "The descriptions of East Berlin's gay scene are revelations in themselves." (Variety) A related bonus feature on the DVD is The Best of Queer Berlin, a PC-friendly interactive city guide with special links and printable maps. Review In November 1989 a handful of East Germans slipped into their cinemas to watch the debut of Coming Out, the latest film of Heiner Carow, who had time and again bucked the authorities with his sincere, if sentimental, portrayals of everyday life in a socialist country. He was the man who had put Flower Power, rock music, and the transforming power of romantic love on East Germany's big screens and given those subjects a legitimacy they had never had in the eyes of the state. In 1989 his topic was homosexuality, and the story traced a young man's choice between the woman who was bearing his child and a man with whom he had fallen in love. But it is what happened outside the theaters that would capture the hearts and minds of East Germans much more powerfully... That very night, the Wall fell. --Matthew Schuerman, German LifeOne of the best gay films I've seen. I only wish there were more films like this. --London Gay TimesAn erotically charged, emotional roller coaster and a tour of gay East Berlin-- with real gay bars, cruising areas and personalities! --Out in the Mountains
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