Ask, Mark ve Ölüm – Liebe, D-Mark und Tod

The recruitment agreement with Turkey in 1961 also brought the music of guest workers to Germany along with the people. Cem Kaya's dense documentary film essay is a tutoring session in Turkish-German contemporary history: assembly line jobs, homesickness and family reunification, the bazaar in Berlin's Bülowstraße elevated railway station, xenophobia and racism, the wistful songs of the early years and the hip-hop of the post-reunification era. The musicians talk about all of this, from Metin Türköz and Yüksel Özkasap to the psychedelic Derdiyoklar and rapper Muhabbet, who was in the charts. Their music developed far away from that of German bands, always driven by the Turkish community and its needs. It is about Radio Yilmaz, various music cassette labels, the German exile of protest rocker Cem Karaca and wedding bands that also sing in Kurdish and Arabic to cater to the market.Extensive archive research and an interest in Turkish popular culture are recurring themes in Cem Kaya's work. With Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm, he has created a rhythmically and vividly narrated filmic reference work on Turkish music in Germany. (Berlinale)