Tanzstück zum 750jährigen Jubiläum der Stadt Königsberg

Finality. The city of Königsberg is lost – razed to the ground. Banishment. People love their home city and have to leave it. No turning back. Many things in history are repairable. Not this.

Young Russian dancers become Germans, banished by the Russians after the 2nd World War. Only the younger generation can produce an artistic commentary of its own history, still hanging over the city like a trauma. Immanuel Kant was born in the once thriving port of Ostpreußen and Thomas Mann taught at its famous university. In 1945, Königsberg was declared a fortress city by the German fascists and conquered by the Russian army. Later, it was annexed to the Soviet Union and renamed Kaliningrad.

Dance Theatre Incluse was founded in 1994 by Natalia Agulnik, born in 1954 in Kemerovo. It is the only modern dance company in this Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. Even today, all the art is characterised by classical sovietism, although a chance is finally being taken on the emergence, and contemporary techniques are being learned. Since 2001, the company has also organised the annual »TransTranzit« festival as a meeting point for Russian and European dance.

»Deportation« is a socially involved piece about (German) history. At the same time, the term »homeland« is questioned in the light of globalisation and cosmopolitanism. The associative music of famous German-Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-98) produces strong references to the present, where dreams are in the direction of Europe.

The film, shot over a year and a half of intensive research work, is a kaleidoscopic compilation of over a hundred hours of interview and archive material and of recordings from historic Königsberg and present day Kaliningrad. Two young filmmakers from Germany and France investigate the myths surrounding Königsberg and the present dreadful spatial and intellectual emptiness of this city. A fast-paced presentation of a provocative and thoroughly »informative« excursus into the German and Russian past and present.