Baldiga – entsichertes Herz (Baldiga – Unlocked Heart)

Film program, DE 2024, 92 min., dt. OV + engl. UT

By: Markus Stein

With: Jürgen Baldiga, Timo Lewandovsky, Bernd Boßmann, Ulf Reimer, Birgit Baldiga

Using countless photos and passages of text from thousands of pages of his diary, Markus Stein paints a portrait of photographer Jürgen Baldiga and dives into the gay underground scene of West-Berlin in the 1980s and 1990s. In his radical and moving photos, Baldiga portrayed his environment, his (sex) life and, as he describes it, “people who are on the margins of society and have found their center”. When he fell ill with AIDS, his images became more unsparing and a confrontation with dying friends and his own death became more and more present. The film thus not only provides insights into the life of a driven artist, but also that of an AIDS activist and committed fighter against the stigmatization of gay life.

Kristian Petersen