BALDIGA - Unlocked Heart - Opening Film

BALDIGA - Unlocked Heart by Marcus Stein, Germany 2023, 90 minutes, German OV with English subs

"Prostitutes, transvestites, alcoholics and the mentally ill. That's where I feel at home. That's the world that needs to be captured."

In 1979, 19-year old Jürgen Baldiga moves to Berlin and decides to become an artist. Faced with certain death from HIV infection, he discovers photography as his medium. Between despair, longing, rebellion and an irrepressible will to survive, Baldiga becomes a chronicler of the queer West Berlin subculture of the 80s and early 90s and proves his unique talent as a sensitive and provocative photographic artist.

The film director Marcus Stein, born in 1965, has spent a lifetime in the filmindustry exploring a diverse variety of subjects and genres. His first contact with Jürgen Baldia was in the 1980s when, in a friend's apartment, he saw a print of Baldiga’s photograph of the drag performer Melitta Sundström. It has not left his mind ever since and eventually led him to produce this stirring film based on Baldigas diaries. Stein lives and works in Berlin, Germany.