Röbi Rapp and Ernst Ostertag, who appear in the film The Circle in interview footage and portrayed by actors (eos)
I’ve been a bit obsessed this year with the idea of a ‘backward turn’ in LGBTQ cinema – a spike in interest in stories about the past, expressed through attention to period dramas, documentaries about historic subjects and greater screen presence for older LGBTQ people. (Here’s the Guardian piece where I set the idea out.)
At the Queer Lisboa film festival in Lisbon this September, I saw a few films that engaged with this topic in relation to drag and cabaret performance – obviously another area I’ve got a soft spot for. I wrote up some thoughts on the relevant films – Sao Paolo in Hi-Fi, Before the Last Curtain Falls, Party Girl and Castanha – for Sight & Sound. You can read the article here.
And today sees the UK release of a very distinctive Swiss film called The Circle, which uses all three of the tactics mentioned above: period setting; documentary material; older people on-screen. It’s a docu-drama about a remarkable early gay-rights magazine and social group that thrived in Switzerland in the mid-twentieth century, until it was effectively shut down by a reactionary backlash in the late 1950s.
The film follows young teacher Ernst Ostertag as he gets to know the world of The Circle (or Der Kreis in German), beginning a romance with teenage drag performer Röbi Rapp. Rather wonderfully, Ernst and Röbi are still together today, and can be seen talking about the period in documentary sections of the film as well as being played by younger actors in scenes set almost 60 years ago.
You can read more about the picture, including words from its director Stefan Haupt and where I think it fits in with the trend in LGBTQ period filmmaking, in this Guardian article that I wrote for today’s paper. I was lucky enough to have Ernst and Röbi answer some questions over email – in the Guardian article they talk eloquently about the need for constant vigilance to ensure gay rights continue.
But they had plenty more to say that I couldn’t find space for. So here’s are their thoughts on the influence of The Circle, the origins of the film, the emotions of seeing their lives recreated on screen
Ernst Ostertag and Röbi Rapp with the poster for The Circle, featuring actors playing them as young men (eos)
Why do you think it matters that the story of The Circle is remembered?
Der Kreis was a unique gay organisation, the only one on the continent surviving the Nazi terror. Shortly after the end of the war, Der Kreis started helping to form similar organisations in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Germany and France, and it opened connections to a newly founded US organisation. The monthly magazine regularly consisted of a part in German, French and English under its name Der Kreis—Le Cercle—The Circle. So it was the only existing international gay magazine with exclusively homoerotic literature, with photographs and drawings and also political reports. Der Kreis as a sort of club organised festive meetings with programmes of theatre, songs and ballet performed by a special team of Kreis members, and of course with music and dancing for everybody. These big events, three per year, were at the time the only gay gatherings of that kind worldwide. Members and guests came not only from all parts of Switzerland but also from all over Europe and America, sometimes up to 800. This should not be forgotten.
What was your response when you heard about the idea for the film?
Originally, the idea to have a film on Der Kreis turned up in 1999 during the opening of the first exhibition on the organisation. This was at the Schwules Museum [Gay Museum] in Berlin. We both were present there together with a crew from Swiss TV. The result was a seven-minute report during the main evening news. Some years later, we contacted Stefan Haupt, whom we knew through his gay brother, a friend to us both. Stefan, however, was occupied with other film projects. A few years later, we met the film producers Ivan Madeo and Urs Frey. We were members of the same Swiss organisation for gay executives, Network. We introduced Ivan and Urs to the history of Der Kreis and after some time they found “the best possible film director”; it was Stefan Haupt!
Now Stefan was really interested to make a film on love combined with The Circle – a film for everybody, not just a gay film. This matched exactly with our own ideas about the film. First, the producers and the director wanted to create a big fiction film with Swiss-German co-production. This project failed because there was no money to be found in Germany. So they had to seek for a cheaper way and finally found the form of a docu-fiction film. The two elements, documentary and fiction, became completely interwoven and tell the story in such a way that the audience hardly realises where fiction ends and documentary begins and vice versa. We think the film turned out to be a masterpiece of its kind.
Were you surprised that a younger generation would be interested in hearing your story?
We were not at all surprised to see younger generations being touched by the whole film and its story – our story. The problem of accepting one’s own homosexuality is the same anywhere and anytime. It is a long and hard way to go and mostly a lonely way as well. The film shows an understanding mother and hostile parents, it shows a ghetto-home, a cold and partly aggressive job situation and a homophobic society with its accordingly overacting police. People from outside generally think things have changed completely. Yet the problems gays and lesbians are faced with today are still similar or even equal to what is shown in the film. We both always had vivid ties to younger people and now by accompanying the film-screenings in many cities in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, in Kiev, Ukraine and in the US we very often are confronted with younger and sometimes very young people talking about their situation right now as pretty much the same as ours 60 years ago. Such talks often are emotional with tears and hugging. And they end with hope since the film shows a way out and ends in harmony and acceptance.
The film shows a gay world in which different generations mixed with one another socially and sexually. What were the advantages and disadvantages of that? Do you think this still happens today?
Of course this happens today as it did in the times of Der Kreis. Different generations mixing socially and if there is a possibility also sexually, this happens today in gay organisations fighting for equal rights and against all kind of discrimination in same ways as it does in heterosexual organisations where events of entertaining and social gatherings belong to the general programme or tradition. Disadvantages and advantages are the same. The advantages though are always much bigger. Maybe gay events due to the minority effect are more exclusive and so naturally more open to mixing.
It must have been strange seeing your own lives recreated for the film. What was most surprising about revisiting that period?
The first time we saw the film it threw us into an up and down of emotions like being on stormy seas. So many details long past and forgotten turned up and were suddenly real and present in front of us. We sometimes laughed, sometimes broke out in tears or shivered with fear and automatically held hands. At the end, we were unable to stand up and start talking – but when we did, we soon found out all others in the audience had similar feelings. They were deeply moved. So we knew the film was good, it reaches hearts and minds deeply and not only as a quick emotion. The most surprising and touching moment was when the two actors playing us meet marked with black fingers by the police [after being fingerprinted] and fall in each others arms saying. “We are not criminals, do you hear me? Not criminals!” It is the very message of the film: Love is no crime.
The Circle is in UK cinemas from today.
Posted by Ben Walters at 10:00am on Friday December 12 2014.
