Quarterly 2 · 2008 - German Films

Sylke Enders (photo © Stephan Rabold)
DIRECTOR’S PORTRAIT
Sylke Enders grew up in the 1970s in Kleinmachnow, in the former
GDR. Her mother was a bookkeeper, her father a social scientist.
Excelling at getting expelled from school and unable to fulfill her
dream of film directing, she studied Sociology at the Humboldt
University in Berlin but had to leave in 1986 due, again, to behavioral
issues. After pursuing a career in unemployment and homelessness
she became a doorkeeper at Berlin’s Volksbuehne theater. She made
her first short AWO, about bikers, which sold to western TV. Then
she married, emigrated to the West and studied Social and Business
Communication at the Berlin University of Arts. From 1990 she work -
ed as a script and continuity consultant and director’s assistant, then
entered the German Film & Television Academy (dffb) in 1996, graduating
in 2002. Since then she’s worked as a director and writer.
While at the dffb, she made the short, Kroko, which she turned into
a feature in 2003. It picked up the German Film Award in Silver 2004
and was nominated for the European Newcomers Film Award in
2004 as well as the First Steps Award in 2003. Then came Hab mich
lieb! (2004) and in 2007, Mondkalb, her third feature, which open -
ed the Hof 2007 festival and was in competition at the Max Ophuels
Festival Saarbruecken 2008. She is currently working on several projects.
Contact:
Henschel SCHAUSPIEL Theaterverlag Berlin GmbH
Marienburger Strasse 28 · 10405 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-44 31 88 88 · fax +49-30-44 31 88 77
email: verlag@henschel-schauspiel.de · www.henschel-schauspiel.de
CONTRADICTIONS
& SANDCASTLES
A portrait of Sylke Enders
The tea is brewing, but there’s a lack of biscuits, despite her having been
asked to bring some, which means Sylke Enders is hitting the chocolate.
She’s as relaxed as she can be, given she’s in a stranger’s apartment
and I’m between her and the door, but she opens up from the get go.
“I’m a real Zone Kid!” she says of her upbringing, laughing heartily. “I
wasn’t an unhappy child, despite several disciplinary problems, but
they did mean I lost my place at the university. In those days, it was
possible to study in Moscow or Lodz as a post-graduate but that was
out, so aged eighteen I took myself off to discover more of life and
society and the eternal fight of the individual against the latter.”
While “opening doors and welcoming directors and actors” at the
Volksbuehne theater in Berlin, Enders made her first film, AWO,
“about a motorbike gathering in Saxony. There were 600 bikers and
350 ’Awos’, that’s a special name for a motorbike. They thought, with
my leather jacket, short hair and Japanese camera, I was from the
West or the secret police!” AWO later got sold to western TV and
Enders collected yet another disciplinary hearing! “Then I met a man,
got married and emigrated to West Germany!”
In what could quite easily come from a film script and proves life is,
well, like that, Enders applied to the University of Arts in West Berlin
german films quarterly director’s portrait
2 · 2008 14