Männerfreundschaften

How gay was Goethe? And what about his contemporaries? How was homosexuality perceived by society at the time, and in what form was it experienced? Inspired by Robert Tobin's “Warm Brothers - Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe,” cult director Rosa von Praunheim explores these and other questions. Queer-read stagings of correspondence, poetry, and dramatic texts at the places where they were written are accompanied by commentary from interviews with literary scholars and historians. The result is a dazzling, varied film that transcends genre boundaries and entertainingly illuminates homoeroticism and homosexuality in Weimar Classicism. In his film, Rosa von Praunheim interweaves original texts by Goethe, Schiller, Heinse, and others with fictional dialogues that reach into the present in an astonishing way. With a deliberate theatrical style, powerful images, and a mixture of seriousness and irony, the result is a cinematic experiment about friendship, eroticism, and intellectual freedom. The film uses historical backdrops as well as modern breaks, creating a friction between eras that renegotiates questions of identity and feelings. FRIENDSHIP OF MEN was presented at the 2018 International Hof Film Festival and received great acclaim from audiences and critics alike. Praunheim received special recognition for his courage in combining literary heritage and queer perspectives.