Episode #3 - East German born Director, Writer and Casting Director Uta Seibicke was the appointed contributor. Uta has many credits as a casting director in feature films in Germany and has since moved to New York City in the United States. She has a deep connection to her home, the city of Berlin and its history of separation. It’s something that she feels and understands in a way only a German could.
Our screening took place in Bushwick at Fourwind Films’ headquarters where Uta presented her short film Last Christmas (2013) she wrote and directed. Last Christmas takes place in Berlin and is about a terminally-ill woman and a special relationship she has. Uta went into detail about her casting and relations of working with the cast. Since she’s a casting director, it was strange, even to herself, that she did not go through a casting process to shoot this short holiday story about an insomnia disease that leads to death.
For this event, we had Glühwein that Uta brought and cooked, which is mulled wine and a specialty around Christmastime in Germany. And we also enjoyed a German breakfast prepared by Thomas Kelsey as we watched Good Bye, Lenin!
For the second film of the event, Uta presented the 2003 feature Good Bye, Lenin! directed by Wolfgang Becker. It’s a film that takes place in 1990, revolving around a mother who wakes up from a long coma. In order to protect her from a shocking truth, her son keeps her from discovering that her nation East Germany has disappeared.
Credits:
Host - Justin Joseph Hall
Location & Production Company - Fourwind Films
To watch Uta's film check out it on YouTube here.
Uta Seibicke - Wrtier/Director, photo by Daria Huxley
Transcript:
Justin Joseph Hall:
I am Justin Joseph Hall. Welcome to Feature & a short, which is a monthly screening hosted by Fourwind Films, where an appointed contributor presents their chosen feature motion picture and a short movie. There is only one condition for screening. The presenter must have been directly involved with one picture, but not the other. Today we have Uta Seibicke who has many credits as a casting director in feature films in Germany and has since moved to the US.
The first movie she presented was a Christmas film entitled Last Christmas that she wrote and directed. So we ended up watching that. And before she arrived, Uta made Glühwein, which is mulled wine. And it is a specialty around Christmas in Germany. So, we had that along with some other drinks after the first film we had a quick discussion and Thomas Kelsey began to prepare our German breakfast that we would eat during the second film.
Audience:
Yeah, this is pretty. I like the color correction.
Uta Seibicke:
Thank you. Thank you. I had professional people working on that. I didn't do it. I have nothing to do with it. But I, I was fortunate enough, yeah, to have people who helped me without getting paid.
Audience:
(laughs)
Yeah. That is like a big advantage to make films about how many people can, people can afford to do that that could help you, like, even, you know, they're working people. They, like, they work in films and like, the camera person who did the camera on this film. He's worked in films for, like, 20 years. And he did that for me as a favor. He didn't get paid, so.
Audience:
What were you looking for in the actors?
Uta Seibicke:
That, that’s a cool question because I was actually really, I didn't cast my actors. Like, I didn't have auditions. I just cast them.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Because you already knew them all or?
Uta Seibicke:
But, yeah, but I didn't know that I was going to do that. I had one audition with two people, and after that I just realized, I don't want to do this. Yeah, it was just really weird. I just knew I wanted them to be in the film and, like, even the girl who's playing the woman, originally I had thought of much, much older person to do that.
Audience:
Yeah.
Uta Seibicke:
But I just wanted her to be this person and work. And the taxi driver, I mean, that guy, he's like really well-established actor in Germany. And I really think that that performance there is the best I've ever seen him in. That’s, like, really strange but he's just so, I think, I mean, from I don't know what you think, but for me he's just, he's a taxi driver. He's not an actor at all.
Audience:
Yeah.
Audience:
It was in Berlin.
Uta Seibicke:
Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't know, I mean, did you get the, the East German kind of thing in it cause that's kind of, like, that's the connection to the film that we are showing after this, the, the, Goodbye, Lenin. Cause I am East German and I did actually, like, my, my sister is ten years older than me, and she studied in Berlin when I was still East Berlin and the wall was up.
So she lived on Ackerstraße. So she was never able to go to the end of the street. So Ackerstraße’s one of the streets that were divided by the wall. So you had an East German part of the Ackerstraße on the West German part. So it really was like that. You could walk until you hit the wall, basically, but you could never go into the end of your street.
Audience:
So what was the site they visited?
Uta Seibicke:
That is now, it's a memorial for the, like a wall memorial kind of thing or whatever you want to call it.
Audience:
So it was one of the last standing portions of the wall?
Uta Seibicke:
Yes. And it's actually one of those towers where the policemen were, like, standing and watching.
Audience:
How do you come up with a story that’s, it’s like, so sad for when everybody’s so happy during Christmas?
Uta Seibicke:
Do you think it's so sad? I don't know cause I, actually I wanted to make a long version and I just wanted this to be a trailer. But in the end, it ended up being like the perfect short film for me. When I done it, I was like okay, I'm done with it. This is, like, I can't tell anymore.
That's, like, the backstory. Of course, I have all this in my mind, but, like, I wouldn't make a film about that. And that's how it started. I wanted to do a long film and I was trying to think of, like, the part that's most important about the long story that I want to tell and how to make it into, like, a teaser so people would get interested in producing the long film.
Audience:
But where'd you get that idea? Was it from, like, something that happened to somebody? Do you know, or?
Uta Seibicke:
I was thinking about death a lot in that time and I did an interview with a friend of mine who interviewed people at graves. And she was interviewing people what graves mean to them. And, so it's all about this, kind of, how do we deal with death? Like, what's so, what's so scary about death? And, you know, and so it just all kind of came together to have this person who totally accepts that she's going to die.
She knows she's going to die. So why not, like, make it into a happening and, you know, say goodbye to whatever was important to you before she basically goes to die. And I, of course, I wanted her to leave some kind of imprint, you know, to make someone at least, like, a little happy before she goes. And that's what she does with the grumpy taxi driver.
And I think that's also, like, a Christmas spirit is, like, you hate it or you love it. There's no in-between. So this is kind of, like, the version where someone who loves it helps someone who hates it to get a little bit, you know, less grumpy or maybe think about it, like, do I really have to be so anti-Christmas or can I just see something nice in it? You know, or make my girlfriend happy if she loves Christmas. Why don't I just, you know, get a fucking Christmas tree and decorate it for her? You know, what’s, you know, what's the big deal if you can make someone smile? So, so that kind of, like, came together in a longer period of time was things that happened in my life. And was also trying to think of something that I could do with the film stills and make them, you know.
Audience:
It's nice this all came together.
Uta Seibicke:
And then Lilia, my daughter, she's in it and she really wanted to be in it. So she’s the middle version of the actress. And that's also, like, an East German thing that this very small girl, the very blonde one, she's wearing a pioneer blouse. We went to school, the first five years we were so-called young pioneers. So we had, like, the white blouse and the blue kind of thing that we put around our necks.
I think you were in Russia, you had similar stuff. Then, the next period from 5 to 7 or something, we had a red scarf and then was the one with the dark blue blouse that the second girl was wearing. So.
Audience:
You had to wear that too?
Uta Seibicke:
Yeah.
Audience:
Wow.
Uta Seibicke:
That was mine, actually. I went back to my parents’ house. My mother has this, kind of, huge closet and, you know, in our house, and we all have old clothes. So this were exactly the ones that I was wearing when I was young.
Audience:
So you'd already written the featured version of this?
Uta Seibicke:
No.
Audience:
You hadn’t.
Uta Seibicke:
No.
Audience:
So you had it conceived.
Uta Seibicke:
Yeah, I had the idea and then, yeah. No…
Daria Huxley:
So you're not going to the, you're not going to do anything else…?
Uta Seibicke:
No, this is really finished for me.
Audience:
And with that version never revealed what she was dying from?
Uta Seibicke:
No, I think that would have always been the backstory.
Audience:
Mystery.
Audience:
Yeah.
Audience:
Wait, you're talking the Christmas story, reminded me of A Christmas Carol. Dickens.
Uta Seibicke:
Yeah.
Audience:
A Christmas Carol. And so I was thinking, because at one point, watching, I was thinking she could be a ghost. Like she, she has this quality about her.
Uta Seibicke:
I like that, I like that.
Audience:
It’s very ethereal.
Uta Seibicke:
And I could go with that. The thing was, one of the reasons people go to an hospice is it has to be like an illness that's not curable. Otherwise, you don't go to an hospice. And I didn't want to have the usual cancer person. Well yeah, cause she has so much hair and I was like, oh I don't want, you know, to put her in this kind of like.
Audience:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uta Seibicke:
So the thing is, I found out that there is an illness that people can't sleep anymore. It's like, yeah, insomnia or whatever. I don't know what the, like their brain at some point just burns because they don't get to relax anymore.
Audience:
Yeah.
Uta Seibicke:
And there's nothing you can do about it.
Audience:
Can do a medication?
Uta Seibicke:
No, nothing. So the only thing, yeah, the only thing you can do is to go to an hospice and they can put you under high painkillers and everything to make it less bad that you die. But at some point you just die because your brain can't, you know, your brain needs to relax. And these people have this illness and it doesn't. They don't, they'll never shut off. And so, that's also why she's in the graveyard because her mother died of it.
And that's also why she learned to deal with her, her own dying because she knew, you know, what, it was going to happen at some point of her life. She'd always been, like, the graveyard was always her place where she would be happy and by herself and reading and stuff like that. So.
Audience:
So did you direct the actress with that in mind?
Uta Seibicke:
Yes.
Audience:
Okay.
Uta Seibicke:
She definitely, yeah, I mean, I think her part was really difficult cause all, like, everything that her character has is in her backstory. So, of course I had to provide her with the full backstory.
Audience:
Yeah.
Uta Seibicke:
Otherwise, that's, like, impossible to act. It's like, I think, I mean, I don't know, but yeah.
Audience:
I mean, you communicate a lot in the story nonverbally through, through visuals. Did you storyboard it out? Because there were some very key shots there. You know, where information is delivered, you know.
Audience:
For example, like the headlight shot.
Audience:
The headlight, exactly. Kind of the hospice care. Also her, like, the dark circles under her eyes. It's like a lot of the most important information is not spoken.
Uta Seibicke:
Yes.
Audience:
Yeah.
Uta Seibicke:
I totally do believe in that. I think, was it Hitchcock or something who said, like, everything that’s said and not shown is wasted? So I totally believe in that. Yes. Dialogue should just be fun but not, it shouldn't tell anything about the story. Yeah.
Justin Joseph Hall:
What do you think about, like, Woody Allen films or directors that are more?
Uta Seibicke:
I like watching Woody Allen films, but it's, that's not how I do it not because I don't like it, just because I don't think I can. And yeah, I guess I am a more visual person than, like.
Justin Joseph Hall:
What brought you into casting number one and then obviously directing and writing rather than being in front of the camera?
Uta Seibicke:
I actually never thought about being in front of the camera.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Yeah. What drew you to being a casting director originally?
Uta Seibicke:
I guess I like to tell people what to do rather than being told what to do. Maybe it's as easy as that, you know, like.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Uta presented Good Bye, Lenin!, a film from 2003 for her second feature. After the last film, some people stuck around a while and we ended up talking about socialism, communism and the perceptions from different countries.
Audience:
Well, no. Uta, do you want to explain?
Uta Seibicke:
Well, not really explain, but yeah. And so, I basically chose it because it has the, the East German, West German topic too, the one that I mentioned. I have this in this moment that she goes back to the place where she could never go to the end of her street.
And also, I haven't watched this in a very, very, very long time, but when I saw it I really related to it cause, well, I grew up in East Germany. My mother was not in a coma but she was also, like, she had a brain tumor when I was very young. So a lot of what he does for his mother and this film really moved me. And so I thought I'd watch it again with you and then see how I react now, ten years later.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Thank you so much for tuning in. This again was brought to you by Fourwind Films. If you want to check out anything by Uta, check out Last Christmas which is free on YouTube and you can Google that. Thank you and talk to you soon. Happy holidays!