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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Ja nuar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an ihrem
ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific theme
in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture in Aachen
and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint motion picture “Oi!
Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

I t all began with a flight to San Francisco, or no, it actually began long before that, hodgepodges, crammed with tattoo designs and odds and ends of all kinds. Less “sty-
with a lecture on architecture I had attended during my studies: “The Papuan tattoos
lish” than the shops to the left and right which celebrated sunglasses and handbags
his skin, his boat, his oars, in short everything within his reach. He is not a criminal. as if they were icons. Deliberate “no-shop design”, perhaps a remnant of the archaic
The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons artisan’s honour that services focus on the person doing the work and not the glitter of
where 80 per cent of the prisoners have tattoos. The tattooed who are not in prison the space around them. Q-She seemed to know everyone here, greeted, chatted, even-
are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If a tattooed person dies in freedom, he tually met friends in Golden Gate Park, also tattooed and pierced, young, sporty and
just died a few years before he committed murder.” It sounded like a Sunday sermon, confident, like her. Despite, or perhaps because of, the very sparse amount of clothing
the text “Ornament and Crime”, written in 1908 by the Viennese architectural avant- they wore, they looked stylishly dressed, with their thick weaves of lines on their skin,
gardist Adolf Loos. The entire lecture hall guffawed at once. For me, things were not so and I, in my airplane-crumpled T-shirt with my untanned German arms still sticking
clear, although I am neither Papuan (alas) nor criminal (thank God) nor a degenerate out of it, strangely naked. Maybe it’s nice to be a Papuan? To feel conscious, lustful
(hopefully). My flight to San Francisco went fundamentally wrong. A bang, an explo- “primitiveness”? To find back to nature! Brave and free! But ... what would Adolf Loos
sion, a power unit that caught fire, just for a brief moment. You could see it clearly have said? I pondered. The festival lasted six days, I saw the latest works by Pedro Alm-
from the oval of the cabin window. Silence fell in the cabin afterwards. But the Boeing odóvar, Kimberly Peirce, Tom Ford and the big Derek Jarman retrospective, there were
did not crash into the waves of the Atlantic, it flew on but with just one engine less. press conferences and premieres, sumptuous opening-night parties and a gala recepti-
Then, shortly after having flown over Ireland, the flight was aborted: “Our headquar- on in the town hall with the mayor. The next day, the last of the festival, my little film
ters in Atlanta has decided it,” we heard the pilot’s apologetic voice over the onboard was to be shown, in an off-off cinema called Wrong! and I was to give my speech. The
loudspeaker. So, we returned to Frankfurt. A layover of ten hours, then on to New York evening before, I was gazing, admittedly exhausted, admittedly a little melancholy, at
after all, then an overnight flight to San Francisco. I arri- the lights of the Lower Haight from the Victorian flat-sha-
ved there at five in the morning. Q-She waved excitedly ring bay window, when I heard a voice. “Can I practise?”
at the gate. Q-She who picked me up. As she explained, Q-She! I turned around: “Practise what?” “Tattooing.”
Q stood for Queen, She for Sheba. Her original name “Whom?” “Well, you!” The next morning, I fainted, the
was Evelyn Stuckenbrock, a native of Detmold, but in very first time I tried to get up. Five hours she had been
“EssEff” (she always said “EssEff”, never San Francisco) practising. Not very painless. Yet the tattoo had turned
she called herself Q-She and a tattoo artist, although I out dainty, a dragon, just above the belly button. Q-She
had already heard rumours that she had never tattooed was guarding a book on Chinese porcelain, left behind
anything on anyone ever before in her life. But she rented by the previous tenant. I had hurriedly picked out the
out a room, the living room of her shared flat, to guests motif and had traced it for her. “Hey, you okay?” Q-She
of the International LGBTI*Q Film Festival San Francisco. was standing in front of the couch now, but all I could
Guests like me. One of my short films had made it into hear was her voice, she sounded nervous, “Do you need
the programme of the renowned festival and I was also help?” I couldn’t see her, I couldn’t see anything at all,
supposed to give a short speech before the screening. It only hear, and that’s how it was going to stay for the next
would definitely be an honour. Q-She shimmered, glitte- Grafik: Dominik Reding while, thanks to my circulation. She took me carefully
red, everything about her was an eye-catcher, she herself by the hand and asked: “When does your film start?”
looked like a film character, like a still undiscovered star, “At noon.” “Oh, that’s in 40 minutes!” She grabbed me
on the verge of the inevitable breakthrough, of course: tanned, sporty, slim, androgy- and pushed me out of the door. Surely the bus driver was familiar with such derailed
nous, her clothes were deliberately shabby and emphatically chic at the same time. tourists who copied hippie habits in “EssEff”, consumed illegal substances and – of
Everything about her managed to compel attention, wonder and admiration: from her course – failed miserably at it. Without comment he let us in and without comment
piercings down to her cowboy boots, from her tattered 1970s jeans to the artfully engra- he let us out again in front of the cinema. And I could see nothing. Further on. In the
ved spider tattoo right on her shaved head. After a restless night on the couch of her anteroom of the Wrong! it smelled of popcorn and Coke. Coke! Pure sugar! I greedily
shared flat, while outside shooting could be heard (“It’s always like that here”, she had drank the first, the second, the third bottle. BAMM! A miracle of biblical dimensions:
fortunately informed me before falling asleep), she woke me up with American coffee I was able to see again! And to give my speech as well. And I got applause when I
(cinnamon taste) and said: “Come, I’ll show you the Haight”. She said it unenthusia- finished it. Even from Q-She. On the plane the day after, on the way back to New York,
stically, surely a routine thing for all her festival visitors. The Haight, that is, the Haight I doubled over in the economy-class seat. The seatbelt pressed hard against the fresh
Ashbury Street. First run-down beatnik hang-out, then hippie stronghold, now tourist tattoo. “Something to declare?!” Maybe it was because of my pain-furrowed face. At
attraction. And indeed, at the lower – less hip – end of the Lower Haight lived Q-She. JFK airport, I was frisked by customs. First the trolley bag, then the shoulder bag, then
“We’re going down the Haight all the way to Golden Gate Park”. She took her pet with me. “Strip!” the officer ordered. I readily obeyed. The officer, who looked amazingly
her, a female Afghan greyhound named Anastacia. “You may hold her on a leash for a like Tupac Shakur, examined me sternly, as customs officers do. Then he spotted the
bit,” Q-She smiled, “if she’ll let you.” We moved along the Haight, past endless rows of tattoo. He looked at it carefully. “Is it fresh?” I nodded. “Did it take long?” I nodded.
these Victorian wooden houses that – carved and decorated – resembled whitewashed “Did it hurt?” I nodded again. “Looks cool, bro!” He grinned, his white teeth flashing.
Swiss cuckoo clocks. On the ground floor, small shops: glasses, jewellery, clothes, Then, “You can go!” He grinned wider, rolled up the sleeves of his uniform: tattooed,
now and then a pub, now and then a “tattoo parlour”, a tattoo shop: small, colourful both arms. “Go!” I went. The flight back was, what can I say, just great!

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