KIn addition to all the terrible things, risen also produces creativity at best, and it was no different at the height of Corona. While live events were impossible, artists gave living room concerts on social media, choirs sang via zoom and artistic rehearsals finally took place under strange but also stimulating conditions when some encounters were possible again under strict conditions.
In Andreas Ammer’s SWR documentary, filmed during the first year of the pandemic, which bears the baroque title “The largest three-division house in the world facing its greatest challenge”, he accompanies three teams of theatre, ballet and opera at the Stuttgart State Theater in front and behind behind the scenes in an attempt to maintain some sort of operation and prepare for the resumption of performances. Pas de deux without physical contact, solo singers who confess their feelings to each other from a distance of six meters, endless hygiene requirements and strictly monitored exception regulations, it has a grotesque-comical touch in addition to the dramatic one.
At the time of the pandemic, impressive documentary films and series were made for television. “Charité intensive: Station 43” about everyday life in a corona intensive care unit, for example, is a lasting testimony to the filmic accompaniment at the worst time. In the realm of the fictional, it was sometimes more or less successful in dealing with the danger and the restrictions. ZDF, or rather ZDFneo, found an answer with its “instant fiction” approach. Faster development and production time, short series formats, current topics.
Model from the Netherlands
Many of the productions that came about in this way are convincing, including, for example, the ironically serious “Sleeping Sheep” with Lisa Bitter and Daniel Donskoy. “Loving Her”, the free adaptation of a Dutch format, was another (niche) success. In contrast to the ARD series “All you need”, a format with exclusively gay main characters, “Loving Her”, which is about the life and relationship experiences of a young lesbian protagonist, won the television awards despite its special design and program color of the corresponding year. As a pure adaptation excluded by the statutes, it said.
But that’s not entirely true. Although “Loving Her” is based on the Dutch format “Anne+”, the independence of the format becomes even clearer in the second season that is now being broadcast. The main player is the city of Berlin, there are various subcultures that are portrayed with just as fresh a look as the main character himself. This time, however, she runs the risk of becoming the lesbian Carrie Bradshaw, which is also addressed in the series with – played – desperation becomes. Strict brevity, which designs scenes for emphasis, also protects against clichés. In the first season of the “Instant Fiction” series, the episodes were fifteen minutes long, now there is more epic breadth and depth, which means: the topic and the events have to be dealt with with mostly twenty minutes per episode.
Hanna is in the “Quarter Life Crisis”
Hanna (Banafshe Hourmazdi) is now 28 years old, reasonably established as a journalist and has arrived in the “quarter life crisis”. While she fell in love with a different woman in each episode of the first season (including Karin Hanczewski as a successful queer publisher, who again plays a crucial role this time), the new episodes are about one, the one and only lady of the heart. Isabel (Annick Durán Kandzior), former star chef, runs a trendy food truck and vegan catering in the capital, is extremely popular, extremely attractive, humorous and sensitive in equal measure. Her appearance hits Hanna like the famous thunderbolt. The mixed balance up to that point: “Five years in Berlin, a degree, six hundred euros in rent, twelve failed ‘Situationships’, but I was still Hanna”.
A reunion of a different kind: Hanna (Banafshe Hourmazdi, right) and her ex Lara, who has recently changed her name to Crystal (Emma Drogunova, center).
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Image: Marcus Glahn/ZDF
Partnering and family planning are progressing around Hanna. Her friends Franzi (Lena Klenke) and Alma (Jobel Mokonzi) want a baby, her boyfriend Tobi (Leonard Kunz) has just become a father. Hanna has been taking care of Miriam (Robin Gooch), an older lesbian friend, since the Corona period. Hanna arrived as a young editor at a queer scene magazine, but suffers from her brash influencer boss Sammi (Max Schimmelpfennig) and an editor-in-chief who acts like a blade axe. In addition, she thoroughly screwed up her relationship with Isabel.
Like good series, “Loving Her” is light and serious, approachable and interesting at the same time. This time there will be extensive feasting in sensual, indulgent images, giving the impression here and there of a filmed food magazine. Should the protagonist already have arrived at the “sex of old age” at the age of 28? That, too, is turned self-deprecatingly.
Marlene Melchior (lead writer) and Olivia Lauren Requat’s screenplay consistently creates tight scenes of drama and humor; the director Eline Gehring and the cameraman Valentin Selmke also make the second season of “Loving Her” a television gem. What makes this series worth seeing is above all the superficial lightness and naturalness with which it is told – a naturalness in which lesbian love does not appear as a social inclusion issue, but simply with all the ups and downs of real life.
The second season of loving her shows ZDFneo on Sunday, September 3rd (Episode 1-3) and on Sunday, September 10th. (Episode 4-6), each from 8:15 p.m. All the episodes are in the ZDF media library.
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