She is a fairy, a fairy from Walchensee, says the blonde girl with the wreath of flowers in her hair. Her mother films it and asks questions – but only before After all, sitting in front of the camera is not enough for the girl. The then five-year-old Janna Ji Wonders asks her mother to swap roles and places, she wants to film herself and ask questions. With self-empowerment one cannot – and rather: woman – start early enough.
The blonde girl is now a director. Janna Ji Wonders studied at the Munich Film School, she has made music videos, short and medium-length documentaries and feature films. In “Walchensee Forever”, for which she received the Bavarian Film Prize in 2019, she tells of the women in her family, a dynasty of Bavarian rebels. It’s a homeland, adventure, family and women film that seems a bit fairy-like.
Its geographical center is the Café am Walchensee, which her great-grandparents opened in 1924. Proud and beautiful, always carefully dressed, the great-grandmother stands in the kitchen – photographs show a landlady holding herself like a queen. Janna Ji Wonders’ grandmother Norma, who is very old in the film, couldn’t do much with the café at first, but later took it over. Of course there were and still are men in the family, but they only play supporting roles.
A fairy tale by Janna’s grandpa is read, in which he writes about a beautiful girl – Norma – who wears her hair like a crown on her head. It tells of marriage and happiness. A fairy tale, as I said, Janna’s grandma would tell the story of their marriage differently. Severely mentally damaged, her husband came from the war, and Norma finally decided against him and in favor of the café on Lake Walchensee. In “Walchensee Forever”, family history is always a window to contemporary history.
Janna Ji Wonders apparently loved her late grandmother very much, there are some wonderful, tender scenes with the two of them. The Café am Walchensee has always been a girls club. It is nice to see this bond between the women, their solidarity and the thoroughly matriarchal structures. After all, there are enough men’s associations.
Finding material for her film was child’s play for Wonders: Even before her there had been various picture makers in the family, her mother is the photographer Anna Werner. So there were enough photos and film recordings, plus letters and diaries. All of this is assembled by the director into a family album spanning around a hundred years. An album with a view of the lake – the women, as adventurous as some are, keep coming back to Walchensee.
If the lake is the geographical center of this documentary, Anna Werner, the director’s mother, is her emotional one. Like thirty years ago, she sits in front of her daughter’s camera and lets herself be asked questions: How was it when you went to Mexico and San Francisco for the “Summer of Love”? What was it like to live naked with Rainer Langhans in a cave on Crete? What was the matter with Langhans’ harem, of which the mother was a member? The communard Langhans is then the only man who has more to say in the film. But more as a witness – not as a central figure. Even in the “Harem” he was by no means the boss, says Anne Werner. There, too, women’s friendships were at least as important as the relationship with the man.
You can’t get out of the traffic jam, Anna Werner lived so adventurously and fearlessly as a young woman. Her sister Frauke was at her side for a long time, and instigator for many adventures. Frauke is no longer alive – and it is this still painful wound in this family that was possibly the reason for Janna Ji Wonders’ film.
In traditional Bavarian clothes, with dulcimer and guitar, the young Anna Werner and her sister Frauke toured Mexico.
(Photo: color film)
What is family And what is home? Which dreams can be lived? What are the risks? These are some of the questions that “Walchensee Forever” – no, not offensive – suggests like a fairy or a water nymph. You have to imagine Bavarian folk music with this airy web. Not as it can be heard in beer tents, but “folk music” like that of LaBrassBanda or the one that Anna Werner did with her sister Frauke. In traditional Bavarian costumes, the two sisters traveled to Mexico in the 1960s to yodel there, the Mexican machos were entranced and full of respect. It is the same mixture that makes “Walchensee Forever” so charming, the mixture of Bavarian down-to-earthness and the greatest possible cosmopolitanism.
Walchensee Forever, D 2020 – Director: Janna Ji Wonders. Book: JJ Wonders, Nico Week. Camera: JJ Wonders, Sven Zellner, Anna Werner. Editor: Anja Pohl. Music: Cico Beck, Markus Acher. Distribution: color film, length: 110 minutes, cinema release: October 21, 2021.