DEUTSCHLAND, DEINE KÜNSTLER – NINA HAGEN

Punk diva, bad girl, “Catharine the Great”. Opinions about Nina Hagen are sometimes divided, but as a musician she is unique. She created German Punk and launched the “New Deutsche Welle”. A music magazine once asked the rhetorical question of whether Nina Hagen was the most important contribution to German pop history since Bertolt Brecht.

In this interview Nina Hagen talks about her private turmoil as well as her commitment to Jesus, her image, the early beginning of her Christian search for meaning in Communist East Germany, about her social commitment and her chequered professional career. The film observes Nina Hagen’s activities at close range and looks behind the scenes. At a demonstrations for more rights for the mentally ill, at the Berliner Ensemble, where she interprets songs of her idol Bertold Brecht. She allows the film crew to observe her composing and rehearsing new songs in her small Berlin home studio. This, and a rock concert with her band at an international festival in Budapest show Nina Hagen on and behind the stage as a serious musician, born to be a showgirl and an indefatigable sensualist. She has remained faithful to the look of punk, which she still personifies at almost 60.

Her mother Eva Maria Hagen, her son Otis, the musicians Campino and Thomas D as well as the journalists Sandra Maischberger and Otto Waalkes, with whom she made a cinema film, also have their say.