OYOYO

In 1976, the filmmaker Chetna Vora, who sadly passed away at a young age, came to the GDR on a scholarship from the Marxist-Communist Party of India. There, she studied film directing at the University of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. OYOYO is her main exam film and, according to the study regulations at the time, the first feature-length film produced prior to the graduation film. It is an interview film that Vora shot at the age of merely 21 in a dormitory at what was then the University of Economics (now HTW) in Berlin-Karlshorst. In it, students from Chile, Guinea-Bissau, the Mongolian People’s Republic, Cuba, Mali and Ethiopia reflect on their decision to study in the GDR and on their daily lives there. It is their voices and friendships, their conviviality and songs that carry the film. The film’s title, OYOYO, quotes the chorus of an anti-colonialist song by Os Tubarões, which, in Cape Verdean Creole, warns against working too hard for others.

OYOYO

Documentary by Chetna Vora (1968)

Chetna Vora, 68’, German, Spanisch, Portugiese with English subtitles, Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR, 1980

Digitisation and restoration by the KONRAD WOLF Film University Babelsberg, supported by the Film Heritage funding programme, financed by the Federal Ministry of Culture (BKM), the federal states and the German Federal Film Board (FFA).

Following the screening, Pamela Aryeh and Anna Bromley will join the filmmaker Neelesha Barthel – Chetna Voras’s daughter – onstage for a talk. Neelesha is the daughter of Chetna Vora and Lars Barthel (cinematographer of OYOYO). She left the GDR with her parents in 1983 and, after spending time in India and the United States, grew up in West Berlin, where she still lives today. Like her parents, she also studied at the ‘Konrad Wolf’ Film University in Babelsberg. She subsequently worked as a director and screenwriter on projects including the award-winning documentary “Fifty Fifty” (2002), the Kreuzberg culture-clash comedy “Marry Me!” (2015) and the television comedy “Ein schrecklich reiches Paar” (2016). Nowadays, she works as a commissioned director for television films and series, alongside developing her own projects for cinema and television.

Film stills: OYOYO, Chetna Vora, Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR, 1980. Courtesy of Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.