Tobby

Jazz singer and bongo player Tobby Fichelscher has received a tempting offer. He’s been invited to join a tour abroad, which would be well paid. But Tobby hesitates to accept. Because he wouldn’t be playing “his” music. Caught in a quandary about whether to choose art or career, he roams the city. He goes to a basement jazz club, a snack bar, the Wannsee beach; he meets fellow artists, an admirer, friends and acquaintances – and finally makes a decision… “The people and locations are real”. The film seems to be as improvised as its protagonist’s music. The associative editing, jump cuts and high shots made Tobby a pioneer of cinematic modernism, so of course it could not find a distributor. Whereby the documentary images do more than just give us a look at Berlin’s artistic niches and urban wastelands. In Tobby’s sessions with musician friends, the palaver within Kreuzberg’s bohemian world – especially during the five-minute drum and scat solo performed in the Gropius Bau, which had been destroyed in the war – the city becomes an echo chamber for his attitude towards life. (Berlinale)