Germany's best-known gay filmmaker portrays the best-known gay comic artist: Rosa von Praunheim's "King of Comics" will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on 15 February. Axel Schock has seen it in advance.
Perhaps one day in the distant future, academic studies will explore in detail how these bulbous noses have had a lasting influence on the image of homosexuals in mainstream German society. No one before had observed the nature, goings-on and loves of the gay man as closely and recorded them as a chronicler of gay everyday life as Ralf König.
Thanks to his comic stories, even heteros and heteras from outside the scene were given an insight into the techniques of rimming, the mechanisms of the gossip about queers and the advantages and disadvantages of promiscuity. And some people only learnt about the existence of cruising parks, poppers and cock rings here.
As a comic artist, Ralf König has recently been deservedly honoured with prizes, exhibitions and awards. What was still missing was a feature-length documentary film. Rosa von Praunheim has now made up for this, dramaturgically very straightforward - after all, the work is produced by ZDF/arte and with the usual Praunheimian peculiarities such as the one or other somewhat bumpy cut.
Praunheim was less interested in the artistic aspects of König's work and endeavours. "König der Königs" is not a workshop report. Anyone hoping to gain an insight into how König develops stories, how he draws, writes and colours will be disappointed. Instead, Praunheim traces the most important stages of König's biography: from the 2500-strong village of Westönnen in Westphalia via Dortmund to his adopted hometown of Cologne.
"I've always been a very sexual person"
König is an ideal protagonist for director Praunheim: forthcoming, likeable, an open and pointed narrator who knows shyness and modesty and therefore does not put himself centre stage, but is nevertheless not afraid of embarrassing revelations.
"I've always been a very sexual person," says Ralf König and talks about how, as a child, he would rummage through his dad's Super 8 porn films in his parents' bedroom and gather around the projector with his school friends to have a group wank. He talks about his homosexual initiation experience, the gay festival "Homolulu" in Frankfurt in 1979, failed relationships and how to behave as a public figure at sex parties.
The fact that Ralf König has been touring with comic readings for some time, bringing his speech bubbles to life with the help of an overhead projector and his entertainer qualities, comes in very handy for Praunheim's film. It succeeds in bringing König's humour to life on the big screen in the best sense of the word.
König also sets the coarser parts to music live with juicy smacking, licking and other sounds of interpersonal activity. To portray gay sex in an undisguised way - and in the case of the comic novel "Bullenklöten" even in close-up! - as a matter of course, has always been a matter close to his heart. The fact that there are readers who even jerk off to his bulbous-nosed men made him proud.
Safer sex comics for Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe
König also broke new ground with his safer sex comics, created in 1985 on behalf of the German AIDS organisation Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe. "At the time, I found it so unbelievable that there should be a disease that only gays get," he recalls of the beginning of the epidemic in the 1980s. The educational comics were very important to him, but at the time they didn't have much to do with the reality of his own life.
It wasn't until a few years later that the first HIV-positive people among his friends and finally the first death in his closest circle were mourned. Ralf König turned these experiences into two of his best comic novels to date: "Beach Boys" and "Super Paradise".
Thematically, he has opened up a new, wide field for himself in recent years, at least as confusing and confused as the gay world: the major world religions in general and fundamentalist Muslims, Old Testament Bible stories and New Testament sexual hostility in particular. König has researched all of this meticulously and dissected it with passionate commitment.
For now, however, this chapter is also closed for him. And what comes next? He leaves it open. The last few minutes of the film show König with his new partner as a man happily in love and at peace with himself - and so, after 80 entertaining, exciting and always very funny minutes, the viewer is actually genuinely moved.
"King of the comics". D 2012, directed by Rosa von Praunheim. With Ralf König, Joachim Król, Olaf Gabriel, Ilona Winjen, Ralph Morgenstern and others, 80 min.
Trailer for King of comics
"König der Comics" can be seen in selected cinemas from 22 February. The cinema list and dates of local premiere events with Rosa von Praunheim and Ralf König can be found at Basic film distribution
