Loneliness and Pathos in Heiner Carow's Coming Out (1989)

Abstract

Abstract: Heiner Carow's Coming Out (1989) is unique as the first (and last) East German feature film to place a homosexual relationship front and center. Coming Out challenges the social and institutional attitudes and conventions of a heterosexist East German society. Taking seriously Carow's suggestion that cinema is a form of debate, this article explores through precise considerations of form and affect how the film sought to move a predominantly heterosexual audience emotionally as part of its project to meaningfully integrate the queer community into the social whole. I analyze the film's mood-rich disclosure of its world, the employment of melodramatic conventions, and the use of strategies that blend the diegetic world with extradiegetic reality. Through my analysis of Coming Out along both aesthetic and affective lines, I emphasize the film's value beyond its amply discussed representation of queer life in the GDR as an example of how cinematic affect operates politically through particular strategies unique to film form.