Frau Kutzer and Other Residents of Naunyn Street

A photograph showing Skip Norman during the shooting of Frau Kutzer und andere Bewohner der Naunystraße (Frau Kutzer and Other Residents of Naunyn Street), FRG 1973, dir.: Friedrich Zimmermann. The film was produced by SFB (Sender Freies Berlin) as a collaboration between Aras Ören and the reporter Friedrich W. (Fritz) Zimmermann.

In her article “Intermedial Solidarity: Drawing Inspiration from the 1970s”, Deniz Göktürk writes:

“The assistant director on the production was Skip Norman (1933–2015) from Baltimore. He had been a student at the newly founded German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) in 1966. He worked as a cameraman and director on 27 productions of the DFFB and primarily made short films relating to the struggle for African American civil rights such as Blues People (1968), Black Man’s Volunteer Army of Liberation (1970), and Strange Fruit (1970). The exchanges between African American, German, and Turkish perspectives on the set of Frau Kutzer would have been exciting to eavesdrop on. The above overview on some actors involved in the production shows that what at first glance appears to be a documentary on the life of Turks in Berlin is in fact scripted by a writer, staged by a director, and enacted by an ensemble of professional actors who produced a film that conveys a different sense of time and place than more conventional formats of television production.”

Deniz Göktürk. “Intermedial Solidarity: Drawing Inspiration from the 1970s.” Monatshefte 112 (4), December 2020, 606-631; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/m.112.4.606