Ich denke oft an Hawaii

“A Film for Every Living Room” was intended to be "I Often Think of Hawaii", in which fantasies and everyday life take on special significance. The film tells the story of sixteen-year-old Carmen, who lives with her mother, Ruth Rossol, and her brother, Tito, in an apartment building on the outskirts of West Berlin. It is the 1970s. Her mother worked for years on the assembly line at a button factory and now earns a living for the family as a cleaning lady. The children’s father, a Puerto Rican career soldier, left them after Carmen was born. He left nothing behind except a few postcards and Hawaiian music records. Carmen wants to become a dancer. She dreams of a warm, sunny country. Tito is a quiet boy who loves to play the violin. — Elfi Mikesch

Elfi Mikesch, a cinematographer and director who has won numerous awards for her visual imagery, is considered one of the early pioneers of feminist-queer film. In her documentary work, she focuses on people and projects that fall outside the bounds of the norm, telling their stories of the search for identity and individual self-realization.