Portrait of Valeska Gert (Nur zum Spaß, nur zum Spiel)

Valeska Gert was famous in the Twenties for her performances as a “grotesque dancer” with Anita Berben in Berlin, at the Prolet-Kult in Moscow and at the Theatre des Champs Elysées in Paris.

She appeared in films by Pabst and Renoir, is supposed to have been Sergei Eisenstein’s great love, ran a night club in New York during the war, a cabaret in Berlin in the Fifties and finally an artists’ pub on Sylt.

In the film she speaks with inimitable repartee and typical Berlin brashness about her scandals and the people she met. She recreates her grotesque dances and pantomimes for the camera with the young Nastassja Kinski. Hanna Schygulla says that Valeska Gert was the only person she would have ever wanted to have acting lessons from.