Eldorado: this new film shows the fragility of queer freedom

Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate is a new docu-drama which charts the rise and fall of the queer culture in 1920s Berlin, prior to the rise of Hitler.

Eldorado was a legendary queer nightclub, which hosted everyone from Magnus Hirschfeld, a sexologist who pioneered trans healthcare, to Ernst Rohm, an infamous gay Nazi who, prior to his murder by the regime he helped to usher in, was a close friend of Hitler. Using the history of this venue as a starting point, the Netflix documentary explores how a period of freedom, fluidity and experimentation gave way to violence, oppression, and the reinscribing of rigid gender roles. The period is brought to life through a combination of archive footage, interviews with survivors and expert historians, and new dramatisations which capture the raucous atmosphere of Weimar Berlin in vivid detail.

The trans history is especially fascinating: during this period, some of the earliest gender-affirmation surgeries were performed at Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, and legal recognition for trans identities was introduced for the very first time: trans people were issued ‘ID cards’ which served to shield them from police harassment. But as the Nazis rose to power, Hirscheld was accused of feminising Germany and seducing young people into queerness (rhetoric which, from a modern perspective, sounds eerily familiar). In one of the documentary’s more harrowing uses of archival footage, we see his institute ransacked and his life's work burned by the Nazis – an omen of things to come. 

After Hitler assumed control, queer people in Berlin faced a brutal wave of persecution. The Eldorado was shut down immediately and the building which housed it was quickly decked out in swastikas. Women were reported to the police for wearing trousers and “looking lesbian”, while people of all genders were transported to concentration camps after being accused of homosexuality, many of whom were killed. While the documentary is often harrowing, it's also a way of honouring the queer community’s capacity for love, courage, creativity and survival. We spoke with co-directors Matt Lambert and Benjamin Cantu to talk about how they made the film, and what it tells us about our contemporary moment.

Why did you decide to interpose archival footage with newly shot scenes?

Matt Lambert: The script was much based on gaps in the narrative that we needed to fill, and a way of illustrating new discoveries that we’d found through historians and interviews. So much of this era is missing, and a lot of the stories that we’re telling have been forgotten or erased. The documentation of the nightlife scene which does exist is very limited. It’s often the same people being photographed, some of whom were very famous, and people weren’t always truly free – they were conscious of the fact that those photographs were potentially contraband. So there are the layers of people self-censoring, as well as who was being photographed, and then just the fact that so much of it is gone. The major storylines are backed up by very deep historical research, but there are moments which are just our best impression – it’s a love letter to this time through fragments of ephemera.

Benjamin Cantu: I wouldn’t say that the dramatisations were just about filling in gaps in the story.  I think it was a very enriching process to transfer the knowledge of these historians and extract a story that is character-driven. I think that’s what made this process so interesting.

Matt Lambert: Yeah, it’s about finding these moments that really can pull your heartstrings and humanise these characters. Some of these stories are very big and others are very small. As a gay Jew living in Berlin, you hear numbers in the millions and it’s horrific, but it becomes abstract. I think that there’s something about getting to the minutiae of an individual who loved another individual. It somehow makes everything else so much more real – it was millions of small stories. 

How did you go about capturing the atmosphere of the Eldorado itself?

Matt Lambert:  For me, it was about trying to create an accurate representation of what that nightlife scene would have been like. We really tried to build a living, breathing world. Everyone was there in character, no one had their phones, and everybody took a dance class prior to the shoot, because if they were going to move freely and embody a character, they had to know exactly how to exist in that space. We worked with some very experienced actors and performers, some of whom are only on screen for 30 seconds. Because of the desire to tell this story, to pay homage to the queer past of this city, we got a lot of amazing people to step up.

How did you convey the fashion of the era?

Matt Lambert: We worked Larissa Bechtold, a costume designer who I have collaborated with since the beginning of my career. In order to be historically accurate, everything had to be intensely precise – even if it was someone in the furthest background shot. Everyone got a haircut, every detail was correct, including the hair and makeup; we made custom clothes – I think around 150 costumes in total.

In terms of fashion, 1920s Berlin was one of the most exciting eras of history, and I think we really nailed it. This documentary gives you a lot of information and takes you down a dark path at times, but we wanted to start by showing how absolutely amazing this time was, and how many incredible people were there. 

“The freedom that queer people had in 1920s Berlin is not different from the freedom that we have today. There might be different levels, but it’s so fragile, and it’s so dangerous to take it for granted” – Benjamin Cantu

There are some disturbing parallels between the story this documentary is telling and what is happening to the LGBTQ+ community today, in terms of the rise of the anti-trans movement. Is this something you were conscious of as you were making it?

Benjamin Cantu: From the beginning of the project, every historian and researcher that we worked with told us: the freedom that queer people had in 1920s Berlin is not different from the freedom that we have today. There might be different levels, but it’s so fragile, and it’s so dangerous to take it for granted. Now that the film is out, it’s very sad to see the discourse and attacks which are happening, not just in countries like Russia or Uganda, but in the US, Germany and France. 

Matt Lambert: The edit was locked before the drag conversation was really starting in the US, but I’ve had a lot of American friends telling me they were shocked by the parallels. One thing that’s intense for so many people, upon seeing the documentary, is how quickly it all happened. The Nazis’ rise to power was very long, but the ending of the queer spaces happened so fast. And I think we’re seeing in America how exponentially quickly things can move, in terms of people using things like trans identity and drag performance as a hot-button issue for a culture war.

What message would you most like people to take away from the film?

Benjamin Cantu: We didn't want to end on a dire note, as it does become very dark in the middle, and I think queer people who experience violence against them today might be triggered by seeing what happened 100 years ago. But there is also a kind of beauty. At the end, we talk about the life of a survivor, Walter Arlen: he’s turning 103 in two weeks and he’s been with his partner for over 60 years. It’s just one example of how things could have gone for others if they had been allowed to live their lives. I think the message would be to remember these stories because really, these were people with emotions as we are today, who had beautiful experiences that were taken away from them.

Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate is on Netflix now

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