Warhol in the distance, Burroughs silent, and a director who'd rather stir trouble than shoot B-roll.
In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. (Clarke Fountain, Rovi)
Direction
Von Praunheim's deliberate sloppiness as punk aesthetic statement.
Production
Greta Keller's cabaret war stories vs. Divine's Baltimore chaos.
Editing
Cuts that feel like the filmmaker got bored and wandered off.
Director
Rosa von Praunheim
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Von Praunheim helped launch Germany's modern gay rights movement with his 1971 film 'It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives'—this 1976 project was his New York vacation from that activism.
Divine appears pre-'Pink Flamingos' fame, making this a rare document of underground royalty before the mainstream came calling.
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