Film Review: "Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate" ("Eldorado - Alles, was die Nazis hassen") (2023).

"Here it's right!" This is Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate (Eldorado - Alles, was die Nazis hassen). This German documentary film directed by Benjamin Cantu and Matt Lambert, and written by Cantu and Felix Kriegsheim. At the heart of this documentary about freedoms lost under Hitler is a glitzy nightclub in 1920s Berlin that became a haven for the queer community.

The Eldorado was the name of multiple nightclubs and performance venues in Berlin before the Nazi era and World War II. The name of the cabaret Eldorado has become an integral part of the popular iconography of what has come to be seen as the culture of the period in German history often referred to as the "Weimar Republic". Two of the five locations the club occupied in its history are known to have catered to a gay crowd, though the phrase gay bar, which could conjure up images of the type of bar that became common after World War II catering first and foremost to gay and lesbian clientele, does not accurately describe what an establishment like Eldorado to a certain extent was, and what similar venues still are to this day. Eldorado was a gay cabaret in that along with gay, lesbian, and bisexual patrons, a heterosexual-identifying audience (artists, authors, celebrities, tourists) would have been present as well. "Cross-dressing" was tolerated on the premises, though for the most part legally prohibited and/or sharply regulated in public (and to an extent in private) at the time. This exception to everyday life attracted not only male patrons who wished to dress in the "clothing of the opposite sex", and their admirers, but also to no small extent women who wished to do the same, and their admirers. Wealthy lookers-on were encouraged to come and drink and watch as so-called "Zechenmacher" (tab payers). However the eradication during the Nazi Period of any and all references to queer life in Germany was so thorough, that very little explicit public, or even archival reference to the clubs queer history remained by 1945. Criminalization made researching, speaking, or writing about queer realities a legal risk during the first decades following WWII, not only in Germany. That the cabaret Eldorado is remembered at all, is due in no small part to its central role in inspiring the novels of the Anglo-American author Christopher Isherwood and to the Broadway musical and moreover to the 1972 film Cabaret inspired by Isherwood's novels. At the same time historians, and activist of the Gay liberation movement, and of the ensuing LGBT rights movement began piecing back together was is now called queer history. Eldorado thereby became a prominent part of the telling of LGBTIQ+ histories.

The film captures an impressive array of voices and is especially noteworthy for the number of men and women of color with whom Cantu spoke. Its dramatisation footage is extensive and the stories told by its talking heads are full of the sort of elder wisdom and poignant recollection that remains a potent testament a hundred years later.

Simon says Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate (Eldorado - Alles, was die Nazis hassen) receives: