Yesterday was the German premiere of ‘star biz’ a documentary film produced as part of the project import-export. The film uses mercedes as a tool to examine the process of cultural appropriation of western consumer and luxury goods in India. The film gives an surprisingly unfiltered insight into the corporate culture of Daimler Chrysler. The interviews with Daimler Chrysler managers among them CEO Hans-Michael Huber reveal a fair amount of arrogance and narrow mindedness among these ‘ambassadors of indo german globalisation’ (quote from the article about the film in the import export publication).

At the same time the swabian accents and the insitance on provincial german lifestyles among the ‘mercedes family’ members make these interview extremely hilarious to watch. The film contrasts the Mercedes family with the bollywood empire of star producer Ravi Chopra and features lots of footage of ‘merc’ driving Bollywood heros and villans.

Star biz is available (with German and English subtitles) on dvd as part of the publication ‘cultural transfer – import export – india, germany, austria’.

In eastern Germany you get your abitur (the secondary school exam that entitels you to study at a university) after 12 years (where i grew up you have to do 13 years of school for the same exam), but apparently it also gets you less:

There are areas in east germany where more than a quater of the population is unemployed. And that is after the young and educated have left to find their luck elsewhere. This picture taken in greifswald (a port city in the north of meckelemburg vorpommern where unemployment rate is something like 19.8%) sums up the misery pretty well – if you ask me:

There are two stickers on the car. The white one advertises a personal housekeeping service, that is flexible, fast and cheap (eg an activity all the way at the bottom of the capitalist chain of exploitation) and the yellow sticker proudly states that the owner of this car has just (summer 05) gotten his or her abitur…