The Indian film-maker Chetna Vora came to the Film and Television Academy of the GDR in Babelsberg, Potsdam in 1976 to study directing. Shot for the purpose of her final examination, OYOYO was filmed in a student residence in Karlshorst, Berlin with a focus on students who came to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from Chile, Cuba, Guinea-Bissau, the Mongolian Soviet Republic, and other countries. In this student environment, Vora captures a community that lives closely together and shares a transnational space shaped not only by many languages and intimate conversations, but by music and dance as well. A song in the film by Os Tubarões in Cape Verdean Creole, whose chorus gives the film its title, warns against ‘working too much for others’ and instead brings the dancing students together in a moment that celebrates friendship, solidarity, and conviviality.

OYOYO, Chetna Vora, Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR 1980

Digitization and restoration by the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, supported by the Förderprogramm Filmerbe, financed by BKM, federal state funding, and the FFA