Enlarge image
Malanda in »Schwesta Ewa - rapper.
Prisoner.
Mother."
Photo: TVNOW
Deutschrap has long since ceased to take place only in clubs, on Spotify or in Instagram stories, but also at book fairs.
In autobiographies and auto-fictions, sometimes written with the help of ghostwriters, rappers have been telling for years about gold transport robberies (Xatar), social Darwinist boss transformation fantasies (Kollegah) or about climbing from the curb - with effort and rap - up to the skyline (Bushido, Katja Krasavice).
Such books also serve as extensive proof of authenticity for the artists.
Recently, German rappers have turned to another format that is supposed to underpin their credibility, simulate intimacy and make the star human: the documentary series.
Loredana, Bushido - and now Schwesta Ewa
In her Spotify series, Loredana reported 2020 as "the most beautiful and worst of the year". Bushido promises to share his truth soon in the not yet aired Amazon series "Uncensored", whatever that means; The team is said to have accompanied the Berlin rapper and his family for three years. And recently a documentary series directed by Stefan Kauertz about the Frankfurt rapper Schwesta Ewa has been available on TV Now, RTL's streaming service.
That fits very well, because Ewa Malanda, as the 37-year-old Polish woman is called, once drew attention to herself with an unheard-of sound of female self-empowerment that was previously unheard in German rap, but later almost exclusively with scandals: the former sex worker became a sex worker in 2017 Sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment for 35 bodily harm and promoting sexual acts of minors, among other things.
In the series »Schwesta Ewa - Rapperin. Prisoner. Mother. «, Which begins with scenes from Malanda's release, she sits, strangely enough and suitable for instagram at the same time, on a leather sofa in the parking garage and gives her version of the Schwesta-Ewa story: Kiel red light district at 16, street prostitute at 18. Ewa as a sex worker, the struggled through. Ewa as a pimp whose black money business is flourishing. Ewa as a rapper who's just starting to rap in order to have “more customers in the brothel”.
It's also a story of violence.
It is particularly upsetting when it becomes clear how normal it must be for Malanda to experience violence.
When she quickly repeats the sentence "Another beat me up" as if it were some other sentence.
When she reports that her mother beat her with a cord or leather belt.
Her mother, who she loves, she says, "no matter what."
Which she moved to after her release.
Only Malanda's story is more about something else.
To the court case against them.
The preliminary skirmish, the course, the consequences.
Enlarge image
Malanda's hands at the start of the trial in the regional court in Frankfurt am Main in 2017
Photo: Arne Dedert / picture alliance / dpa
She says that one of the women who were apparently attacked by Malanda had merely painted the bruises on her own.
That the women, "one more stupid than the other, one to the left than the other," wanted fame.
That there were lies in the files about them.
They are attempts at rectification.
A kind of cleansing.
They are supported by original sound sources such as the rapper, entrepreneur and ex-gold robber Xatar, who discovered Schwesta Ewa.
Xatar remembers being summoned as a witness and everything seemed "very personal" to him: "Am I backstage somewhere or with the police?"
They should also be supported by original sound givers such as a sex worker who always sits with her back to the camera and for whom the question remains open, why she is a meaningful original sound giver for a Schwesta-Ewa documentary series should be.
In any case, she praises Malanda's earlier way of dealing with her sex workers as a "dream", "so mega," and judges: "The judgment was not at all fair."
The burden of the world's suffering on the cameraman's shoulders
The journalists appearing on the series do not seem to be there to criticize, but rather to confirm the affirmative judgment of the faceless sex worker towards Malanda. One journalist sees it as an emancipatory act that Malanda decided to do sex work. A journalist interprets it as a practiced feminism to box someone. It seems a bit as if every crooked thing in Malanda's résumé has been bent so that it fits well into a story of self-determination. A story with a happy ending.
It goes »Schwesta Ewa - rapper. Prisoner. Mother. ”Apparently not about balance. Nor is it a dynamic dramaturgy that could have arisen, for example, when real critics had their say. It's more about underlining, bold and dragging the font size a few sizes larger from Schwesta Ewa's version of the Schwesta-Ewa story.
"I'm not going in anymore," Ewa raps in the opening credits of the series.
Slow motion drives through the red light district and the prison, as if the burden of the world's suffering lay not only in the filmed suspenders and bars, but also on the shoulders of the cameraman.
Dark, hazy off-screen music that sounds like something from a film that Gaspar Noé was forced to make by German private television.
How could one stylize Malanda's lawyer as a fighter?
Oh yes, by having him hit a punching bag.
All in all, it doesn't look much like an extensive authenticity certificate, but comes across like an epic advertisement for Schwesta Ewa.