Sex, drugs, and neocolonial leisure: An intermedial history and analysis of Dieter Schidor’s Kalt in Kolumbien (1985)

This article provides an intermedial history and analysis of Dieter Schidor’s 1985 film Kalt in Kolumbien to trace a small but fascinating history of interaction between German and Colombian film cultures. Examining archival documents, interviews, and the fictionalised accounts of the film’s production in Gary Indiana’s Gone Tomorrow, the article revisits the “golden age” of the Cartagena International Film Festival, Schidor’s trip, and the film’s production process. The essay argues that Schidor brings the icy austerity, queer desires, and cruel humour of the German New Wave to the Colombian city to create a film that is comically brutal towards locals and foreigners alike, as it attempts to highlight the inequalities that allowed its director to eat, drink, and do drugs “like a king” in Cartagena. The essay suggests that Kalt in Kolumbien is a document of the complicated union between Germany and America as a cultural and intellectual centres and Latin America as a peripheral, romanticised source of inspiration.