Summary

In this documentary, filmmaker Johanna Jackie Baier tells her story. It begins with Chantal’s escape to Berlin from the confines of a small country town in southwest Germany in 1980. Interweaving interviews and portraits, but also on- and off-stage stories, backstage gossip, copious amounts of music and excerpts from her shows, the film allows Chantal’s story to unfold before a backdrop of recent and very recent history. House of Shame takes us to the squats of Oranienstrasse of the early 1980s; to Martin Kippenberger’s newly founded club ‘SO36’; to the studios of the artists of the ‘Neuen Wilden’ movement, and the epicentre of gay emancipation. The film also takes a look at the lives and deaths of transsexuals. No amount of colourful parades and riotous parties can conceal the fault lines in a personality: a body can thwart everything and lead to apartheid among sex workers, in bars and even in everyday professional life.