She is a cute girl, our Jule
and she is also good at school, yeah.
But there is something we despise:
She doesn’t wash, which isn’t nice.

The Film

Background information

Gerhard Schöne’s classic tune “Jule never has a bath” is by far one of the the most well-known songs for children of the former East-German GDR. It has probably been a song from hell for thousands of kids named “Jule” – while a few million other fans utterly enjoy the song.

Now the song is more than 30 years old – time for a new musical interpretation and a music video. During the summer of 2012 I began thinking about turning the song into a movie and started drawing the storyboards and developing ideas. I called the songwriter, Gerhard Schöne, who immediately was interested in taking part and having a small cameo in the film.

Yet, despite a finished script and funny ideas, the shooting didn’t work out, so I laid the project off for a year or two until I woke up one morning with the thought: “It’s time for Jule to have a bath!”
I took up all the plans, scripts and drawings and planned the movie with the students of the school I’m working at.

Where there had been obstacles before there were open doors everywhere now. A musician friend of mine, Arne Rüdiger, with whom I had been working before on several music videos re-arranged the song and turned the original two-minute version into a longer song. His band “Silverwater” recorded it in a studio.
Most of the pre-production work was finished in only three days.
We shot the movie in November 2013. The Making-Of below gives some insight into the shooting process.
 

Storyboard