“He gets up around five, when the man who is writ­ing about him goes to bed.” This is how the author Hubert Fichte begins his story about the “casual dock worker.”

Leonore Mau, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, orig­i­nal­ly did not know much about photofilms, but she learned quick­ly. Rough­ly 500 pho­tographs were needed for 20 min­utes of film. Mau had gotten to know the dock worker in the Palette bar. She fol­lowed him with her camera, pho­tograph­ing him at home with his family, on his way to work, to the “Admi” (where jobs are assigned), to the launch­es, to the boat hatch­es, and later to his reg­u­lar bar around the corner. At the end of the day, each docker had moved 660 bags, equal­ing 30 tons. The spoken text and images, which are inter­spersed with short film sequences in a kind of tele­vi­sion format, create a pre­cise report about life on the docks.