For two years, the writer Günter Wallraff assumed the existence of a Turkish laborer in West Germany in order to investigate, and at the same time film, the miserable working and living conditions inflicted on immigrant workers by West German industries. With hidden tape recorder and camera, Wallraff-alias Ali Levent-joined his colleagues every day in line for work meted out by an employment agency (or "slave dealer" in the jargon) specializing in the dangerous and unhealthy jobs no one else will touch. At work and after, they are subjected relentlessly to the racial bigotry of every "pure German" from slave driver to bartender. Director and cinematographer Jörg Gfrörer was also incognito-he was the "crazy Italian who lugs the Turk's bag around after him"-seeing to the hidden video camera. Wallraff's unorthodox investigative methods have antagonized authorities in West Germany for years, although, beginning with a challenge to his book 13 Unwelcome Eyewitness Accounts, the courts have upheld his right to "uncover states of affairs through adopting a role, when nothing else would help." His book on the Turkish affair, At the Bottom of the Heap, is a national bestseller.