In Berlin (dir. Michael Ballhaus and Ciro Cappellari, 2009)
In Berlin (dir. Michael Ballhaus and Ciro Cappellari, 2009) takes up the story of Berlin almost a decade after Berlin Babylon. It begins with an opening shot in the recording studio of Alexander Hacke, the base-player of Einstürzende Neubauten, followed by a mimicked helicopter areal shot over Alexanderplatz.
It is a special kind of hybrid between a commercial film, made to promote the New Berlin abroad (the film had a wide release at the Goethe Institutes around the world), and an ethnic and creative diversity mirrored back to Berliners and Germans all across the nation in a similar way as the “Du bist Deutschland” commercials did in the year leading up to the 2006 World Cup.
Some of the well-known protagonists include the actresses Angela Winkler and her daughter Nele, writer Peter Schneider, architects Lars Krückeberg, Thomas Willemeit, and Wolfram Putz, mayor Klaus Wowereit, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, fashion designers Doreen Schulz and Clara Leskovar of c.neeon, and as already mentioned, musician Alexander Hacke, and his girlfriend, musician, artist, and co-founder of the Love Parade, Danielle de Picciotto.
Following the daily routines of famous and average Berliners, the film remains observational, presenting its protagonists as if saying, “they are Berlin now.” In continuation with the Berlin Babylon trajectory, the protagonists of the film seem to be saying, “look at all what we have achieved and built in only ten years!” and perhaps even “We are Berlin now!” Moreover, Berlin is presented as the place where everything is happening right now. Where average Germans are living side by side with foreigners from all over the world, celebrities, politicians, artists, musicians, fashion designers, writers, and architects, and together they are all forging the new Berlin brand.
The architect Wolfram Putz touched on this type of locational branding, saying:
"Suddenly you began to hear that Berlin had a good nightlife, all those illegal bars, a music scene. And now more recently it’s art. Art from Germany, art from Berlin. That established Berlin as a location that extended beyond the image of the historical city, the capital, or site of a terrible past. It allegorized and defined the city anew and created a yearning in people’s minds. The Brandenburg Gate wasn’t a touristic, Prussian architectural icon, but rather the backdrop for the soccer festival or the Love Parade."
"Suddenly you began to hear that Berlin had a good nightlife, all those illegal bars, a music scene. And now more recently it’s art. Art from Germany, art from Berlin. That established Berlin as a location that extended beyond the image of the historical city, the capital, or site of a terrible past. It allegorized and defined the city anew and created a yearning in people’s minds. The Brandenburg Gate wasn’t a touristic, Prussian architectural icon, but rather the backdrop for the soccer festival or the Love Parade."
Standing at an abandoned void with old train tracks running through it, Peter Schneider, the author of Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper, 1982) reflects on the romanticism of Berlin’s voids with a hint of nostalgia – a nostalgia caused by the looming, future gentrification, and the systematic erasure of such places:
Peter Schneider:
"I love this place. Places like this are romantic in a way. They show something that has fallen out of time, that doesn’t belong in time or has no time at all. I think it’s important that such places exist in the city, where you’re not a historical being, with intentions and wishes and interest in profit, thinking about tomorrow, but rather where you’re simply at one with eternity, to put it melodramatically."
"Ich liebe dieses Gelände sehr. Solche Orte wie dieser haben etwas romantisches. Sie zeigen irgendwie etwas, was aus der Zeit herausfällt, was nicht in die Zeit gehört oder keine Zeit hat. Und ich finde es wichtig, dass es solche Orte in der Stadt gibt, wo man nicht ein geschichtliches Wesen ist, mit Absichten und Wünschen und Profitinteressen, und an morgen denkt, sondern wo man einfach gleich unmittelbar ist mit dem Unendlichen, sagen wir es doch mal so pathetisch."
"I love this place. Places like this are romantic in a way. They show something that has fallen out of time, that doesn’t belong in time or has no time at all. I think it’s important that such places exist in the city, where you’re not a historical being, with intentions and wishes and interest in profit, thinking about tomorrow, but rather where you’re simply at one with eternity, to put it melodramatically."
"Ich liebe dieses Gelände sehr. Solche Orte wie dieser haben etwas romantisches. Sie zeigen irgendwie etwas, was aus der Zeit herausfällt, was nicht in die Zeit gehört oder keine Zeit hat. Und ich finde es wichtig, dass es solche Orte in der Stadt gibt, wo man nicht ein geschichtliches Wesen ist, mit Absichten und Wünschen und Profitinteressen, und an morgen denkt, sondern wo man einfach gleich unmittelbar ist mit dem Unendlichen, sagen wir es doch mal so pathetisch."
While the desire to preserve the voids of Berlin is a post-reunification phenomenon, Peter Schneider’s nostalgia for ruins, broken facades, bullet holes, fire walls, old advertisements painted on buildings goes back to at least 1982 and his Wall-novel. The wounded-ness of the city elicits a sense of sentimentality and compassion. Thirty years later, the concept that there are unclaimed, abandoned, un-gentrified urban spaces and places that had been created by the Cold War and the Berlin Wall enclosure of what became known as the island of Berlin, has both fascinated and captured global imagination, and set an enormous branding and construction mechanism in motion.
During the 28 years of division such places were not only abandoned, but also taken for granted. During the Cold War, the capitalist gentrification machine had bigger threats to worry about than the grass growing over its former symbols of industrialization (like the train tracks romanticized by Peter Schneider). With the end of the Communist threat, however, urban space in all of Berlin has been re-conceptualized and re-branded as a commodity, manufactured for global consumption. And the global tourists do not wish to consume voids and emptiness.
During the 28 years of division such places were not only abandoned, but also taken for granted. During the Cold War, the capitalist gentrification machine had bigger threats to worry about than the grass growing over its former symbols of industrialization (like the train tracks romanticized by Peter Schneider). With the end of the Communist threat, however, urban space in all of Berlin has been re-conceptualized and re-branded as a commodity, manufactured for global consumption. And the global tourists do not wish to consume voids and emptiness.
In post-reunification Berlin, voids became infused with significance because they emerged out of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, in places of the former death strip and no-man’s-land. In a place like Berlin, voids are simultaneously palimpsests (or emptiness infused with layers of history). These voids became spaces of signification and history (or memory), and the project of retaining this meaning and significance throughout the reconstruction and gentrification has been a real challenge for urban planners, architects, and the general public. Despite all the struggles and controversies, Berlin has been an exceptional example of commemorative practices in its urban space. In a way, the changing attitudes in nostalgia we are witnessing in the Berlin documentaries are a response to the memory project. The new nostalgia, then, is a response to the branding of Berlin.
Both Berlin Babylon and In Berlin mix the observational documentary style with a constructed narrative and even “brand” of Berlin’s transformation from Baustelle to Schaustelle.
"Poor is not sexy!" Police demonstration in front of city hall during campaign launch in 2008
Tresor, Dmitri Hegemann and DJ Jeff Mills
Dimitri Hegemann:
"What fascinates me is the yearning for such places. I can’t help it, I just discover such places, whether it’s the Tresor or other places in Berlin."
“Was mich so fasziniert ist, glaub ich, eine Sehnsucht nach diesen Orten. Ich kann da auch nichts dafür, ich finde die Orte nur, oder einen groβen Teil wie Tresor oder andere Orte in Berlin.”
"What fascinates me is the yearning for such places. I can’t help it, I just discover such places, whether it’s the Tresor or other places in Berlin."
“Was mich so fasziniert ist, glaub ich, eine Sehnsucht nach diesen Orten. Ich kann da auch nichts dafür, ich finde die Orte nur, oder einen groβen Teil wie Tresor oder andere Orte in Berlin.”
Dimitri Hegemann:
“Young people around the world are talking about these spaces, which are located in some abandoned buildings, and where alternative possibilities exist. Berlin needs these open spaces and should protect them. The transitory, the unfinished in such ruins offers the optimal breeding and experimental soil. My mission is to transform such spaces into cultural places.”
"In der ganzen Welt sprechen junge Leute über diese Orte, die in irgerndwelchen vergessenen Räumen ruhen und in denen andere Wege gegangen werden. Berlin braucht diese Freiräume und sollte sie schützen. Das Amorphe, das Unfertige in diesen Ruinen bietet optimalen Nährboden und sind die richtigen Experimentierfelder. Das ist auch meine Mission, solche Orte zu Kulturräumen zu wandeln."
“Young people around the world are talking about these spaces, which are located in some abandoned buildings, and where alternative possibilities exist. Berlin needs these open spaces and should protect them. The transitory, the unfinished in such ruins offers the optimal breeding and experimental soil. My mission is to transform such spaces into cultural places.”
"In der ganzen Welt sprechen junge Leute über diese Orte, die in irgerndwelchen vergessenen Räumen ruhen und in denen andere Wege gegangen werden. Berlin braucht diese Freiräume und sollte sie schützen. Das Amorphe, das Unfertige in diesen Ruinen bietet optimalen Nährboden und sind die richtigen Experimentierfelder. Das ist auch meine Mission, solche Orte zu Kulturräumen zu wandeln."
Kiki Blofeld beach bar, and founder Gerke Freyschmidt
Gerke Freyschmidt:
“It’s too bad that everyone’s starting to chase after the money. And, as was the case after the war, it lacks common sense, it’s just mindless selling and building. It’s too bad.”
"Es ist schade, dass alle anfangen jetzt so dem Geld hinterher zu laufen. Und eigentlich so wie nach dem Krieg ohne Sinn und Verstand Sachen verkaufen oder irgendwo bauen. Das ist schade."
“It’s too bad that everyone’s starting to chase after the money. And, as was the case after the war, it lacks common sense, it’s just mindless selling and building. It’s too bad.”
"Es ist schade, dass alle anfangen jetzt so dem Geld hinterher zu laufen. Und eigentlich so wie nach dem Krieg ohne Sinn und Verstand Sachen verkaufen oder irgendwo bauen. Das ist schade."
As the documentary film theorist Stella Bruzzi noted,
“documentary now widely acknowledges and formally engages with its own constructedness, its own performative agenda; it is not that reality has changed, but rather the ways in which documentary – mainstream as well as independent – has chosen to represent it” (Bruzzi 252).
She argues that
“all documentaries, including observational ones, are performative in that the ‘truth’ depicted on screen only comes into being at the moment of filming and that, far from being equivalent to or a substitute for the truth that existed before filming began, all documentaries are the products of a dialectical as opposed to synchronous relationship between these two ‘truths’” (Bruzzi 222).
This constructedness and performative agenda can also be related to nostalgia because the object of contemporary nostalgia in Berlin is the imaginary emptiness and unclaimed spaces, as exoticised and contained as the Ishtar Gates of Babylon inside Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.
“documentary now widely acknowledges and formally engages with its own constructedness, its own performative agenda; it is not that reality has changed, but rather the ways in which documentary – mainstream as well as independent – has chosen to represent it” (Bruzzi 252).
She argues that
“all documentaries, including observational ones, are performative in that the ‘truth’ depicted on screen only comes into being at the moment of filming and that, far from being equivalent to or a substitute for the truth that existed before filming began, all documentaries are the products of a dialectical as opposed to synchronous relationship between these two ‘truths’” (Bruzzi 222).
This constructedness and performative agenda can also be related to nostalgia because the object of contemporary nostalgia in Berlin is the imaginary emptiness and unclaimed spaces, as exoticised and contained as the Ishtar Gates of Babylon inside Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.
The film begins and ends with the music of Alexander Hacke. In the beginning, we see him at his studio, and in the closing scenes of the film he is on stage. The end titles are superimposed over the images of Berlin’s Fernsehturm shot from the air at dusk, with the sun setting in the back. Ballhaus and Cappellari quote Berlin Babylon, thereby elevating their film from a commercial and promotional portrait of the city, and thus contextualizing their film within the emerging corpus of Berlin documentaries and contributing to the Berlin documentary discourse. The film ends on a very interesting sound note: Alexander Hacke’s song “Ich warte” (I’m waiting) signifies that the story of Berlin is unfinished and to be continued, and perhaps anticipating even more sweeping changes, of which we are not quite conscious yet, but which, historically, and economically, we know are coming (predicted by Benjamin’s Angel of History, Karl Scheffler’s observation of the “ever-becoming” nature of Berlin, and the nearing completion of the international airport that will begin a new phase in Berlin’s economic life).
Final image of the trailer included on the DVD reads: "With kind support of the city marketing campaign be Berlin - Discover Berlin and all its stories! Be unique, be diverse, be Berlin. More information at: sei.berlin.de"
After the film's release, it was incorporated into the promotional media of the "Be Berlin" marketing campaign.
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