2430 – Capital B series about Berlin (Arte 2024)

Capital B – Who Owns Berlin is probably the best documentary about a city any city out there, in a league all of its own with Los Angeles Plays Itself.

What happened to one of the biggest cities in continental Europe? A city that had incredible opportunities, cheap basically free spaces for grabs, and immense swaths that were opened up after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Berlin was probably the biggest story in subcultural history. This documentary by Arte Channel in 5 parts explains it all step by step. Yet saying this we cannot forget that after the Wall, there were winners and losers of the reunification, and sadly the losers (in economic terms, in job and academic positions, and cultural management positions) – were the people of former East Germany or DDR who today are being swiped off their feet by populist rhetoric and vote for the extreme right-wing AfD demagogues (altough there have been huge protests against AfD recently against right-wing extremism and for democracy).

Important to mention here that the institution (Treuhand), the pop-up trust company seated in Berlin that regulated and controlled the restructuring from a planned to a market economy did this almost overnight, without much accountability or democratic supervision. Its task was certainly immense to privatize 8,000 formerly nationally-owned enterprises. Modernizing thousands of enterprises and closing down thousands of others, from gigantic combines comprising a staff of umpteen thousand up to small family enterprises – and it ended with complete humiliation for East Germans, even if some say there were some benefits.

I think the story in Berlin is even starker, for most Berliners, and for most that have been living to see the explosion in subcultural spaces, clubs, and underground venues – it all came with a huge cost, they all were just acting like a magnet for the real estate mafia. Real estate – and space (to use Jameson’s suggestive quote from below) one might say is at the center of today’s capitalism. It was involved in the sub-prime crisis in the US that spread throughout the whole world, and certainly in land grabs around the world as well as ‘zoning’ of special economic zones, duty-free areas, and offshore tax-free heavens.

To narrow it down to a city – Berlin, the German capital allows us to see this process of capital accumulation, rent extraction, and speculative markets. It is a very sad documentary, particularly harrowing for all those who went through 30 years of gentrification and speculative luxury housing investments. Sadly the 5 part documentary is only available in French and German, there are no English subs, but I sincerely think someone who cares about the history of this city should do it, especially considering how many EN-speaking inhabitants live in this city.

There is interviews with key figures of the underground but also mayors, investors, politicians etc. The documentary offers a unique range of voices and key figures who were deeply and personally involved in shaping this city and transforming it into what it has become today. This is also the story of techno music and its entry into German electronic music. It is about the translation of a metronomic abstract heavy beat arriving in Berlin from Detroit Motor City via the UK and Belgium and one of the first musical styles to unite both East and West. Techno pioneers from East and West Berlin started setting the night on fire. It is really important to see how the members of the initially small rave culture tribe started scouting for a location, and how they ended up finding TRESOR by chance, that incredible space initially situated on Leipziger Straße and cleaning it and there is incredible VHS footage of that moment in 1991. Subculture had its summer of anarchy, an incredible mix of utopia and frenetic living, but the power elites of the city started asserting their pressure – and it all ended with fierce police raids, street battles, and forced evacuations.

The Fall

One should understand that this is a battle to the teeth, in the middle of the 1990s the West Berlin old-money elites got their interests served by mayor Eberhard Diepge – and started exercising their stranglehold over the city. Klaus-Rüdiger Landowsky one of the most powerful figures in Germany and together with Diepge want to transform Berlin from an industrial hub into a financial capital of the world on par with London and Frankfurt. It all ends with the biggest banking scandal in Germany and the arrival of a new younger mayor ready to use the power vacuum: Klaus Wowereit. Districts such as Kreuzberg and Wedding with a big migrant population are being transformed into virtual ghetto’s without opportunities, high unemployment rates and lack of funding. Savas Yurderi aka Kool Sava becames one of the most well-known rappers in Germany and he’s speaking with the voice of that place.

Poor but Sexy (was the mayor Klaus Wowereit motto for the city)

The City as Prey

This is the final decade where clubs get closed, everyone is kicked out and most of the underground places get shut down. It is the march of uberization, digitial nomadism and finacial speculation.

2429 – The chasm between rich and poor – Homeless in the wealthy West | DW Documentary 2024

Living in Berlin on and off during the last 30 years has made me acutely aware of the increasing number of homeless in Germany’s capital during the last 3-year span, basically since the price shock has overlapped with other shocks.

What is the cause for this? Well, it is very simple, and it went on unimpeded for decades, it basically meant a war on the poor and ended up transforming cities into unaffordable places and countries with infrastructures that were not buit for the 21st century capitalism.

A look at the figures shows just how dire the situation on the German housing market really is: There is a shortage of over 800,000 apartments in Germany, a figure that is growing. More than 9.5 million people, mostly single parents and their children, live in cramped conditions, according to the Federal Statistical Office. (source DW)

Berlin now looks more and more like SF, and maybe that is a sign of how much inequality is affecting Germany (its index lies close to the US) combined with a lack of affordable housing. The invisibility of poverty in Germany is also part of why it is hardly being addressed, but many have pointed out the strain put on the lower half of the population or what is termed “seller’s driven inflation”, practically driven by rising consumer prices in parallel with energy prices. Certain vulnerable categories are particularly affected by homelessness: women, migrants, LGBTQ+ etc. Australia has now around 500.000 women over 50 or around 50 years old who according to the documentary are on the brink of homelessness. I urge everyone to watch this documentary to get acquainted with the lives of persons who are no different than we are and who’s lives have been affected almost overnight and without any preparation.

This ‘sellers’ inflation’ happens when the corporate sector manages to pass on a major cost shock to consumers by increasing prices to protect or enhance its profit margins. Of course, not all firms have won equally. The bottom line is that sellers’ inflation results in an increase in total profits. This simple truth led Adam Smith to warn, 250 years ago, that profits can drive price pressures. (Isabelle Weber)

“The gap between rich and poor continues to widen in many developed nations. The result: more and more people are finding themselves homeless, with women making up the fastest-growing affected group. They live in their cars or camper vans, sleep on friends’ couches or end up in short-term accommodation: Homelessness in industrialized nations is a growing problem, and increasingly affects the middle class, as well as the poor. While the wealthy can also lose everything, the middle classes are the ones coming under more and more pressure from the ever-present threat of joblessness. It’s a problem also affecting migrants and indigenous communities. Increasingly difficult socio-economic conditions in rich countries are leading to a sharp rise in poverty. The documentary profiles some of those affected in Australia: women who’ve not lost their optimism and humor despite their personal hardship.” (Youtube)

2384 – The Man in the High Castle (TV Series 2015–2019)

timespace coordinates: Set in 1962, the series’ main setting is a parallel universe where the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan have won World War II in 1946 after Giuseppe Zangara successfully assassinates United States President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, creating a series of developments that include the Germans dropping an atomic bomb on Washington, D.C. (now renamed “District of Contamination”). The German Reich extends to Europe and Africa and the Empire of Japan comprises Asia, but most of the series is set in the former US and in Germany proper.

Western North America, now part of the “Japanese Pacific States”, is occupied by the technologically less-advanced Shōwa-period Empire of Japan, which has assimilated its formerly American citizens into Japanese culture, although high-class ethnic Japanese are extremely fascinated by pre-War American culture. Japan’s Trade and Science ministers work in the Pacific States’ capital, San Francisco. The Japanese rulers subject non-Japanese people to racial discrimination and grant them fewer rights.

Eastern and Midwestern North America is a colony controlled by the Greater Nazi Reich (GNR) under an aging Führer Adolf Hitler. The colony, headed by a “Reichsmarschall of North America”, is commonly referred to as “Nazi America” or “the American Reich” and its capital is New York City. The Nazis continue to hunt minorities and euthanize the physically and mentally sick. The superior technology of the Germans is highlighted by the use of video phones and Concorde-like “rockets” for intercontinental travel.

The US as depicted in the television series. Though Denver is the capital of the Neutral Zone, Cañon City, Colorado, is a major setting.

A Neutral Zone, which encompasses the Rocky Mountains, serves as a buffer zone between the Japanese Pacific States and Nazi America due to Cold War–like tensions between the German and Japanese blocs. Another buffer zone is present in the Urals.

Films collected by the eponymous “Man in the High Castle” show views of numerous other Earths, including some where the Allies were victorious, some featuring executed Allied leaders (such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin), and some where an American resistance is doing well.

The Man in the High Castle is an American dystopian alternate history television series created for streaming service Amazon Prime Video. It was created by Frank Spotnitz and produced by Amazon Studios, Ridley Scott‘s Scott Free Productions (with Scott serving as executive producer), Headline Pictures, Electric Shepherd Productions, and Big Light Productions. The series is based on Philip K. Dick‘s 1962 novel of the same name. (wiki)

imdb

2180 – Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (1981)

spacetime coordinates: 1975 – 1977 in West Berlin

Natja Brunckhorst Characters: Christiane Film: Christiane F. Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo We Children From Bahnhof Zoo Christiane F. DE 1981 Director: Uli Edel 02 April 1981 Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo BRD 1981, Regie Uli Edel Natja Brunckhorst / Filmplakat, Plakat, Poster, Filmposter PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: MaryxEvansxAFxArchivexConstantinxFilm 12468751 editorial use only

Christiane F. (German: Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo) is a 1981 German biographical drama film directed by Uli Edel that portrays the descent of Christiane Felscherinow, a bored 13-year-old growing up in mid-1970s West Berlin, to a 14-year-old heroin addict. Based on the 1978 non-fiction book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (We Children from Zoo Station), transcribed and edited from tape recordings by Kai Hermann and Horst Rieck, the film immediately acquired cult status and features David Bowie as both composer and as himself. In 2013, Felscherinow published her autobiography Christiane F. – My Second Life.

The film was shot with a low budget in 1980 and released in 1981, but set between 1975 and 1977 in West Berlin. It skips the beginning and the end of the book, and concentrates on the main story, starting when Christiane begins her nightlife in Berlin at around 13 years old, and stops rather abruptly after her suicide attempt by stating that she recovered. In the real story, Christiane F. never fully recovered from her addiction, nor did her troubles end with going to Hamburg to begin withdrawal.

cof

The cast is composed mainly of first-time actors, most of whom were still in school at the time and have mostly not pursued acting careers since. Natja Brunckhorst is the only cast member who continued to act in German films and television. Real life “Stella” (Catherine Schabeck), aged 18 at the time, has a short cameo as the drug dealer that sells the first dose of heroin to Detlev. Most of the extras at the railway station and at SOUND were actual drug users and prostitutes. It would now be illegal to have minors act in the film’s graphic shoot-up, nudity and sex scenes; at the time, however, all the production needed was a written letter of consent from the parents to proceed with filming.

Bowie’s music from his albums made in Berlin during 1976 and 1977 is played throughout the picture, and as he was at the peak of his popularity during the late 1970s and early 1980s, his presence helped boost the film’s commercial success. (wiki)

imdb

---

---

Can you dream about anything?
Can you really be sure you are not dreaming?
Can you dream -are you dreaming-?
Have you pinched yourself to see that you weren’t dreaming?

2176 – yesterday evening

UNITED IN FLAMES W/ MALIBU

-MONTHLY-

---

Malibu is a French electronic musician whose work sails between ambient and ethereal music. Forever inspired by soft reverbed vocals and melodious chord progressions, Malibu’s music is an immersive nostalgic journey in a sea of synthetic strings and choirs.

---

Shot in La Grande-Motte, Camargue (FR)

2112 – yesterday evening

Arca – Mequetrefe

2108 – The Sweet Bread of Exile (Short 2002)

A documentary about classic Romanian playwright Ion Luca Caragiale‘s time of exile in Berlin, Germany (1905 – 1912). (imdb)

watch online here: docuart.ro