Und jetzt

Typical. As soon as I leave Berlin, exhibits pop up everywhere I would want to see. The latest is Und jetzt, a group show of female artists from the GDR. Among the 12 artists on show are Verena Kyselka and Gabriele Stötzer, two former members of Exterra XX about whom I have written. Other artists include Christine Schlegel, Elsa Gabriel and Cornelia Schleime.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking to Cornelia Schleime when she came to London to present some of her Super 8 work. Sadly, I could not attend her talk, as it coincided with my visit to Berlin, but we spoke at length about her life in the GDR and her emigration to West Berlin in the 1980s. She also delivered a highly amusing rant about the plethora of prams in her neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg, the baby boom there an unexpected post-wall development.

Und jetzt runs at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien 27 November to 20 December.

11th Festival of German Films

28 November - 4 December
London

This year's Festival of German Films features a co-production strand and a focus on the documentary maker Andres Veiel.

Intentional or not, the themes of politics and families run through the programme for the festival. Sometimes, as in Lenin Only Got as far as Lüdenscheid (dir Andre Schäfer), one finds both. In this ironic documentary, Richard David Precht recounts his upbringing in 1960s West Germany, being raised by leftist parents and dreaming of life as the head of the East Berlin zoo in the the fantasy land of the GDR.

With an extended family that includes two adoptees from Vietnam, there is plenty of scope for drama, while mentions of Baader-Meinhof and shots of protests provide the necessary backdrop, as the country goes through its own growing pains, ending with reunification and a family reunion in Denmark.

Alex, the hero of My Mother's Tears (dir Alejandro Cardenas-Amelio), also has an unconventional family, which encompasses the residents of his group house in West Berlin in the 1970s after he and his parents flee the Argentine dictatorship. His gift for moving things with his eyes proves more help than hindrance, and he observes with unease his dad's struggle to settle in "the island of Germans". It is a compelling story with wonderful moments of invention, as when dad's drawings come alive and in the films shot by the household.

Meanwhile, over in Absurdistan, the residents of a small village find themselves left behind once the Soviet Union crumbles and as their ageing water pipe collapses, their water supply dries up and the village divides along gender lines. Veit Helmer's allegory is enlivened by bits of surrealism but let down somewhat by crude humour.

Inter-generational conflicts provide the fault lines in Cherry Blossoms - Hanami (writer-dir Doris Dörrie), as the well-ordered life of elderly couple Trudi (Hannelore Elsner) and Rudi is disrupted when she dies and he tries to live out her dreams in Japan by visiting their son there, having discovered their other two kids in Berlin have no time for them. The sacrifices his wife made for him and the family haunt him and he realises how little he knows of his family. The most perceptive characters are the outsiders: the daughter's girlfriend (Nadja Uhl) sees both parents in a way the kids never do.

Late in the film, as Rudi bumbles around Tokyo, the character of Yu appears, and if she's a bit ditzy and overly mannered, she does represent a less rigid character who helps Rudi connect with his departed wife and some risk-taking in himself. It is also amusing to find "ah so" exists in German and Japanese.

The documentary Two Mothers - The Search Began in Riga considers the very meaning of family, as filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim searches for his biological mother and father and uncovers some uncomfortable truths. His adoptive parents were part of the occupying forces of Riga and his investigation into his origins moves between Berlin and Riga, as he tests out hypotheses: was dad a photographer? A Nazi? Could his mother be Jewish? Along the way he meets a range of characters from devout nationalists and apologists to historians. In the end he simply cops out and decides it's better not to know.

In Beautiful Bitch (dir Martin Theo Krieger), 15-year-old Bica is cut adrift from her brother and homeland of Rumania as she arrives in Dusseldorf and takes up the life of a pickpocket. When she meets the spoiled Milka and streetball coach Andrej she hopes to find friends but is constantly under threat from her "patron", the odious Cristu.

The premise is intriguing and the promises made to easterners about the west that lead to exploitation and greed are well-rendered, but the film deteriorates into melodrama and the relationship between the girls is not developed. It's not believable that a few games of streetball and some dancing would create a real bond so much so that Milka says Bica is her first real friend. And what's up with the black-clad girl who appears sporadically to ask (backwards) if Bica will be her friend?

Drifter (dir Sebastian Heidinger) is a well-shot but very slow observational doc about street youth living around Zoo Station in Berlin. This is perhaps a nod to Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo but with no sensationalism. Aileen, Daniel and Angel live on the streets visiting shelters in between shooting up and taking clients when they need money, but there is little drama to their lives, just the sensation that they are wasting away, while complaining of being undercut by those even lower on the social scale--Poles.

With no voiceovers and no interviews, it relies purely on observation. The worst scene is Aileen giving a blood sample and finding her vein is too scarred from heroin injections. In the credits is a thank you to Andres Veiel, who has several showings at the festival and will be a guest.

The festival screenings are mostly at Curzon Soho, with some at the Goethe Institut.

Berlin museums

While waiting for the opening of the Berlinale, I have availed myself of the plethora of museums on offer in Berlin.

First up was the DDR Museum, which I have meant to check out since it opened in the summer of 2006. With late openings seven days a week, it`s pretty accessible and surprisingly busy on a weekday evening visit. Star attractions include a Trabant in the window and a replica DDR living room, complete with the dreaded Black Channel for one`s viewing pleasure. More enjoyable was the DEFA film on housing available in the screening room. Definitely worth a visit.

In a very much more sinister vein is the Stasi Museum, previously headquarters of the security police and now on show to the public to see just what the police were up to for all those years. Behind the bland wallpaper and plush chairs, hideous things went on, and the contrast is startling and disturbing, even now. Most of the complex has been taken over by doctors and Deutschebahn, which lends a peculiar air to the place and it`s easy to walk by without noticing it. Easily worth three hours and there`s an adjacent archive, which has limited opening hours.

On a more cheery note, one can find the Museum for Communication within walking distance of Potsdamer Platz. Current exhibits include photos by Erika Rabau of Berlinales of the past. Famous names on show include Kirk Douglas, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Shirley MacLaine. One gets a tinge of faded glamour from the array of photos draped over railings around a central courtyard patrolled by robots. Most peculiar. Also showing is Andreas Gox`s exhibit of Berliners at streetlights. But these are not just any streetlights but the fabled Ampelmann lights. Why one would want to devote a year to shooting people at streetlights is anyone`s guess. Anyway, clearly the spirit moved Herr Gox to pursue this project and the photos are, at times, charming.

Lives Controlled

Goethe Institut
London
18 September 2007

As part of its Lives Controlled series on the former GDR's system of state security, the GI presented two documentary films on the state security service or Stasi. The feature I Love You All (Aus Liebe zum Volk) (dirs Eyal Sivan, Audrey Maurion) was a German-French co-production using the memoirs of Major S of his time as a Stasi agent, written in 1990 on the occasion of him losing his job after 20 years' service.

The film used a voiceover reading the agent's recollections and his bitterness at his change of circumstances, utterly oblivious to the effects on others of his activities and the distortion of the idea of the people's state. There was much humour in this, with such memorable quotes as "You have to force some people to be happy" and "Trust is good. Control is better".

Then there were the party songs, including such jaunty numbers as the border guards' ode to "so many skulls smashed"; angelic socialist children celebrating joining the People's Army; and the Stasi anthem about being "soldiers of the invisible front", surely a Eurovision anthem in the making.

The film never showed the agent, instead using archive footage and possibly reconstructions of surveillance but it was difficult to tell what was genuine. There was fascinating footage of the people invading Stasi HQ in 1990, demanding to see their files and daubing anti-Stasi graffiti on the walls of the hated building. Major S says very tellingly that the Stasi were more afraid of the people than the other way around.

While I found the film enthralling, others in the audience found it hard going and there was a rush for the exits as soon as the credits rolled. One viewer who remained called it bleak. An interesting point of the film was that surveillance of the population did not end with the fall of the GDR. Indeed, today's population is probably the most watched in history, with security cameras omnipresent and "anti-terrorist" measures still at work.

One of Major S's gripes was the lack of high-tech facilities at the Stasi's disposal, unlike their counterparts in the west. Presumably, this included paper shredders because when they were disbanded, they left behind reams of hastily hand-shredded files on the people they were meant to serve.

The short film which preceded the feature, Educational Film about State Security Files (dir Anke Limprecht), was as unglamourous as its title suggests, but equally gripping. Without dialogue, it showed in black and white the mundane existence of the people who are attempting to reconstruct the shredded Stasi files. Piece by labourious piece emerges from huge sacks, is laid out on a desk and then matched to other fragments.

It is a shockingly low-tech procedure. Not only do the staff not wear gloves, but they appear to be using standard sellotape to piece together the fragments, despite the fact that tape degrades with age. Another curiosity is the use of Pepsi Light boxes to contain the sheets.

Incidentally, in her book Stasiland, Anna Funder quotes the chief of the reconstruction office in Nuremberg as saying at the present rate it will take 375 years to reconstruct the Stasi files. It does make one wonder at the commitment of the reunited government to this project and also just whom it will benefit, once completed. Perhaps the Stasi have had the last laugh, after all.

The Lives of Others

(Das Leben der Anderen)dir Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

An extraordinarily gripping film looking back to Cold War East Berlin in the '80s and the grip held by the State Security Services, or Stasi, over the population.

In placing a Stasi officer at the centre of the piece, writer/director von Donnersmarck subtly shifts the audience's attitudes toward him, from repulsion to sympathy, as his behaviour changes from blind obedience to flouting his orders.

The officer, Wiesler, a blank-faced man dressed in grey, has been assigned the task of spying on a playwright, Dreyman. The order is politically compromised as a corrupt government official has designs on the playwright's girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Wiesler starts off his surveillance playing by the book but gradually he comes to sympathise with the couple and starts falsifying his reports. It all climaxes in tragedy but the tension is repeatedly ratcheted up as pressure falls on Wiesler from his superiors and the couple are also compromised.

There are some brilliant moments of black comedy within the film. The repulsive official, Hempf, praises Dreyman with the quote, "Writers are engineers of the soul", before a dissident reminds him the author of the quote is Stalin. He is nonplussed.

The idea of The Good Man becomes a motif, as well, with Dreyman referring to a sonata of the same title and then writing a novel of the same name. The film seems to be asking: who is good? who is evil? can people change? what are the responsibilities of artists?

Thought-provoking, politically charged and very handsomely made.