Berlin Visions
Gespenster (D/FR 2005)
Before and after 1989, the "Wall City" Berlin was one of the most dazzling metropolises in the world. But what part do media images play in this fascination? Analogous to the book edited by Marcus Stiglegger and Stefan Jung (Martin Schmitz Verlag, Berlin 2022), the film series Berlin Visions examines how feature films have made the city what it is today: paradise for subcultures, political stronghold, crime scene and party capital.
Films show us Berlin as a city of division and isolation, yet always in the midst of life, pulsating from post-punk to techno, from David Bowie to Paul Kalkbrenner. The series, curated by Marcus Stiglegger together with the Zeughauskino, presents key films made between 1980 and 2015, some in the presence of the filmmakers. The examples range from studies of everyday life from the "Berlin School" such as Thomas Arslan's Der schöne Tag or Angela Schanelec's Plätze in Städten to classics from East and West Berlin such as Solo Sunny by Konrad Wolf or Berlin Chamissoplatz by Rudolf Thome to scene and genre films such as RP Kahl's Angel Express and Sebastian Schipper's Victoria. In works as diverse as Andrzej Żuławski's marriage and horror drama Possession or Christian Petzold's allegorical Gespenster, the border issue comes up both before and after the Wall, while Wieland Speck simply subverts it in 1985 by means of a queer love story. In short: Berlin remains a place of perpetual change and reconstruction to this day, even on the screen.