The 2009 Berlinale ran a series called After Winter Comes Spring (Winter Adé) in which was shown a selection of films that "presage the Fall of the Wall".
The press release says: "The prints we are presenting are mostly new and have come from Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. They include feature and documentary works, as well as animated and experimental films, all of which were produced between 1977 and 1989, and convey a sense of the radical changes to come."
I say: this was a strong run of films. Given the generally fucked nature of ticketing at the Berlinale—in which, it seems, even a ticket can't guarantee you entry—I didn't get to see all that I wanted to see. Nevertheless, there's only so much cinema a regular human (das ist mir!) can swallow in eight days. There are those professional festival haunters who seem to run from screening to screening with a kind of detached passion—rolling out of their 4-star suite each morning, grizzled yet tastefully attired (recycled-materials shoulder bags, department store jackets, North Face trousers), checking Gmail on their iPhone until the credits roll, eating chain cafe baguettes and slurping over-milked cappuccinos. Long ago they liked movies. Now they just see them. I am not one of these people. Although, y'know, I understand the appeal. I did a Cinema Studies degree, after all...
I present below a few summaries/reviews/reflections/desecrations. A couple of these weren't in the Winter Adé series. But, for some regrettable reason, I decided to only see German or socialist films this year. (Hence the slightly bitter tone at points. Why am I here watching these Romanian dunces when I could be seeing Kate Winselet?) So that, at least, ties them together.
The Scarecrow (Tschutschelo)
Decent Soviet two-parter in which a girl is ostracised by her peers in a primary school. A new pupil in an established group, the twelve year-old is immediately tainted by association with her eccentric uncle. More than that, she is an upstanding citizen, willing to be moral and true to her sense of self. She is cast out by a particularly mendacious girl who leads the rest of the class in their physical attacks and verbal taunting. Willingness of boys to beat the shit out of a girl shows the success of Soviet egalitarianism. Equality for all in schoolyard beatings!
Made between 1983 and 1986, there is an obvious thematic core, overlapping with other children's narratives (Lord of the Flies etc) but of immediate importance for an audience in a Soviet state sliding toward its end: dissent, moral fibre and the folly of blind support for leaders. Many of the children it was made for, of course, were to reach adulthood under a new system—where these lessons were of just as much use.
Experimentalfilme
A suite of seven experimental films made in or about communist countries.
-In-Sight (Ein-Blick)
A camera is set-up in the window of a West Berlin apartment abutting the Wall. It films one frame a second for twelve hours. Shot in 1987, Ein-Blick shows indolent border guards, lovers breakfasting, gymnastics groups and schoolchildren playing. Whenever a subject looks directly at the camera, the movement freezes. "This GDR," I think to myself, "looks OK."
-From My Window (Z mojego okna)
Similar to the above in concept, but different in form and content: Polish guy—Józef Robakowski—films the square in front of his Łódź apartment each day for thirteen years. In voiceover, he tells the stories of those we see on screen—not bored automatons (a grey mass) but characters full of life.
The film is an illustration of everyday Polish life: he underscores this through the narration, which was clearly done after the events but is told with an immediacy. He inadvertently charts the fall and rise and fall of May Day marches, in sympathy with the fortunes of the State and Solidarity. He reflects ironically and negatively on post-socialist Poland in his "postscript". The square, he notes, is now a "parking lot," emphasising the strangeness of these words. The language changes in train with the economic system. (This can be watched in full at Robakowski's website. Click into the "videography" and find either Z mojego okna or From My Window. No subtitles, unfortunately—and his flat delivery won't make it obvious where the gags are. See it with a Polish friend.)
-Trabantománia
Hungarian film of marginal merit. Shows Hungarian bohos—nomenklatura children?—making post-punk music and childlike, outsider art. The point of its inclusion seems to be: Hungary had bohemian, post-punk, outsider-art making people. Ergo, the fall of socialism was inevitable!
-The Severe Illness of Men (Schestokaja bolesn muschtschin) & Woodcutter (Lessorub)
Two offerings from the planet of Soviet Parallel Cinema. Bizarre, strange, funny. Various humanlike corpses are thrown around and ravaged. A man is chased through the woods. Plot is ostensibly missing. Jerky and discontinuous, like early silent cinema. Illness of Men is available to download and stream at Ubu.
-Sanctus, Sanctus
Shot in the GDR in 1988, this is one trick over twelve minutes. Public political ('ideological'?) celebrations are filmed on the street, then overlaid with religious choral music. To wit: the similarities between real-existing-socialism institutions and religious institutions. The idea is an old one with plenty of analytic scope (for instance: is it merely appealing because the religious narrative is such a familiar one to us, that the content of this political belief can so easily fit the form given to religious belief?), but only the surface is touched here. As a visual representation of that core idea, it works. As twelve minutes of cinema, it is twice its needed length. Generously, one could add that it gestures in a more complex direction: the way rituals become rote over time, the similarity in a distance between the mouthed beliefs of parishioners/subjects and the enaction of those in everyday lives. Or perhaps it might push towards another thought, something about the instrumentality of belief in both settings—say this, get that. My future film project: put a socialist song—bold brass, strident lyrics, amassed voices—over a religious ceremony. What would happen then? If only I had research assistants to do this kind of leg work for me...
-Konrad! The Mother Said... (Konrad! Sprach die Frau Mama...)
An odd student film, made in the last year of the GDR. Someone is on the run from someone in the GDR. Beyond that, the rest of it simply flew past me. Escape. Commitments. Etc. It was the last film. I was hungry.
Little Valentino (A kis Valentinó)
"The band kept playing on the Titanic, even as it was sinking..."—these are the final words of this 1979 film from Hungary. This little gesture—which seemed slightly at odds with the film—seems to have bestowed upon it a prescience that makes it worthy of inclusion in the Winter Adé series. In my notebook afterwards, the best I could muster was: "aimlessness as metaphor? Valentino as state—spending your way out of trouble?"
Nevertheless, it is one of the better films in the series. The narrative is the tale end of a heist movie, what would happen if the credits rolled and the crooks had gotten away: a sullen teen boy (or is he 20?) attempts to find high-price kicks in Hungary with a wad of money, only to meander aimlessly from one to another, finding mere sugar-rush excitement and an inevitable ennui. It's an unlikely cross between You, the Living and Richard Linklater's slacker films: Little Valentino is strong on surrealist imagery and scenarios—plus strange surrealistic poems are projected on screen as kind of "chapter headings"—but equally at ease with long stretches of banal action.
The Grass is Greener (Überall ist es besser, wo wir nicht sind)
The title gives away the thematic concern: the lure of elsewhere, an oasis always just out of reach, the elusiveness of happiness. A Polish guy travels to West Berlin and then New York, in search of contentment. He continues running into another young Polish exile—a discontented young woman, running through the same circuits, ending up in the same towns. Romance sparks. Romance dies. Bags are packed. Romance returns. The film uses a simple but effective conceit which avoids suggesting quietism (i.e. the argument that would run: unhappiness is everywhere, forget about leaving home or acting otherwise) but suggests a critical approach to the appealing fantasies of 'elsewhere...'. At only 70min, the story thankfully gets in-and-out quickly.
How's Work on the High-Rise Block, Ion? (Ioane, cum e la constructii)
Short, well-shot documentary about a young Romanian couple who are both construction workers. They await—and then get—their own apartment. Although there is a lot of unspoken material here, suggesting dissatisfaction, the film was made with the approval of Romanian communist authorities. So it delivers an optimistic, happy-ending version of high-rise living...
Panelstory
...which isn't quite delivered in Panelstory. This is a less rosy portrayal of high-rise living, set on the outskirts of Prague. A great film, worthy of more attention. It blends Tati-esque elements—a devilish child and a freewheeling, dissatisfied grandfather—with the energy of some 1970s Western avant-garde films. Slapstick. Free jazz. Dolly camera. It depicts a chaotic, barely functional new estate. Construction workers and middle-class residents rub shoulders and trudge through the same mud patches.
Like Tati, there's a critique of new individualism and commercialism here—the grandfatherly figure injects reminders of old values into a scene where modern practices and technology have exploded any strong sense of solidarity and community. A pregnant woman and an old woman (who appears to be dead) are left aside by others as they seek to furnish their new apartments.
Memory (Der Tag, an dem ich meinen toten Mann traf)
Soporific, repressed drama in which a soporific, repressed German woman finds a replacement husband. (The translation of the German title is: "The day I met my dead husband.") A new film set among the concerned middle classes (hydro-power, 20th-century classical music), this airless piece mistakes tension for silence and overwrought 'stillness'. And doppelgangers for Hitchcock-style suspense. Like Lantana, a ponderous Australian tale of leafy-suburb professionals committing adultery, this lets clichés (woman cries desperately in shower after holding it together in public) and self-conscious cinematography (shallow depth of field [see above] and dim lighting) assume the weight of gravitas. 90 minutes felt like 120. Audience members left, heads were held in hands, there was a slow exhaling of breath. Even with the director in attendance. Ouch.
Jadup and Boel
Based upon a GDR book I have not read (Jadup), this late period East German film was banned until 1988. It is a tale of small-town life in the GDR, understandably banned (y'know, within the context) for its depiction of bumbling officials, disregard for authority and general slapstick hi-jinx. It's a pleasant film, which seemed to be something of an old favourite with audiences. A love story. A small town. Touches of Hitchcock (a church belltower, an old love, domestic tensions). Like much else in this series, it is thought remarkable because it presages the imminent collapse of European communism. But the narrative template here is so utterly generic, that I wonder if a decent film—telemovie?—has been overinflated for political significance. Much more interesting, I thought, were the gasps of "Eric!" from the audience when Herr Honecker's portrait appeared in a Buro office.
Berlin Playground (Hans im Glück)
As already mentioned here, this film is a documentary about post-Wall life in Berlin. Its singular focus is Hans Narva, a 40 year-old musician who spent half his life under socialism and half under capitalism. The well-handled documentary manages to convey something of Hans then and now. His punk days in bands on the wrong side of the regime—notably, Herbst in Peking—and his sombre new musical work suggest a discomfort under both economic and political regimes. As does his incarceration in both periods. Often, director Claudia Lehmann lets Hans wander around the city and tell stories as they walk. This is an effective way to get him talking—where he is somewhat uptight in talking head mode, he relaxes and narrates easily as he walks. Wandering into the prison-cum-apartments, he lays out the terrain—the yard where he once used to exercise, the cells where he spent solitary time. He hates "The New Berlin," as it is always called, for the stupidity of its planning, for the way old sites have been so quickly erased. His school is razed—for what new purpose is never exactly clear. "It could've been a cultural centre," he suggests. The Palast der Republik is the least of it. Yet, equally, the "Old Berlin"—the GDR one, the one seemingly beyond the scope of heritage marketing—is somewhere he never wants to revisit. For its value alone in illustrating this viable, ambivalent position, Berlin Playground is a worthwhile documentary.
Material
A stunning montage documentary film by former GDR resident, Thomas Heise. Playing out over an expansive 166 minutes, Heise lets the tape—and it mostly is VHS tape—run on some extraordinary events in East and West Berlin, circa '89: subjects boo speeches as GDR apparat attempt to quell the coming end of the regime; police turn their hoses on protests in Kreuzberg; far-right goons smash up a small screening of a documentary about Ossis shortly after reunification; prisoners and prison wards criticise GDR amnesties and prison systems in front of official organs; Müller debates the staging of a new play. By far the best film I've seen about the GDR near and after its end. Barebones in its presentation—the film is framed by minimal contextual information ("Kreuzberg, 1989") and no voiceover. The virtue of this is the presentation of material that accumulates explanatory power together—each segment supports the other in a way that is not immediately clear. Avoiding the usual footage of Berliners clambering upon the Wall, Heise manages to convey more than others about the criticism, hope and nastiness of the Wende. It is complex and deeply informative—a single viewing is not enough.
