Synopsis
If you can remember the 80's, you weren't there!
The wild West Berlin of the 1980s became the creative melting pot of pop subcultures: music, art and chaos. Before the Iron Curtain fell, anything and everything seemed possible.
2015 Directed by Klaus Maeck, Jörg A. Hoppe …
The wild West Berlin of the 1980s became the creative melting pot of pop subcultures: music, art and chaos. Before the Iron Curtain fell, anything and everything seemed possible.
This is definitely intoxicated on its own sense of coolness, an uber-hip look at counterculture in '79-'89 West Berlin. The cultural commentary was a little trite, but the music montages were fantastic; you can hear the burbling origins of just about every form of modern rock and roll—punk, indie, electronic, noise, etc. The highlight for me was an appearance by one of my favorite bands, Ideal, whom until now I've never found an interview of with English subtitles. Also neat seeing Die Toten Hosen playing a secret show in East Berlin for moshing kids who were usually denied any access to real music. There's one other part where they show pictures of Einsturzende Neubauten holding signs that say stuff like "SUPPORTING COMMERCIAL MUSIC MEANS SUPPORTING THE REACTIONARIES" and then it cuts to one of the band members angrily shouting while monotonously stabbing one note on a small piano, which I think pretty much sums up the whole scene.
Wunderbare und informative Doku aus der Sicht des aus Manchester stammenden, vielseitigen Künstlers Mark Reeder, der Ende der 70er Jahre aus Liebe zu Krautrock-Bands nach West-Berlin umzog und dort mit der höchstspannenden Musik- und Kunstszene in Berührung kam. Gerade im musikalischen Bereich war es für mich interessant, die verschiedenen Genres und ihre jeweiligen Auswirkungen auf die Menschen in der Stadt in der Zeit zu sehen. Neben Acts des (Fun-/Post-)Punk gibt es unter anderem welche aus New Wave, NDW und später auch Electro zu sehen. Es ist wahrlich super inszeniert wie Reeder mit kreativen Köpfen zusammentrifft, die zumeist eine radikale Wende in (sozial-)politischer, künstlerischer und musikalischer Hinsicht herbeiführen wollten, und die hier zu Wort kommen: z.B. Gudrun Gut (von der wunderbaren…
The number one comfort film for me. As a fellow berliner & a person who researched a lot about Geniale Dilletanten for some academic works, I consider the journey Mark Reeder shared with us on screen as a very personal experience. The film belongs to me & I belong to the film. Those golden years of revolutionary noises. Nothing can ever beat it, I swear.
sitting in my flat that i pay too much for, with no hot german punks living anywhere near me, sacre bleu what is the point. i could be squatting with nick cave or in a record shop listening to a young german lad yell into a face mask and play a tiny piano, but culture has died! we have no fun anymore!
Went in expecting a whimsical 3D-animated movie starring Jerry Seinfeld.
Left learning a lot more about West Berlin in the ‘80s.
Mega coole Einblicke, besonders in die west Berliner Musikszene in den 80er Jahren. Aber auch andere Themen werden kurz behandelt, wie ein kurzer Abstecher zur Hausbesetzerszene oder Club und Barszene West Berlins. Dies alles aus der Sicht von Mark Reeder, der seine Erfahrungen dem Zuschauer mitteilt und dies auf durchaus unterhaltsame Art und Weise. Besonders interessant ist das ganze für mich, da ich in Berlin wohne, aber zu der Zeit noch lange nicht geboren war und dadurch nochmal einen neuen Blick auf Berlin bekommen habe.
Everyone’s bitching about how it’s all about Mark Reader, yeah, that’s what a memoir is. Mark Reader is a genre of person who exists in every city who waxes nostalgic about “what the scene used to be like.” (Especially in Berlin, where it was always “so much cooler 5 minutes ago”) He’s an unselfconciously enthusiastic and warm narrator who name drops all over the place because its titled B-Movie. I actually appreciated that it, unlike other similar documentaries, did not attempt to give an “objective, definitive overview” of a scene, because that never works.
It’s a fun watch and has a lot of old TV footage that’s not on the internet.
fun fact: 5% of the scenes with Mark Reader are reenactments done by his nephew (the ones without talking or other people) everything else is from when he was a presenter on British TV
Some great footage but the narration was all cheese. I came to see a film about the music in Berlin in the 1980's, not the career development of Mark Reeder. I don't really care for him or his penchant for name dropping. What did Tilda Swinton and her bicycle have to do with the film, really?
Unterhaltsamer Blick zurück auf eine Zeit, als Berlin noch interessant war. Leider kommen einige persönliche Vorlieben zu kurz: ich hätte gerne mehr über Reeders Zusammenarbeit mit Buttgereit erfahren. Und warum zum Teufel radelt Tilda Swinton einmal zwei Sekunden durchs Bild und verschwindet dann im filmischen Nichts? Aber das kann man der 90-minütigen Dokumentation angesichts der Fülle und Dichte des hier präsentierten Materials kaum vorwerfen. Mucke ist auch geil. (P.S.: noch bis zum 10.10.2015 in der ARTE Mediathek)