The fall of the Berlin Wall – a turning point. An event which has marked and inspired generations, changed history – its aftermath can still be felt today. But the question remains: how do we look at each other? What effect do borders have on us? And how can we reclaim the space that is ours?
Q&A after the screening
Wagah
Supriyo Sen
Germany / 2009, 13 min
Each night the only border crossing between India and Pakistan on a 1000km stretch becomes the sight of an extraordinary event. Thousands of people gather to witness the ritual closing of the border, after which the masses get as close as possible to the gate to greet their former neighbors. This "festival" is therefore on the one hand a celebration of the partition, but on the other hand also the only connecting element. What do the terms separation, home and proximity mean to the people on both sides?
Flag Mountain
John Smith
UK / 2010, 8 min
A view across the border in Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. The camera looks over the rooftops of the Greek Cypriot south to the mountains of the Turkish Republic in the north, where a display of nationalism is enhanced by filmic means.
489 Years
Hayoun Kwon
France / 2016, 11 min
489 Years shows an animated landscape of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, based on the narration of a former soldier who had entered the DMZ–one of the most dangerous and heavily armed places in the world.
Symbolic Threats
Mischa Leinkauf, Matthias Wermke, Lutz Henke
Germany / 2015, 15 min
On the night of 22 July 2014, two filmmakers hoist two white American flags on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. They take the US flags down and fold them in the prescribed orderly fashion. Poetry or threat? An act of surrender or perhaps art? What happens when threatened freedom reinstates art with the element of danger? Who or what makes it into a threat?
Ein-blick
Gerd Conradt
Germany / 1986, 10 min
A film camera looks back and forth between a house in West Berlin and a house in East Berlin for twelve hours, taking one picture a second. The Wall runs between the two houses.
Cycling the Frame
Cynthia Beatt
Germany / 1988, 28 min
This is a short film about the Berlin Wall back in 1988 when West Berlin was still an isolated fiefdom of the capitalist west, located 125 miles behind the Iron Curtain in communist eastern Europe. The film follows a young girl and her thoughts as she circumnavigates West Berlin alongside the 96 mile long, iconic, symbol of the cold war.