They say that Paris is not France. The same holds true for Berlin. Even though it has been the political capital and the cultural centre for the last 20 years, it is not the whole of Germany. For centuries the various regions of our country have kept their cultural identity. Up to 1945, Berlin had been undeniably the centre of the German film industry. But this came to an end for many decades with the partition of the city. Today a number of other film centers can be identified all over the country, above all Hamburg, Munich and Cologne.

The German program of the Taipei Film Festival will open with the episodic film DEUTSCHLAND 09 (GERMANY 09). It is immaterial that the stories take place in Berlin or are presented by directors who live in Berlin. The film shows a cross-section of attitudes of the entire country. In hindsight, another film is interesting – created as cooperation effort of many directors of the “New German Film” of the 1970s – that gives a much more fascinating insight into the situation of the West Germany of the 1977: DEUTSCHLAND IM HERBST (GERMANY IN AUTUMN). This is an inventory of the crisis of confidence between the state and large parts of the politically interested population caused by the terrorist attacks of that period. In 1979 Rainer Werner FASSBINDER produced DIE DRITTE GENERATION (THE THIRD GENERATION), the cruel and comical caricature of a pointless political struggle that has become an end in itself. A much later reflex of this political situation can be seen in Christian PETZOLD’s analytical film DIE INNERE SICHERHEIT (INTERNAL SECURITY) of the year 2000 in which ex-terrorists, who have become puzzled individuals, are roaming through a country that has become alien to them and who are eliminated, routinely and without much fuss. The fact that the episodes of DEUTSCHLAND 09 will hardly start a heated debate on the state of the country clearly proves how much more relaxed both society and film makers live today.

The organizing committee of the festival has chosen to feature a number of Berlin films stretching from the 1920s to most recent times under the heading “City Vision: Berlin”. The famous classical period of the German silent movies is represented by a film of the cinematic opposition. MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (PEOPLE ON SUNDAY) was created by a bunch of young film enthusiasts who came from outside the film industry but who still succeeded like nobody else in showing the atmosphere of a summer day in 1929. This comes close to a documentary and presents a true picture of everyday life in the Weimar Republic by simply observing ordinary young people without any showy setting. This viewpoint is further accentuated in Slatan DUDOW’s films ZEITPROBLEME, WIE DER BERLINER ARBEITER WOHNT (PROBLEMS OF OUR TIMES, HOW THE BERLIN WORKING CLASS LIVES) and KUHLE WAMPE, ODER WEM GEHORT DIE WELT? (KUHLE WAMPE : TO WHOM DOES THE WORLD BELONG ?). They show the political battles of the period before the fascist assumption of power from the point of view of the left. Helmut Kautner’s film UNTER DEN BRUCKEN (UNDER THE BRIDGES) proves that it was possible to form a quasi aesthetic opposition against the production of film propaganda of the fascist period. The film was made in 1944 during the last year of the war and could be played for the first time only after the end of the war. The story of a girl and two sailors – in style and the treatment of the characters obviously oriented at the poetic realism of the French cinema – is treated very individualistically and thus becomes a clear sign of opposition to the official demand for “heroic” action, something that the cinema allegedly had to observe during that period. Immediately after the end of the war, Wolfgang STAUDTE started the preparations for DIE MORDER SIND UNTER UNS (THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US), which was the first production of the East-German film company DEFA in 1946. It was now possible to show an unequivocal comment on tyranny and war. Interestingly enough, the film very consciously uses the aesthetic film language of the 1920s: Wildly canted camera perspectives following the principles of the New Seeing and “expressionistic” lighting, full of contrasts. This was an attempt, after a long period of a totally conformist film language, to renew uncompromised elements of style, which during the “Third Reich” were declared “degenerate”. Max FARBERBOCK’s film AIMÉE UND JAGUAR shows in a totally different way how in the fascist Germany, oppositional trends were alive under the surface and how private and political resistance strategies were closely interlinked. It tells the love story between a Jewish woman who is active in the political opposition and a seemingly simple German housewife. Another retrospective on this time is Helma SANDERS-BRAHMS’ DEUTSCHLAND, BLEICHE MUTTER (GERMANY, PALE MOTHER), an extended epic that shows the effects of undigested war experiences and how they destroy the psyche of a whole generation even if they have physically survived. Helke SANDERS deals differently with the long-term effects of the great war in the documentary BEFREIER UND BEFREITE (LIBERATORS TAKE LIBERATED). She analyzes extensively how the female population was systematically exposed to sexual violence.

After 1945 there were two Berlins. East and West Berlin were opposed to each other, divided by a wall since 1961. In the East, the state-owned film company DEFA produced films for entertainment and education of the East Germans, in the West a small film production was also kept alive with state funds. The absurd political situation of the quasi extraterritorial West Berlin is at the center of Helke SANDERS’ sarcastic film DIE ALLSEITIG REDUZIERTE PERSONLICHKEIT (THE ALL-ROUND REDUCED PERSONALITY). The very title is an ironic reflection of the ideal man, propagated on the eastern side but never reached in real life, which was omnipresent even across the wall in the West of the city through the daily news: “The completely developed socialist personality”. The DEFA productions are represented in the festival by three very diverse films. HEISSER SOMMER (HOT SUMMER) is the attempt to produce a popular musical with local means. It was a huge success with the population of the GDR. Today this cult film is a curiosity for young people who have no personal experience of life in the GDR. COMING OUT was a courageous film produced in 1989, shortly before the collapse of the GDR. For the first time homosexuality was shown in the GDR in a non-discriminatory way. WINTER ADE (AFTER WINTER COMES SPRING), a sensitively photographed documentary, was the sensation of the 1988 Leipzig Film Festival. For the first time, women were speaking freely about their lives, which even under the socialist system was not quite a “completely developed” success. In the end, the camera even leaves the country by taking the step of getting on the Sweden ferry. Only one year later, after the fall of the wall, everybody could do that, but in 1988 this scene was still seen as a provocation.

The 1990s were an exciting time in Berlin, only comparable to the peak of the 1920s. But what counts in the end even in a unified Berlin are the stories of people. And that is what the films of Tom TYKWER, Wolfgang BECKER and Andreas DRESEN are all about. However different these films may be from each other, they have one thing in common. They observe in a very precise way what happens in everyday life. Nobody is interested in film stars and in artificial and stereotypical stories from a film factory. With the very diverse films SOMMER VORM BALKON (SUMMER IN BERLIN), DIE TODLICHE MARIA (DEADLY MARIA) or DAS LEBEN IST EINE BAUSTELLE (LIFE IS ALL YOU GET), Berlin film makers come back to their roots. They describe what is important for ordinary people in the same way as Robert SIODMAK and Billy WILDER did in 1929 in MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (PEOPLE ON SUNDAY).

Translated by Peter Pruefert in Berlin
Martin Koerber