Berlin Babylon
Berlin Babylon is a documentary about the reconstruction of Berlin in the late 1990s. Director Hubertus Siegert turned from 1996 to 2000 for his feature film debut.
Content
End of the twentieth century is the reunified Berlin venue of countless construction projects, especially concerning the new center. Hubertus Siegert documented the before and after this rapid urban transformations, shows the construction of interior perspectives and lets politicians and architects together over the next faces capital of arguing. His film is not neutral, but is developing a critical, sometimes ironic attitude.
Berlin Babylon is first time document. The early stages of the architectural change in the 1990s still show a Berlin that is marked by war and division. But these traces are lost with the realization of the new construction projects more and more. The desire for a finally closed city is the root impressive, partly just also of violent visions. In the minds of planners Berlin is by far not always primarily habitat.
In a central debate, two main directions are opposite. The representatives of the urban mission statement of "critical reconstruction" as Josef Paul Kleihues and Hans Stim man are based on the old European city with a perimeter block and a limited eaves height. Others, such as Rem Koolhaas and Günter Behnisch stand for a contemporary, international architecture.
Instead of relying on interviews and information sets Berlin Babylon on the visual analysis of people, places and urban development processes. In suggestive language and images collagen makes the film felt that buildings and the spaces are built and designed not only for their function. They are also symbols of memory and identity, time and area markings and thus materializations of power interests and social structures. The camera observes the political and corporate productions by both the new owner and all the trappings and by the construction processes themselves Each building receives its full meaning only in the context of the city. Their often unconscious symbolic structures are the actual, mysterious protagonist in Siegert's film, as will waive any informational elements as narrator or explanatory texts.
Places and people
Berlin Babylon shows the (re -) construction of places for photos budget of the German capital are also central to today: The Alexander, the Paris and Potsdamer Platz, the Central Station, the Jewish Museum and the Ku -Damm -gon. The beginnings of the debates surrounding the demolition of the Palace of the Republic and the possible re-establishment of the Berlin City Palace are documented.
The ragtag " General Staff " of the construction shown occurs almost only in male occupation. Some of the hierarchs seem charismatic, others even -handed - all they are ambitious and the historical size of their task well aware. Among managers of mega corporations such as Daimler Chrysler and Sony, world-famous architects such as Helmut Jahn, Rem Koolhaas, Meinhard von Gerkan and Renzo Piano. Politicians like Helmut Kohl and Eberhard Diepgen. The Berlin of the 90s will again be world stage and thereby gets more expensive, smoother and maybe a little confused.
Quotes
" These consultants are all worriers. [ ...] I 'm not here to let beat me there. "
About the cost of development in the construction of the Federal Chancellery:
"In the past has been exceeded on the Petersberg the construction cost to threefold. We are talking about 400 million who might go to 404 million. This is a joke. And yet it gets. Because the whole country has only fear. "
About notions of preservation, to lay the old building on Pariser Platz, the new Academy is based:
"That may at the time have been very good exhibition spaces. [ ...] [ But ] we have to be careful that we do not operate so'n fetishism. [ ... ] This stuff is not that worth seeing for technical or other reasons, but just because it's old. "
About a possible preservation of the Palace of the Republic:
"This is just architecturally third quality, if at all. And the place is just too important to yield to such sentiments. "
Production background
Berlin Babylon arose as a theatrical production without television participation. The camera men Ralf K. Dobrick and Thomas Plenert turned on 35mm film. The very scarce for such a project budget of DM 1.3 million brought producer Hubertus Siegert and some private investors largely on themselves. Only 15% came from the Film Board Berlin- Brandenburg and Filmbüro NRW. The soundtrack was composed by the German experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten.
Evaluation
Berlin Babylon had its premiere in the Berlinale Panorama 2001. The film was marketed as one of the first works in the Berlin film distribution program Piffl media on 20 September 2001 to the cinema and had to and including 2007, 27,000 spectators.
Criticism
" Talk and reasoning are alienated to an atmospheric noise, the film shows the arrogance of power and of what is possible, while the city appears as a rugged natural landscape ... The barren beauty of the images is terrific. "
" Berlin Babylon is one of the few documentaries that have the canvas and not prescribed the screen. Hubertus Siegert plays all over the keyboard cinematic possibilities and composed the evocative symphony of a capital between megalomania and inability. "
" Defendant Curt Bois in Wim Wenders film classic the Verschwundensein urban history, BERLIN BABYLON evokes a similar melancholic feeling. Curt Bois proceeds through the Berlin of modern times, in search of the " presence of history" ( Hubertus Siegert ): the disappeared, blank spaces, the blown-up buildings and " scattered " locations. Where was the border strip? Where was the Wall? When was that anyway? Or was it all just a dream? I do not know ... "