‘Film & TV’ Archives
(English) Berlin: Legendary Sin City
Brendan Nash praises a documentary on Berlin's Weimar era... What is it that is so beguiling about Berlin in the 1920s and 30s? A quick glance at the bookshelves above my desk reveals a dozen hefty tomes on that subject and that's not including a plethora of novels by Hans Fallader, Phillip Kerr, David Dowling and, of course, Christopher Isherwood. The enduring popularity of the film Cabaret and the current resurgence of TV period costume dramas in the UK bear out the fascination with this [...]
(English) ikono: Fine Art TV
Vanessa Remoquillo meets Berlin's fine art broadcaster, ikono... While some people have shunned television completely, art initiative ikono from Berlin has chosen instead to harness the medium to bring fine art into everyday life. Started in 2005 by Elizabeth Markevitch, ikono operates two channels — ikonoTV and ikonoMenasa — that broadcast art around-the-clock without sound or narrative. Markevitch describes watching a typical ikono program as staring at "a living [...]
(English) Berlin’s Yorck Kinos
Natalie Holmes declares her love for Berlin's art-house cinemas... Still not fully tainted by the sameness that embodies most modern European capitals, Berlin is an anomaly amongst its contemporaries due to its unique and tumultuous history. Just over 20 years since the wall came down and Germany reunified, the city has, predictably, changed and developed unevenly. Some areas, such as the central tourist and business districts, have caught up quickly and are virtually indistinguishable [...]
(English) Miron Zownir: A Radical Man
Natalie Holmes chats to photographer, film-maker, author and all-round "radical man" Miron Zownir... Having taken up photography during the peak of the punk phenomenon in the late 70s, German photographer Miron Zownir emigrated to the USA in 1980, living in New York, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. It was in New York that Zownir made his name as a moody, expressionistic and unflinching photographer, capturing the darker fringes of society in the style of Diane Arbus or Weegee. In [...]
(English) Hidden Europe’s Guide to Lichterfelde
Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries, editors of the excellent Berlin-based Hidden Europe magazine, profile their much-neglected suburb... Prosaic places are so often the most interesting spots. And the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde ranks as decidedly prosaic. None of the main English-language guidebooks to Berlin so much as mentions the suburb where we live and work. Tourists do not flock to Lichterfelde to see the great sights of a community that, fifty years ago this summer, awoke on a [...]
(English) In Heaven, Underground: Weissensee’s Jewish Cemetery
Giulia Pines reviews Britta Wauer’s “Im Himmel, unter der Erde”, a new film about Weisensee's Jüdischer Friedhof... Nobody is neutral on cemeteries. Maybe you’re the kind of person who can’t resist visiting them all, browsing through the names and dates like titles on a bookshelf. Or perhaps you can’t pass one without holding your breath, remnants of childhood superstitions still fresh in your mind. Either way, those slabs of stone always seem to elicit a reaction, and Berlin, [...]
