Video below.
Berlin Babylon. Hubertus Siegert, S.U.M.O. Film, Germany 2001, 88'. Original version with subtitles in Spanish.
Monday, February 27, 2012 / 19.30 h. / Pl. Nova 5, Barcelona.
Berlin after the fall of the Wall. Observations on radical reconstruction of a city core. Images of the conflict between the thirst for demolition and the hunger for completion. Edited into a documentary vision. The music provides the commentary. The Babylonian fable of civilization, of the violence of construction, lives on in reunited Berlin. The upheaval turns to stone.
BERLIN BABYLON is a film about construction in Berlin. It begins with a prologue on the Tower of Babylon and Alexander the Great, on power and ambition, on demolition and the problems of building. Twentieth century Berlin knew various decades of architectural upheaval, as did many other cities. But the concentration of construction in the 1990s, the decade after the Wall collapsed, is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. The people who appear in BERLIN BABYLON include those who build and those who hire others to build. The buildings shown in BERLIN BABYLON are old or still under construction. Some have remained figments of the imagination. Others have been destroyed.
Rebuilding a divided city during a lot of time has begun and many of plots left by the wall have become succulent pieces of this pie.
Filmed over 5 years, the film tells the amount of controversy in the heart of a massive campaign of international companies eager to make his mark in the new European capital. Among the major architects are Gunther Behnisch, Werner Durth, Meinhard von Gerkan, Godfrid Haberer, Helmut Jahn,P. Kleihues, Ioeh Ming Pei, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Kollhoff, Axel Schultes, Renzo Piano and no mention of Rafael Moneo who also took part (?).
All spiced up with the impressive soundtrack made specifically for Einstürzende Neubauten. Needless to say? Access and Moritz, Free!
