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Production Company
OFF WAYS
Synopsis
At noon on December 21st, 1989 the members of EINSTUERZENDE NEUBAUTEN – a band then hailedas West-German cult export – hit the road in West Berlin for their very first concert in East Berlin,capital of the GDR.And as yet, it is a long, unusual way from Berlin Kreuzberg to Berlin Lichtenberg, into the WilhelmPieck-Hall of the industrial plant VEB Elektrokohle. As yet there is the wall and as yet there are bordercontrols…Filmmaker Uli M Schueppel, a friend of the band, accompanied EINSTUERZENDE NEUBAUTEN throughoutthis ‘extraordinary’ day – extraordinary for the musicians who for the most part had grown upin West Berlin and who previously had never been granted an official permit to perform in the GDR.Extraordinary, because the concert in the evening had been pulled off through mediation of GDR playwrightHeiner Mueller, who was friends with Blixa Bargeld at that time, and who also would introducethe concert with a short speech. The fact, that he appeared backstage with a delegation of Frenchministers (amongst them then Culture Minister Jack Lang) belongs to the bizarre side occurrences ofthis day…But most notably, this concert is also an extraordinary event for the GDR audience, which associatedmuch with the name and concept of EINSTUERZENDE NEUBAUTEN, and which was suddenly – facingthe band and the West – confronted with their projections. What happened back then, on that particularday – ‘in between’? This film now conflates these ways of West and East. 20 years later some ofthe concertgoers trace those paths that led them to the concert hall of the VEB Elektrokohle.Sometimes from around the neighbourhood, sometimes from Berlin’s surroundings, or even frombarracks 300km away – retrospectively they reflect this way, which on the one hand led them to thisonce-in-a-lifetime pop event, and at the same time to the German reunification.Out of these various Western/Eastern ways to the concert emerges a temporal mosaic of Berlin on this‘extraordinary’ day – a journey back to a German ‘in between-time’.Contact: schueppel-filmsUli M.SchueppelHusemannstr. 3310435 Berlin, Germanytel.: 49 (0) 30-4429457info@schueppel-films.dewww.schueppel-films.deCast & Crew
- Director
Festivals/awards
Berlinale PANORAMAProduction Company
Cast & Crew
Uli M. Schueppel
