Berlin under Construction

Kids

August 2019 •German

Marie, Arthur, Emine, and Christian are ten years old. They live in Berlin. Strolling through the city with them, we experience their freedom as well as first notions of opposition.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Berlinized

April 2012 •English

The documentary BERLINIZED describes this very Berlin-specific attitude in a reflection on and a journey to mid-1990s' Berlin. Filmmaker Lucian Busse, an active protagonist of the period, documents the transformation of Berlin after the Wall. But Berlinized represents more than just the 1990s - it is a metaphor for this virally catching creative feeling, the slightly rough directness, spiced up with a big dash of typical Berlin humor. Berlinized lets the former protagonists reflect how that temporary feeling of freedom shaped their individual lives, and to what degree that freedom can still be found among the neat order of today's Berlin. These reflections are as diverse as the interviewees and as multifaceted as the changes in those times.

I Don’t Want to Be Just a Memory

February 2024 •German

Berlin queer community members mourn the substance abuse-related loss of their friends by sharing memories and rituals. Resembling glow-in-the-dark fungi, they radiate light together as a network of support and care.

Prinzessinnenbad

May 2007 •English

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

Berlin Babylon

September 2001 •German

A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony

February 2008 •German

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

Union - Die besten aller Tage

April 2024 •German

In 2019, Union Berlin was promoted to the Bundesliga. Four years later, the traditional East German club qualifies for the Champions League and achieves something that few would have thought possible. Despite all the euphoria over the triumph, the pressure to remain strong in sporting and economic terms also increased, as did the fear of falling into a conflict of identity between tradition and change. The fact that the soccer underdog from Köpenick still manages to retain its magic is primarily down to the people who work behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly and enthusiastically. Always at their side: a loyal fan base that is prepared to follow their club's path unconditionally. Hendel follows the team behind Union for almost two years, right up to their entry into the top flight, and takes a unique, particularly personal and authentic look behind the scenes of the club.

Ich will da sein - Jenny Gröllmann

June 2008 •German

Leftist Extremism: Activism or Terror?

January 2019 •German

Leftist extremist groups operating in Europe have chosen violence as a political tactic: they attack the right-wing parties offices, attack the police, provoke riots in demonstrations. Although leftist violence is increasing, it receives almost no public attention. An investigation into the alleged good violence exercised in the name of a supposedly just cause.

Julia

August 2013 •German

Julia is a young transgender woman who left her home country of Lithuania. Now living in Germany, she walks the streets of Berlin, working as a prostitute to survive. This documentary revisits Julia over a ten-year period of her life.

Klassenleben

May 2006 •German

Searching Eva

October 2019 •German

This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.

SubBerlin - Underground United

February 2008 •German

The original Tresor was in many ways the quintessential Berlin club: located in an unrenovated vault beneath a bombed out department store, it opened its doors amidst the general confusion and ecstasy that swept across the city when the wall fell. Its low ceilings, industrial decor and generally unhinged atmosphere created an unprecedented platform not only for techno in Berlin, but also for the scene taking shape across the Atlantic in Detroit.

Berlin Utopiekadaver

April 2024 •German

A taxi drives through the city of Berlin. Its driver is a punk, left and a well-known figure in the autonomous scene. The stations of his trip are the most important places of the autonomous scene: all in the struggle for survival. The last evictions have not yet been processed and the next ones are coming right up.

Heimatkunde

October 2008 •German

Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.

Opa sein Berlin

January 1981 •German

Rare documentary footage from around 1900 depicts the mood of life in Berlin at the turn of the century.

DJ Punk: The Photographer Daniel Josefsohn

November 2018 •German

Nobody captured the atmosphere of 1990s Berlin better than German photographer Daniel Josefsohn, who died in 2016 at the age of 54, leaving his mark in advertising with his irreverent aesthetic and punk sensibility. It was his spontaneous, imperfect images shot for an MTV campaign in 1994 that first made him famous.

The Wall

November 1962 •English

Like the best USIA films, The Wall distills political events into an emotionally clear and compelling ideological "story". In 1962 Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources and crafted this taut short film about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Straightforward, keenly balanced narration portrays Berliners as "accepting the wall but never resigned to it". The extraordinary footage of the first escapes was propaganda enough-- His challenge was to make the politics human.

Criminal Minded: Live at the Crime Scene

December 2019 •German