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“Traveling is damn necessary, says the old seagull!“ my film program is called. I’ll show lots of very old, medium old and new super 8 films, partly in original version on my Elmo projector and partly digitized via Beamer.
(if you don’t understand German, the text on the picture above translates like: About singable palm trees in Los Angeles, self healing bikes, winter-in-Berlin-survival-rituals, warmth seeking bug parasites, saltfrogs that reincarnate into trash bins, negative developed love goddesses, magic gold brandy … and lots more. Plus a world premiere: Get up, Jucy Lordan!)

Come into the Regenbogen-Kino at Lausitzer Strasse 22 in Berlin-Kreuzberg this coming Saturday at 8.30 pm!
I’ll bring some freshly baked super 8 cookies!

And here’s the complete film list! >>> regenbogenfilmliste.pdf

Recently I had a glass of champagne (instead of water or tea, as a matter of diversion ;-P) standing within my grasp beside my bed and I fell into contemplation … watching a string of tiny bubbles rising up in an exact interval, one after the other, endlessly. But every (about) 30th there came another on the passing lane … passing the row. Just one single one! In an exact interval … So beautiful, mathematics!

We did it again … geocaching … this is how aunt Wiki describes it: Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called „geocaches“ or „caches“) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a „game of high-tech hide and seek“, sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking.
We solved a puzzle, crawled above dusty ceilings, found beautiful Russian paintings on walls in hidden rooms … and found the treasure in the end. I don’t really know how to describe and explain the fascination, it must have something to do with childish remains, hide & seek, puzzle solving satisfaction etc … and a fresh way of looking at things / buildings / nature …

I can read and write Cyrillic and know some Russian words, but I don’t understand the words above, Russians, help! Sergey, are you reading my blog?? 😉

Geocaching time again! One of the most interesting spots in this rotten world is the Beelitzer Heilstätten (mentioned it before, see blog) near Potsdam.
Todays gang: me, my brother, his son, sons mother Michi. Trying to solve riddles and find hints … bad luck today, but found a handful of halfdead shimmering blue dung beetles …

… nephew David set them free in a sunny warm spot … my brother climbing on water reservoirs … all of us on stairs that ended in nowhereland … cool adventure day anyway …

… and later in the evening my brother managed to drag me with him to his girlfriend performing (Les Gosses!) in a small French Restaurant called „Garçon“ – singing Edith Piaf, making all of us soft. Love? Passion? Sad stories? Bad worries? Heartcracking coincidences? Tears? Trust? Huiui!

… Frederike illustrating the song about a sailor smelling of sun soaked sand …

Too cold for stargazing … I’m sitting nevertheless in my open window with a warming Morellino glass in my hand and … summer is over … I just can’t seem to get that through my head.
And what do I see? The beautiful moon rising with a little shining partner at its side! Checking … it’s Jupiter, the giant gas planet, my (sagittarius) helper, helping me tonight … well, whatever, can’t be bad anyway …
Cheers 🙂

Good morning everybody!
Today I needed some kind of hot spread on my bread, summer drifting away, leaves are turning yellow, it’s only natural 😉
I opened the glass and a smile came back.
Lovely weekend to all of you!

Harvest!

Those two weird looking fruit – no, not chestnuts, they are Russian tomatoes (thanks to Beate who gave me a seedling!) – totally delicious and juicy. Had them in my pasta with tomato sauce tonight.
I think I’ll try to breed the seeds next spring.

My back yard. A bike problem. More bikes than actual bike stands. Some bikes are dead – flat tyre, loneliness, whatever. Slowly nature is taking over. Sprouting, entwining tendrils around the spokes. Hilarious and absurd look.

Mmmh, summer just doesn’t really want to leave! I’m enjoying every single drop of warmth and colour …
One of my favourite bars / cafés in my street is called Goldmarie, I think I mentioned it before: quiet atmosphere, good not too expensive wines, delicious bagels with inventive spreads, peppermint tea with fresh leaves …
And when it gets cold and you still don’t want to go inside since the evening is so precious, wonderful, crispy: they give you Wolldecken – woolen rugs!

I’m a classical music nitwit.
But years ago my friend Andreas introduced me to Dmitri Shostakovich and some of his symphonies, I especially loved No. 7, Op. 60 ‚Leningrad‘; 1. Allegretto; from 7:39 on because, listening to it, I felt the joy of mathematics, I had a vision of cinematic numeral beauty.
Today thanks to my friend Frauke, she invited me to the Philharmonie of Berlin: Musikfest Berlin 09: Orchestra London, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 8.
It was so exciting to watch the musicians, we had a good seat above them all, enjoying, hearing them like a swarm, a flock … and I liked the mixture of old and very young ones. I loved the percussion section the most, so concentrated partly for just one single boooom 🙂

Here you see the conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy receiving a bunch of flowers at the end of the wonderful performance:

This is me and my brother (the best photographer in town!) checking our new magical device (see some blog earlier) …

… and these are two examples of what came out (a tiny version of course – the quality is gigantic in reality – grain beats pixel!!)

It was a too short pleasure to have had you here!

I bought this funny thing on Ebay: a kind of objective that fits on a camera and on top there is a window for one super 8 frame! Analog scan! (Because I’m feverishly trying to find the best highest resolution way to enlarge one tiny image to a … more or less giant poster. I want to bring some unseen beauties, stills, a 24th of a second, to light, to exhibition).
So I opened the parcel, checked the thing and the screw which immediately broke … aaarggh … a plastic screw! How stupid!
But for all accidents there is help: I recommend ASA 90, the best shop in town (Berlin-Neukölln, Fuldastrasse 55) for film and foto!
Fred, the owner, is the coolest helper ever and of course he and his two companions helped me fix that thing! Thank you!

This is Fred’s magic screw toolbox 🙂

It has been hot and beaming and shining for days, now suddenly the air changes and rain comes pouring down.
My opposite children can’t believe it and try to catch the drops 😉

These days I’m thinking a lot about my job. And about changes coming. Shaking situations. Blabla – anyway: I whispered to the heavens above „Why don’t you just send me a quick sign?“ and then I continued spooning my blueberry yoghurt and *YIKES* look: one smiling face and one astounded … Now I’m trying to decipher the message …

I thought my back yard was quite secure. I locked my 15 year old half rusted mountain bike there. Among 20 or 25 other ones more or less rotten. This morning I came down and wanted to cycle to work – and it was gone. At first sight I thought: oh, was I too drunk last night? But I wasn’t even out … Starting Alzheimer? No. It was just simply stolen.

Fuck you, thief! That was really mean. This bike is of no worth, maybe you’ll get 40 bucks for the frame and 1 for the plastic duck honk, you asshole. I curse your Karma. Get scrabies! (Krieg die Krätze!)

Here’s a still from one of my films (The Self-Healing Of My Bike) *sigh* from those days when we were still together …

“Don’t jump from the long side!“ yells the bath attendant in my favourite summer pool called Prinzenbad. I’ve always loved it there, it’s like a melting pot mixing everybody in almost always peaceful coexistance. At least it used to be like that. Except for some cracking pubescents or overheated brutalos but they mostly stay among themselves … and those uptight asshole voyeurs who molest people in the separated nude areal … well … anyway …
What I realized over the recent years: it has always been a normal thing to sunbathe topless. More than half of the girls/women did it. No big deal here. Today? No one except for me and I felt like a medium aged hippie from another planet. What’s that? Americanization? Muslimization? Back to the fifties-prudery? I’ll have to muse about it … Maybe the mood, the atmosphere is slowly turning towards rough and aggressive and disrespectful behavior … and girls … well … react.

Until I found out, here’s a little still from a very short film called “Ducks are watching you”, a film festival trailer that I made some years ago for the Zwergwerk Film Festival in Oldenburg:

and here’s the trailer: zwergwerktrailer.mov

This is how super 8 filmers tame and bind their high towering balcony tomatoes 😉

Last weekend at Force Attack … I don’t really go to punk festivals regularly … but it was a good spontaneous chance to accompany one of the bands that will be part of Bands On Boats – A Pony Named Olga – share some time, work, fun, music, film with them on a small tour.
We even had time to relax half a day at the Baltic Sea which is very close to that festival (Rostock/Warnemünde).

Attack! Ladybug plague at the beach! That was kind of weird! Hundreds of those little beautiful 7-dotted bugs flew around us, landing on us, on the sand, on the towels … never experienced that before.
Sensitive people started to fix mosquito nets to their sunshades …

This is for specialists only … never try to self-process an Ekta 16mm film that has lived more than 20 years outside a fridge. Deborah Phillips my friend and I didn’t believe Mr Draser, the god of Andec, who refused to process her 30 meter long film because of that reason (it would ruin the developer baths with all the black gelatine particles).
It did exactly that. All the beautiful filmed scenes, all work, all images got dissolved in the first two baths. Though … it was fun to do that dirty bucket processing again (30 meters of 16mm film is too much for a Russian tank) so we – thanks to Fernando – occupied a darkroom, set up the scene: 4 buckets, some towels, hot water to keep the chemicals in appropriate mood (38 degrees centigrade), plastic gloves, and my new invention: who tells you the exact countdown time of 6 minutes when you’re in absolute darkness? No red light allowed! So I recorded a kind of down-counting voice with some nice weird music telling every 10 seconds where we are!
Anyway … it all went shit. So we strolled away to have one two drinks around the corner at Syndikat. Good white wine!
I noticed a cat opposite to the bar, it balanced nicely on the balcony rim, said hello to the tree leaves, looked at us and then returned back inside. It was a lovely day anyway!

This is an invitation to a very special evening:

Helen Bittner is a musician and I am a filmmaker. We found each other, spent one day together walking and subwayriding through Berlin, inviting coincidence, strolling around, me filming (on super 8) … and now the music clip for her song You And The Moon (Groovy) is finished. There’s going to be a little party this coming Sunday (the premiere of that clip!!) at Arcanoa (Tempelhofer Ufer 8, Berlin-Kreuzberg) from 8 pm.
No entrance fee!
She’ll be performing some of her songs (with 3 guest musicians) and later I’m going to show some of my films in original super 8.

Here’s the song list:
I’m alive
You are the one
You and the Moon (jazzy)
Where are you tonight?
So blue
You and the Moon (groovy)

… and here’s the film list:
Milchwolken Liebe
Die 6 Astronauten
Ach, es ist so schön, ein Käfer zu sein
Cowboy, reite immer schneller!
Der höchste Spiegel der Welt
Stich 8 juckt einfach super!
Die Salzfrösche von Hiddensee

Come and meet us!

… force people to fold their sunshades and wipe up rain drops in no time.

Riding home from my job through Köpenicker Strasse I saw a beautiful sky, looked like a thundery front approaching, warm tropical evening, beautiful saturated colors, crispy air!
I stopped at a night kiosk (remembering my empty fridge) and bought a bottle of good icecold Rivaner white wine. Stepped in, smiled at the old lady who guarded the open door. The guy (young, friendly, tattooed all over) said, when he realized that I was anxiously watching my unlocked bike outside: „Don’t worry, the owner lady will keep an eye on your bike and if someone’s trying to snatch it she’ll take care of him and throw her crutches at him!!“
I love Kreuzberg …

And then … at home … sitting in my open balcony window I heard a percussion sound, someone’s drumming … I looked down (2 storeys) and I saw 4 guys drumming tenderly on the orange garbage can on my street, a spontaneous 3 minutes concert! Whow! Awesome! Listen and watch! under-my-balcony1.mov

Finally. One of those nights. The summer has come back. The city is humming and buzzing. I light my Guadalupe candle (which I imported from LA last summer!), fill my glass with ice cubes and rosé prosecco, watch the blue-pink sky, listen to the chasing flocks of Mauersegler (European or Common Swift). Mmmh! This is summer and I love it!

In the course of one’s life – film friend Khani told me recently – everybody inhales and swallows (eats!!!!! Yikes!!!) … four spiders.
An urban myth?

Aah, just 2 minutes in the googleverse swang me to a science site!

You can say it’s ugly, this Kottbusser Damm (the street that separates Kreuzberg from Neukölln), yes it is, but it is as well charming on a Sunday noon when you sit at lovely Ankerklause, a café / bar spot on the street. Nothing better than a coffee and a croissant, watching people passing by, relaxing after a long Saturday with too much work.

Happy Sunny day!

Midsummer in the city of Berlin. Suddenly you know: you need to go to the countryside right now or else you go crazy.
So my brother and his son took me out on a ride to the emerald green clear crispy clean beautiful lake called Liepnitzsee, situated about 30 kms North of Berlin. The lake belongs to the district of Wandlitz, which in GDR times was the space where the highest East German functionaries lived.

You can rent rowboats for hours for little money, watch ducks, ducklings, great crested grebes (Haubentaucher), herons (Fischreiher) and coots (Blesshühner) … swim in the soft cuddly water, walk to the Insulanerklause, (a kind of little open air restaurant) and have a wheat beer, a salad, a coke, a Wienerwürstchen, icecream … stroll through the woods on the island and the surrounding banks …
It was a perfect Sunday 🙂

Try to count the mosquito bites on my legs … but funny, the magic water cools the itching away!
And this is my brother taking a dive!!