Dagies Blog

Spring comes to town! People wear flowers and feathers in their hair!

At the sea. The Baltic Sea. End of winter, strong East wind.

photo © Jochen; for me!

Hello hello, wigwag, I’ll clean the snow away, brush your winter off!!

Flicker: Artists and Super 8 – The exhibition at Smiths Row is still open (till end of March), if you have the chance and live in the UK – go there and watch films and images, all about super 8!

I have 7 images hanging there … and a film loop!

… and I gave a workshop (last weekend) called “Three Soups“ – super 8 film shooting and handprocessing in eco soups made from beer, tea, coffee, vitamin c, washing soda. Full success! 4 participants only, which made the whole thing very intimate … together we spent two fantastic and busy days in an experimental alchemistic boat!
Local beer brewer Nick brewed special beer only for us! To use it as developer! (and it worked!!) – see picture below: Reel Super 8 Ale!!

The end of the second day came a bit too quick: the security man of the workshop space wanted to close when we were still in the middle of the last soup: strong Glengettie Tea, extra long stewed (2 hours) – ha, no problem for Tony (it was his film stripe that longed for tea) and me: we rushed to the neighbour cinema café and continued the processing in the boys’ loo!
That was the funniest and punkiest action ever and we had everything we needed there: running water, big sink and the mightiest Dyson hand dryer for the finished film … 20 seconds and it was dry and ready!

London calling, spring is falling, Thames is dusty, joints are rusty, time to awake – spring break!!!!

Flying from Berlin to London, crossing the beautiful North Sea, I saw wind turbines in the middle of the ocean!

When I was a bit younger I thought a great deal about feelings and melting pots … how it would feel to be living in a bubble in a right time like for example in New York in 1987. In Tel Aviv in 2009. In Paris in 1932. Now it’s 2013, now it’s Berlin, now I get this strange damn right feeling .. I live just by chance … here … and the mighty god of coolness and hipness says: Yeah! Right here! Manouche, French undercover restaurant, Kreuzberg, my intimate neighborhood … live band … no name … one guy from Africa, one from Israel, playing the best jazz music I’ve heard in years. Upright base and sax. Gorgeous. Awesome. What’s your name, guys? I loved you!!

Directors Lounge: the cool annual festivity alongside The Berlin International Filmfest (Berlinale).
Every evening another fresh short film program. Very international. In a cool place called „Naherholung Sternchen“ which I try to translate .. and find it almost impossible … Sternchen is little star, Naherholung is local recreation, and together … does it make any sense? Not even in German! It’s got quite neat GDRish charme though!

Today’s program: a bunch of short films from around the world, funny: all dealing a whole lot with personal identity. A young Arab school girl craving for a Barbie bag. A lonesome rider on a Texan highway – pittoresque but somehow morbid photos … a French Canadian explaining 16 reasons why he hates himself – that one was quite hilarious and beautifully trashlike shot in black&white, someone trying to make his parrot talk how beautiful life is while in the background his wife packed her things and left *yaaaawn*, a young Russian/Israeli/Netherland lady on her research of her life thread: I loved the way she combined thousands of portraits of herself always keeping her eyes in the very center!
Even I had a film in that program … even I looked for my reason of existence and found an easy answer (with the help of my flying nephew and an apparently Indian guru in my dreams): bring joy 😉 … promoting myself >>> ¡Viva la combinación!

(Berlin, Bernburger Strasse)

Recently there was a very rare beautiful evening at the Regenbogenkino / Rainbow Cinema in Berlin-Kreuzberg … a 4 evening special event, films mostly by Gaëlle Rouard, some very experimental 16 mm films. I had a special show of 6 films inside the program. Shown in super 8 original. One accompanied by me @ ukulele. Lalalaaaaatrallalla!!
It was fun and very familiar, like gathering around a bonfire. Rattling super 8 projector. Rare. Thank you Manfred for being there and for the bucket full of Kodachromes!!! Chris and Anne for the spirit and the organisation. And the wine. Regenbogenkino is cult. Survived. Yeah!!!

I had a workshop in Dresden at the 14th Schmalfilm Small Format Film Festival … so nice, so cold, so snowy … we experimented with coffee and Radeberger Beer and red wine that one of the participants brought: his wedding wine! Holy wine did divine things: the processing was awesome and the film came out married and beautiful 😉

watch a best of here >>>> xxxx

Roofing tiles half covered in fresh snow make me want to watch them with 3 D glasses!

The leftovers of collegue Tina’s birthday cake … I’m wondering how do they print an image on marzipan??

Oohooo, it’s a dark grey sunless misty humid medium cold period. Things and people are silent and fade.

This morning on my way to my dentist taking the subway I noticed a hole in the platform ground, a smell of coffee (can you see the mug?!) and a Christmas song streaming out! And it was NOT laaaast christmas I gave you my heart but the very next day blablabeleeblaaa!!!!

Heehee, this gives hope! Summer will come back! Someone’s selling bathing stuff on the flea market, hooray!

Woaah, I fell in a starry filmish analog tinker-fumbling mood this weekend! Spilt glimmer stars all over a stripe of old ORWO black&white copy film (low speed) and developed it in coffee.
I am fascinated by the beauty of simple things, again and again!

… means: our fries are cut by hand! 😉

My neighborhood becomes hipper and lovelier and yummier and more expensive and more international and I like it (except the expensive rent part …) – tonight I felt like a decent Hamburger and tried the Hamburger Heaven in Graefestrasse 93. To go.

To the left: Netto supermarket. To the right: Marques Spanish Restaurant (mmmh!).

Had to wait a long time in the cold (20 mins) because the 2 guys seemed to be really busy, their delivery service starting today, but it was worth it and meanwhile I had a Polish beer (Zywiec, mmmh!) and wrapped myself in red fluffy fleece rugs they have outside on their benches … and what can I say? My Cheeseburger was the best I ever had! I chose Biofleisch (really happy organic meat) – you can decide between regular and medium happy animals and super bio … they also have some veggie stuff! Delicious!

Manouche = Zigeuner = Gypsy = one very very good Creperie in my neighborhood in the Grimmstrasse 23 … night salad full of goat flavour and a lovely Rosé … the best, the very best to relax and drink and eat after a long working day and I let my eyes float around to find a Samenstrahl which is a Sonnenstrahl which is a sun beam on the chalk board and I hear American and Spanish and French talking around and I think if I were a young female Spaniard I would energize five devils and six angels and come exactly here!!

Once again I’m featuring one of my favourite bars in Berlin-Kreuzberg: The Goldmarie.
Recently I had some wine there, outside on the street, with Kitty, a wabi-sabi-film-friend.
Put my camera on the white wine glass, pointed up to the roof, the trees, the stars, 60 minutes!

I’m working on my film processing experiences with edible stuff and tea …. this week is yummy rosemary and elderberry (Holunder, Germans!) week!
The results are quite amazing …
The recipe is: boil them, cool down to 22°, add 10g vitamine C, 50g washing soda (for 1/2 liter) and then bathe the film 30 – 40 minutes! Then water, then fix, just like regular black&white negative processing.

Oh-ha! The second workshop day was even funnier, joyfuller and more enthusiastic … we used coffee and vitamin c and soda for developing … but oh holy shit #2: again! Transparent film! Blank horror, heavy question marks in our brains.

So it was not the semi-sweet Bulgarian wine …. and very late, too late, we found out that we didn’t work with as supposed pure washing soda but a sort of hybrid baking/washing soda which most probably ruined the film 🙁

But in the end we have at least a very beautifully scratched and partly blackened orange-ish experimental film which looks great projected …

Yeeha, I’m in Sopot / Polska … at Artloop Festival, giving a super 8 workshop called „The Wine-Vodka-Coffee-Revolution“: developing black and white film using kitchen ingredients.

Yesterday we were quite unlucky …. probably the Bulgarian red wine was too strong or we moved the film a little too much and too long in its bucket – it came out overdeveloped meaning transparent 🙁

Today we’ll try our luck using coffee, vitamin C and soda.

Sunny summer at the Baltic Sea!!

Gofry w zelu! It’s a gigantic waffle with blueberry jam and cream!

Me and my lover we strolled through the countryside and what did we see? Dead farmers! Ooooh!
But they were just abandoned or decorative puppets …. in a little village called „Lamerden“ which comes pretty close to „La merde“ which is French and means „the shit“ … 😉

Q-tip mikado, coincidental.

Waiting at Berlin Central Station for my country train I was fascinated by that teenie boy with a grumpy and dull expression on his face … his T-shirt expressing that everybody has a regular straight girlfriend except for him having one that looks like a photoshopped Bond-Girl every teenie boy dreams of, I giggled around and tried to take a photo without being spotted and beaten up, which was not easy because Mama and Papa, even grumpier, instinctively protected him and his shirt, which made me think about teenie boys in general and the uglier the more you need a trophy and does grumpiness come in genes and then my train came and I had waaaaay more horizon around me and immediately forgot about … err … what?

Thank you Gesine and Reiner for that relaxed beautiful late summer weekend we spent together in your little paradise!
(I found Darth Vader in birch leaves shadows on an umbrella … spooooky! 😉