Dagies Blog

Berlin is surrounded by lakes. Since I don’t have a car I depend on friends or public transport. Which is ok: today I discovered the Dämeritzsee in Erkner, only a three-quarters of an hour away from the city’s center by S-Bahn. Nothing special though, a bit muddy but not overcrowded at all.

The nice thing about it is that you feel miles and miles away from the city though Erkner still belongs to Berlin.
The lake is situated under the entry lane of the Schönefeld Airport so there are planes flying in quite close. I love planespotting (I spot and immediately feel connected to the wide wide miraculous world) and today it fitted nicely into the book that I was reading called “Brautflug (Bride Flight)” by Dutch novelist Marieke Van Der Pol.
There’s a long fascinating passage about emigrants taking a 50 hours flight in the fifties from the Netherlands to New Zealand (including 7 stops or so). Those times they faced turbulences I’d never have survived … god, I hate turbulences.
Can someone explain me that an airplane is not a sardine can in 30,000 feet height? That turbulences are as harmless as shattering peanuts? I think I must find a pilot in my life …

Anyway … they sold freshly harvested mirabelles at the service station. From the boss’s garden. A spark, a breeze from the countryside!

This morning I stumbled over yellow letters when I left my house. On the street. Beautifully sprayed. Some of them have little flashes added. Try to combine them!

I read “Dappy Hilal”!
What can that mean? A Turkish riddle? Happy Birthday, Hilal? Hilal ist ein Depp?

My workshops are history 😉 [which by the way does NOT mean that I’m never holding one any more, on the contrary, I’m planning one in November in Berlin again, subject: animation!!] and what is left? Infected people and a bunch of very beautiful 3-minute films!
You can see some pictures and scenes on my Wabisabi site.

While working on editing them I had a bird loop in my ears, Natural Desaster by Andrew Bird. My favourite song at the moment …
The picture below is a still from Nadine’s film – Adalbertstrasse, shot from a bike, self processed.
It was fun and I’m proud of all my participants!!

View from my kitchen up to my backyard sky!

I had a schizophrenic football event today: first halftime of THE game tonite (Germany vs España) I had to watch it at my job but luckily I have a cool job and can do my things and watch internet-tv simultaneously!

Started a little boring so I took my chance and changed places after the break – go go go to my favourite club in Kreuzberg which I surely mentioned before: the legendary Club 39 equipped for the first time with a professional beamer!

Second halftime … sorry dreamteam of Germany (missing the Müller 😉 – … the Spaniards were better …
No one cried, we preferred to take another drink and listen to wonderful Kristof Hahn who started his one man guitar set with a melancholic version of „Ooh hoo Yogi Löw“. Beautiful!
Listen here >>>> ooohooooyogi.mp3

The hottest day ever!
Very sadly 4 people had to cancel the workshop … 2 because of visa/working problems, 2 caught a sudden summer flu … so there were only Judith and Lutz and Susi left. And me.
We had a very intimate session today and we developed the first color film under perfect conditions: room temperature 36° – so the processing chemicals didn’t really need heating (to 38°)!!
Some walk in the park, some sausage and pesto animation … and to finish a perfect day Judith and I walked by a Chinese Restaurant – Glück Lieferservice – Luck delivery service!

It sometimes doesn’t take much. Just pure summer, heart shaped ice cubes, white wine and a strawberry … to make me smile.

I just realized going up the escalator at subwaystation Anhalter Bahnhof: there are brushes between the stairs and the sides! On both sides! How practical! Shoes can go for a quick cleaning brush and summer feet for a massage!

This is my favourite. It’s just hot and simply infecting! A song in a boat. Ain’t No Thing.

Katzenjammer from Norway.

One more week to go until my first self-organized workshop starts here in Berlin! All about the magic of Super 8 filming and processing and the wabi-sabi phenomenon … more here.

I just cleaned and checked my futuristic intergalactic Bolex 155 macrozoom (made in Switzerland in 1968!) and purchased a manual for 10 bucks at tradebit somewhere on internetplanet because this camera has a mighty complicated lens-construction inside, not easy to zoom and focus!
The workshop is almost full (limited to eight participants) … next is July 3/4.

I stumbled upon the poorest rhyme ever … in the Hamburg subway: „Alle Taschen haben’s bequem – nur Marlen, die muss stehn!“
Which means roughly „All bags feel comfortable, but Marle(e)n (female name) has to stand.“
Giggle.

Today I found a song that I’ve missed for about 13 years … „I’m Straight“ by Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers. –> im-straight.mp3
I used to listen to it a hundred times in a loop. Swinging in my hammock. Thinking about Swingchronicity. Falling in love with someone.

Today I re-found it. At a friend’s re-birthday party in one of my most favourite clubs called Mysliwska (the Polish word for „Jägerstübchen – Hunter’s Parlor“) in Berlin-Kreuzberg (Schlesische Strasse 35) where we celebrated his entrance into the forties. And Berlin’s first warm summer evening. Smells like so much more!

Inside Myslivska there’s a lamp with a magic elf or a dragonfly inside … stretch your neck, buy a drink, get drunk, dance.

… to go and then it’s time for my Berlin Wabi-Sabi-Workshop #1. See here!!

Today I dusted my super 8 cameras … and found my old Agfa Family (the one on the right with the orange button) – a very special and funny camera that Agfa invented in the late seventies: a totally simple thing, no focus, no zoom, but it filmed AND made stills! To mark the still it scratched a tiny chink which was somehow „felt“ later by the projector while projecting the film and it stopped for a certain time. So says Wiki …
And I say: there are still some places left in my workshop!!

The moon is fresh, only a sickle now. Summer has finally, shily come (will it stay?), I open my balcony door and find the moon, scrunch up your eyes: you see the whole of the moon!

One day on the countryside!
I spent some time with my friends (who by the way are specialists in Japanese gardening! Go visit their website here.)
I’m a specialist in weird spontaneous film making … I saw an oil seed field and grabbed it. And then we harvested some rhubarb in the garden and made a cake. Both yummy. See the Making-Of, ah yes by the way: I collect Dirndls (blogged it before) – did you know that the breast part, the décolletée is called Balkonette? Isn’t that beautifully logical? Think of a window with a balcony and lots of flowers 😉 —–> balkonetteklein.mov

It is really incredible how many there are … lost places … abandoned Russian military caserns around Berlin. The geocaching dream team hit the road again and explored a huge area – “Das letzte Paar“, many buildings, wide overgrown boulevards, almost like a city, now taken over by a brushwood and birch jungle.
We found a room in the catacombs filled with weird technical machines, half destroyed half rusted, like pre-computers or calculators, called Задания (Zadaniya which I found out means something like task or job): painted numbers on the frame 1-2-4-8-16 etc, some bakelite buttons behind a hole punched transparent screen, an electric plug and a handle that reminded me of a dynamite explosion device.

The dream team: me, David, Michi, Bernd in front of a water reservoir tower (yes, we did climb the marginally rusted metal stairs up to the top!) Foto: Bernd Brundert

This year I’m tomato crazy. I ordered seeds. At Manufactum! Oldfashioned tomato sorts, hairy, striped, full of pure tomato magic flavor! Funny names like Tigerette (the striped one of course), Black Zebra, Striped Roman …
One is called Fuzzy Wuzzy and the little seedling is so cottony, fluffy …
Summer can begin!

“Endlich, der Sommer ist da, die Wolken weiß, der Himmel klar (finally summer is there, clouds white, sky clear“) sings a skinny grey crooked man with guitar in my Ubahn train in Berlin, yesteryesteryesterday, me leaving for Köln, Cologne, to the Frauenfilmfestival / Womens Film Festival where I spend 3 days, show 2 films, meet summer, feel a bit lost, loving that feeling nevertheless … lay down on a meadow at the river Rhine, ear full of even skinnier young Russian girls yelling into their phones but I don’t give a shit, it’s suddenly summer, everybody drinks Kölsch at noon, I watch them and I watch ducks and ships, one ship’s called “live slow“ and I try to.

On my way home today on the train I recorded the following film … I’m always absolutely appalled and get the goosebumps and start to giggle – oooooh I’m so mean ;-o when I hear German train staff announcing stations and information in english – here’s a good one >>> senkjufortreweling.MOV

To complete a perfect weekend I needed a perfect concert. Tocotronic’s 6 weeks tour ended tonight at Berlin’s Astra, a good intimate place with great acoustic. It was long sold out, it was great, it was for me like fulfilling circles: the junkie (?) with his guitar in the subway singing about clear summer clouds, nervous blondie girls talking Russian, too many lesbians on a festival (sorry, gimme testosterone you awful dudes), exploding nature, ah yes Tocotronic that very best German band that held my bygone last summer together while I was again cloudwatching, filmplanning, searching for things I can’t publish here and they truly friendly accompanied me on my iTunes. Thank you guys and your guitars for the best concert 2010. The last song, the outro, the endless guitar loop feedback was BETTER than Neil Young and that says it all.

Hey ho there’s a fat Venus and a smaller Mercury up in the sky tonight! Planet neighbors, buddies of love and communication, fellows of harmony and transmission, associates of sweetness and intelligence … maybe I had too much herbal tea today, fighting my flu … lalalaaaa shoobidooo …

I got the flu. Und nu? Yoohoo!
Make a new film, step on my balcony (again …), mix words, contemplate about entropy, about cats‘ furs, the black and the white in animals and puddings, escaping the grey, avoiding the wishy-washy and the mediocre. Wish me luck and you too!

The film will be called „Tigerlelle, the incorporated resistance against entropy“ and will be shown next Sunday at Kunstraum T27 in Berlin-Neukölln! [Tigerlelle is the name of my cat].
—

Later in the evening … Jesus is dead, bunnies are alive, winter is gone, spring’s not yet arrived, I feel a bit gaga and this gaganess is always good for processing a film (the one that I wrote about above!) so I poured the stuff into the Russian tank and poured some rosé wine into me (note: heart shaped ice cube for summer luck!) – results: yippieh 🙂

The last ice floe on the Landwehr Canal.

Mmmmmh, gingerbread cookies with a huge amount of organic cocoa powder, cane sugar, butter and honey, in super 8 shape with hand drilled perforation holes – I made them for my audience next Saturday (first day of spring!) at the Shortfilmweek in Regensburg / Bavaria!
For all of my readers who come to my special retrospective: welcome!!

I’m in a black&white mood. I just processed a super 8 reversal film, so exciting, it means: 5 baths plus second exposure to light before second developer … mmh that’s really magic and it looks like everything’s alright, see picture below. For all those who are interested in the matter: buy Czech Foma processing kit R100. Available in Berlin at Foto-Impex. Cheap and good. Foto-Impex is the best photo shop (analog) in town and they are the only ones as far as I know that sell chemicals!!!

Still frozen: the Landwehr-Canal …

A funny word: Orangenrahmfächer! Roughly translated as orange-cream-fan. I was waiting for the subway to take me to my brother – another trip to a geocache! This time direction North, Templin and beyond to a lost place: a former secret Russian city in former Eastgermany, a city in the middle of the woods, built for thousands of Russian soldiers and their families, totally shielded from the environment. Decaying slowly. I felt like in a timewhirl! Found beautiful paintings, peeling off and then that’s it, all the balalaikas, Leninfaces, naive fruit – gone!

foto © www.berndbrundert.de 😉

Last day of February, lazy sunday, staring in the sky, smiling at daffodils, descrubbing my balcony, finding survival moss and a laughing G!