Dagies Blog

I think it was my friend Khani who told me once that she realized the alikeness of a building at Potsdamer Platz and a fuck finger. Especially when seen through the valley-like Kochstrasse in the morning sun coming from straight East. Plus some picturesque dramatic late summer clouds … it brings pizzazz (I just learned that word on www.leo.org when I was looking for Das Gewisse Etwas)!!

… that’s what I recall and that’s exactly what they should do with them, referring to a scene from „Unglourious Basterds“ (Nazi-Eier zu Brei, tut bestimmt schön weh und das soll es ja auch) – sorry, I watched it right now, a little late, a year too late, one of the last glorious warm open air nights at bastardly warm open air night cinema in Kreuzberg …

Tomorrow is the last open air summer cinema day … go there if you can …

It left me a little confused … I saw Brad Pitt who I don’t really like that much … but: genious! With his Southern accent … just uglily talentedly beautiful. The best job he ever performanced.

And I cracked up laughing about Hitler, though … well … I am honestly wondering how they succeeded to translate that stupid crappy accent into english … the version that I saw tonight was just perfect … German and French when it was needed, subtitled … let me think two more days about it, ok? Good night!

Another one! I found another one! The slurring continues!
Free your dialect! Mumble & babble!

This joke is only available for German speaking people!

Self-harvested breakfast this morning! At least the tomatoes come from my high tomato trees …

And for an early evening rosé wine I met Deborah at BROSCHEK (which is the girl’s name of the owner’s mama) – (“Die entspannte Kaffee-Bar / the laid back bar in der Neuköllner Weichselstraße zwischen / between Sonnenallee + Karl-Marx-Straße”) and we talked about film and people and life and summer and suddenly realized there’s a leopard in the trees! Art? Who cares! Beautiful! Like a chameleon!

One of the oldest German airports – Berlin Tempelhof – ceased operating almost two years ago. And reopened three months ago as a … park. Interim park open to the public, interim because nobody actually knows by now how it continues but as far as I know there’s six projects – urban planners, architects – that won the competition in June.

Aaaanyway … I played airplane with my bike, sped along the runway, enjoyed the wide wide view and the imaginary breeze of kerosine still lingering in the air. Molecules of history hit me, kites buzzed lazily, a Turkish woman learned to ride the bike … and then there was a piano right in the middle of the end of the runway … some keys still working, sounded a bit like in a cowboy saloon … aawwwwesome …

… and here’s a little film >>>>>> tempelhof.mov

This group on Facebook announced there will be a starry night tonight all over the world … make a wish, make 1000 wishes … not even one. Shit. In Berlin. Cloudy, rainy, thundery. Wishes still lingering.

I looked up into my trees and remembered an old song by The Cure called A FOREST mmmmh and some good bad ugly vibes shot back at me from about 25 years ago when I was good bad ugly young – here’s a really bad VHS version from 1980!

There are not many good games for mac-users in this world.
I got infected by MYST ages ago and the follower RIVEN as well, but since then: desert.

And then I discovered MACHINARIUM. So awesome, so lovely, so beautifully hand-drawn with a cool ambient soundtrack all over … mmmh!
The story is simple, the puzzles are tricky but solvable, no bad killer monsters around, only a bunch of extremely wonderful plots and sites and helpers and hoodlums and oily metal animals … sometimes very funny and heartwarming (a robot! In a robot world! Mammamia!)

The city robot band (find the cat hiding in the didgeridoo!!!)

There’s one continuously reliable funky good event coming up every now and then at Kunstraum T27 (Berlin-Neukölln, Thomasstr. 27) – it’s called “Projektionen”, a film / (moving) images evening parallel to a current exhibition.
Today’s subject was “Still Lives”. Curated by Deborah Phillips and Bärbel Freund, both artists, film makers, friends …
I loved their mixture! Slide show and 16 mm films.
Especially one remained in my busy brain: “Still Life” by Jenny Okum from 1976. Color negative. Such a mighty brilliant blue! Azure!

Next “Projektionen” will take place September 2nd. Subject: “animals” (including 3 of my films!)

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!