AØ & Utah from DK

Today I was at Antje Öklesund for the first time, it is a great live music club in Berlin-Friedrichshain.
And I discovered a gem!
This doesn’t happen often. Normally I go to concerts and have some drinks and listen joyfully to the music and that’s it. Today I went there with Khani and we had some drinks and listened joyfully … whow that band rocked the house! Rocked the Hinterhaus! Rocked the snowy icey half-dead-hibernating yetis!
A skinny singer with a monster voice! A weird drummer with underarms like calf legs. A warmsmilingsexy keyboarder and two beardy nerdlike base-guitarmen. UTAH from Denmark. Come back guys in summer! And I give you a drink or seven!

About Antje, the name-giver of the club: Im Herbst des Jahres 1599 wurde an der südnorwegischen Küste eine Holzkiste an Land gespült. Die Kiste war mit einer Decke und einem kleinen Kissen ausgelegt. Das Mädchen, das darin saß, war etwa drei Jahre alt und trug nichts bei sich außer einem dünnen blauen Kapuzen mäntelchen. Es zitterte am ganzen Körper, als die Fischer es am Strand auflasen und zum Bürgermeister trugen. Doch niemand brachte auch nur ein einziges Wort aus ihm heraus.Der Fischer, der es am Strand gefunden hatte, hatte Mitleid mit dem Mädchen und nahm es mit nach Hause. Seine Frau hingegen war erbost, da sie schon jetzt nicht wusste, wie sie die vier anderen Kinder ernähren sollte, doch ihr Mann bestand darauf, dass es bliebe.Sie gaben ihm den Namen „Antka“, und nahmen es als Tochter des Fischers „Antkesson“ in ihre Familie auf. So wuchs Antka in der Familie des Fischers auf und zeigte sich schon bald als wissbegieriges und aufgewecktes Kind. Doch die Mutter mochte Antka nicht besonders und zog ihr ihre eigenen Kinder ihr vor. Antka dagegen holte das Wasser für die Familie und wenn sie sich mit ihren vollen Eimern über den Dorfplatz schleppte, riefen ihr die Kinder hinterher: „Antka, Antka, De er et oeklesund“, was soviel heißt wie „Antka, Antka, Du kommst nicht von hier“. Schwer schnitten die Riemen an ihren Schultern und schwer wog der Makel der Fremden an ihr. So nahm sie der Fischer mit zur See und lehrte sie den Fischfang. Doch Antka blickte oft hinaus zum Horizont und wenn der Fischer sie ermahnte, die Netze zu halten, da summte sie verträumt vor sich hin…….

Cutting Snowflakes

I feel like black&white double super 8 fllming these days!
Berlin is covered with snow and the sun is shining but I can’t wait for the white hell to disappear. Having a film in my mind called “Lust For Luck – Get Up, Jucy Lordan!“ which is going to be a lot about, well, taking hold of the reins and running towards … whatever. To the horizon like Jack Sparrow proposed?
“— Now, Bring me that horizon.“ that’s what he exactly said, says Auntie Google.
I’m cutting snowflakes and preparing a nice animated double exposure.

Akabalaka! The Umbi Bros are in Town.

I hate mimes. Say “Marcel Marceau! Boo!“ to me and I break down and get the scabies. But! There is something else in this polyverse! With SOUND!! The Umbilical Brothers come from Australia, performed in the Tipi tent in Berlin tonight and we all loved them, even my little nephew who doesn’t understand more than 10 words english but that doesn’t matter, he understands all the stories they tell with their extremely skilled funny intelligent laugh-myself-to-death noises (special beatbox microphones I guess) and … well … I wish them luck and fame worldwide!
Watch them on Youtube (here’s my favourite: Velcroworld!) or better if you have the chance go see them in reality because they are so REAL (one thing I love about artist is when you see and feel they have really fun performing on stage, it’s like a spark that oscillates, can you understand me?!) and they have layers. Their jokes are not flat. They are partly extremely simple. Boys jokes. About zippers and chainsaws and robots and guns and flies. But with layers behind. And their choreography is gorgeous. Musicians.

Filmsharing Applesharing

These days just happen, Berlins winters are notorious, everyone’s glorious, it’s Berlinale (Filmfestival), I don’t really care, there are side-events … went to Deborahs Film show at Directors Lounge, didn’t feel like in the beginning, it was cold, I was old, wine was sold (just for the rhyme – in reality wine was bad and cold) but the programme was … mixed and good and special and intimate. And: almost all of the participating filmmakers showed up! And: something that will probably never happen again: all super 8 film makers (except one guy) were there projecting their / our films. Milena! Karola! Eva! Me!
Technique was crucial in the beginning because time was out and no one had checked the projector, but 4 skilled super 8 ladies worked like 4 fingers of a hand and we had … fun.

Karola brought apples and shared them. They tasted like spring. Yearn!

All is Red is All

I just met Marie (dreaming over her coffee) and Deborah at the Ankerklause and the latter handed me her Red Films program “Meanings & Effects of Red“: Berliners and visitors, go to Directors‘ Lounge (SCALA, Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte) Monday February 9 at 8 pm! It will be a very cool and mixed program (8 and 16 mm and some DVD) of red films (including 2 of mine).

Dresden Experimental Filmworkshop

That was great! I guided two intense workshop days during the Schmalfilmtage-Film-Festival: „The Lucky 7 film ORWO 8“ – Seven participants (from Leipzig and Dresden) had the rare opportunity to work with ORWO film material. Double Super 8. Old wind up cameras. Film rolls that have lingered for 20 years or more in the fridge and waited …
The results were extremely beautiful: we got the famous „ORWO worms“ – a unique worm-like pattern on the film – the gelatine layers break during processing. My students were a bunch of enthusiastic girls and guys – thank you for being part of my Wabisabi workshop, writing names in the snow, playing with coincidences and having a wonderful time!

Inside the Dresden train station I discovered a kiosk with sausages hanging in the open windows. „Blasenwurst„, I never heard of that before. Can it really mean what it says?? I mean … Blase means Bladder … mmh!

Back in Berlin my brother picked me up and we went to Kreuzbergs best Italian Restaurant (I mentioned it earlier) – pulsating, noisy, crowded as usual, we had gigantic yummy Pizza and there was a partying laughing simpatico large group of Americans at the neighbor table – one of the best film makers and his crew, these days working at his new project – welcome in Berlin, QT! We captured his back through my prosecco glass 😉
What a wonderful fulfilling weekend!

Processing Happiness

I’ve been processing Super 8 films myself forever … I like it, diving into chemicals, the excitement of opening the developer tank after fix and watering and checking: pictures on it or not?! This evening I processed a black and white TriX using the Foma (Czech) reversal kit. But I processed it negative which means only the first developer and then fix. Yeah! Great! One cassette contains 15 m (50 ft) of film and they are now hanging zigzagwise through my room, drying nicely! Happiness is a warm film!

Krasnogorsk and the Sensation of Comfortable Lassitude

Today I bought a beautiful Russian Double-Super-8 camera from a collegue who told me that he bought it almost 20 years ago at the „Stasiflohmarkt“ in Berlin (Stasi = GDR State Security; Flohmarkt = Flea Market: when the GDR broke down almost everything was sold out … the Stasi had their headquarter here and they, too, sold a lot of their equipment … everything except for weapons I think …)

So now I’m a lucky owner of a probably 30 or 50 years old extremely beautiful heavy metallic – no batteries – wind up! camera with some changeable lenses and a manual in Russian … which reminded me that I once began learning Russian almost 30 years ago at my highschool (I grew up in the Western part of Germany and nobody was interested in Russia in the late 70es so our course died after one year … I was very sad because I just got into that complicated and at the same time flowery language).

But thanks to my teacher then (another cool story: he taught Russian and Mathematics and looked like Einstein (hello Herr Becks! Oops, he must be dead by now …). He was very friendly and an inspiring teacher. He, a German, became a prisoner of the Russians during World War 2 but he was treated quite ok and started to like the Russian language and culture and decided to study it after he was released.)

Jumping back now from the story in the story in the story I tried to understand some of the words in the manual, needed a dictionary, asked Tina, got one, browsed a little, and found my favourite expression of the day: „Gefühl angenehmer Mattigkeit“ (sensation of comfortable lassitude)!
They have one word for it – „istòma“. Just one simple word for such a complex feeling … awesome. Genial.

Berlin Birds

Ice age in Berlin! Temperatures fall miles below zero. Bike lanes are meanly frozen over, I’m a coward, I take the bus. Look out of the window, try to ignore my sneezing neighbors, see a dirty grey city.

Antennas up, I see more than a dirty grey city: a blackbird in a flower pot on my brother’s balcony on New Year’s Day, a (probably) sparrow hawk working on his or her nest …

Hello January! Hello fresh new year!

Devil’s Mountain: Hello 2009!

Me, my brother and his little son spend New Years Night on Devil’s Mountain! A thousand Berliners had the same idea … but it was space enough for us all and we shared matches and enjoyed the ice cold night and the atmosphere up there. And the view over the city.

Auntie Wikipedia knows it all: Teufelsberg (German for Devil’s Mountain) is a hill in Berlin, in former West-Berlin. It rises about 80 meters above the surrounding.
It is an artificial hill with a curious history: it was built by the Allies after the Second World War from the rubble of Berlin during the following twenty years as the city was rebuilt.
One estimate for the amount of rubble is about 12 million cubic meters, or about 400,000 buildings. It is higher than the highest natural hill (the Kreuzberg) in the Berlin area.
The curiousness begins with what is buried underneath the hill: a Nazi military-technical college designed by Albert Speer. The Allies tried using explosives to demolish the school, but it was so sturdy that covering it with debris turned out to be easier.

This is my brother writing 2009 with a torch!

El Ángel Exterminador

One of my alltime nicest favorite Kreuzberg bars is the Würgeengel (El Ángel Exterminador, Luis Buñuel). It’s like a warm red hole that you can come to after a long days work. Meeting my brother. Having 2 glasses of delicious red wine. And what a bomb Berlin is right now, it’s pulsating with people from all over the world and we felt like a little eye in the hurrican because we’ve lived here for 20 years. Seen some changes. Call it home. (I grew up in the middle of Western Nowhere and I lived there only 19 years, ha!)
Unluckily the temperatures fell below 0 Centigrade and my bike lock froze. Had to wake it up with matches I always carry with me. Winter survival kit 😉

Xmas Kotti

I love it when worlds collide. I had a late morning-coffee-date with Khani today at Biocompany (they sell organic food in Berlin supermarketwise, quickly growing, expanding. Smaller organic food stores die. Is the world that simple?) but we didn’t enter because the café was crowded with baby buggy pushing parents who allowed their breed to chose between 6 different sorts of croissants and made us feel sick so we preferred to go to the place where reality hurts: Kaiser’s Supermarket (directly @ Kottbusser Tor) with an inbuilt café where you get your coffee good and cheap from probably extremely exploited but extremely friendly and relaxed employees and can watch the outside world passing by which means noon beer drinkers and junkies and tourists and dogs and sometimes straying people from god knows where and neighbors. Sometimes it just feels good to be there for some time and watch them and like them. Especially on Christmas. Why? Don’t know.

I noticed a pair of sneakers hanging from a wire in front of Kaiser’s, reminding me of my Los Angeles days *sigh*, and the woman hanging there (not from a wire) told me there were 3 pairs 3 days ago. We wished each other a good day, she continued her day begging for money and I taking pictures.

Xmas night? I spent it with my very small very beloved very patchworky family at my brothers place and I guess we had a precious good time and a goose who had a good life before it was killed and good red Italian wine. Later when I went back home on the Underground I felt … good in Berlin. Love to y’all 😉

The Kottbusser Tor and the Making Of photo taken by Khani. Get your website ready!!

Nose Flutes, the Kleinert Splint, and Parisian Brats

Music was my first love and it will be my last. This is a song I always remember. And a truth.
Party weekend! Saturday: The Milchbar (Milk Bar) in Kreuzberg hosted the fantastic „Oberkreuzberger Nasenflötenorchester“ – a bunch of guys with nose flutes bombing the house with nosy versions of „Eloise“ and other alltimefavorites. Incredibly rocking and rolling and shaking. One leading guitar, some electronic samples and 8 rocking guys with funny flutes. Sexy.

I was there with Khani and Nadine (who just came back from her 3 months job-stay in Heidelberg and celebrated with us her happy-homecoming feeling) and then we met Jule, an old friend of Khanis, who proudly presented us her „Kleinert-Splint“ at her hand (she had thrown some garbage in the garbage can, pressed it down with her hands not knowing about glass splinters and got her hand nerve cut and torn tendon … outch) – she had a 2 hours surgery (general anesthesia) and they repaired all they could repair and left her with that Kleinert-Splint which allows her finger to bend somehow. Looks cruel but very interesting!!
There’s a plastic thread stabbed through her thumb tip connected with the wrist joint …
This Kleinert magician guy was born as a farmers son in Montana, his mother pushed him supporting his career profession wish and he, well, read it here german and here english

Today, Sunday, different scene, different music, same soul 😉
Berlin-Köpenick, Schlossplatztheater, Les Gosses, a duo of two women, one singer (Frederike Haas), one accordeon (Sirid Heuts), sliding us down to Paris, down to Edith Piaf century, down to small leather suitcases, big love stories with sad endings, harbour ladies, travelling rapscallions.
Rapscallion! What a beautiful word! I learned it using leo.org to whom I want to say thank you by the way. And thank you too to those two Gosses /Gören / Ischen/ Brats for the power you gave me this evening, a very very dark day, the day before Solstice, / Equinox – the power of singing and the beauty of music and the esprit of survival.

All that Glisters is not Gold / All that Stinks is not Vomit

I have a part time job in a publishing house, nice little island, share the room with a collegue. Lately there was a curious stinking cloud lingering in our room: vomit. Pure vomit. Disgusting. Where did it come from? Not me, not him, for sure. It took us a while to detect the spring: a Ginkgo fruit! Ripe, incredibly healthy, incredibly stinking. The Ginkgo tree is called „Duck Feet“ as far as I remember, in Japanese, because the leaves look like. Why do I tell you this story? I have no idea. Today was the first half-sunny day in an endless row of grey heavy dark days. I go nuts here :-O Berlin stinks but is a healthy alternative maybe. For now.

Giant Sand

I think I can tell it right now even if it’s some more days to years end, this was the best concert of the year.

The LIDOin Belin-Kreuzberg hosted Giant Sand. “What is essential for music is the lower part of the whole body“ said Howe Gelb in the end of the concert and even if I don’t quote it 100%ly right right right right now (2 o’clock morning, 4 or 5 Astrabeers inside) I say I totally agree. And disagree because I love my brain and its vibes (upper part!) but it leads too long and far away reminding me (plus the 20 understanders) that I bet on the wrong horse 5 years ago … and again it leads me somewhere else (highways!) and back to the concert … dream audience! The place is gold, the time was more than right (Berliners! Need! Warm! Music! Now! Especially! With! Hot! Vibes! Inside!) I felt that each and everybody was there totally absorbing the music with an open heart. I never before experienced a concert before in my life with so much testosterone around me and I enjoyed my stay being not the oldest person around because the musiclovers started at the age of 50. Or 40. I felt young. Maybe I erase everything written here tomorrow.

Anyways.

2 Stars

Sunday night on my way to the best Pizzeria in town (Il Casolare, Grimmstr. 30) I saw two very big stars in the sky, one above the other, really fat, more like planets. I mean, stars are planets anyway, what a beautiful constellation, Andreas, stargazer, can you blog me a comment and tell me who they were???

Workshop Last Day

Mission possible. More Super 8 makers & lovers!
Thanks Tsveta, Hans, Nick, Mathijs, Mariska, Britt, Judith, Matt, you were great!
To be continued …

This is Mathijs dumping an underwater camera and attracting ducks!!!!! Which was by the way a totally hard job because they somehow were afraid of the camera and instinctively felt it … We had to throw a lot of bread pieces (btw nederlandse supermarket bread is incredibly soft and sandwichfriendly but that is another story) and when the seagulls communicated that the area was safe then the ducks came … slooooowly ….
Filming needs patience but it’s always worth it.

This is Mariska and Britt checking a freshly processed color Ekta film!!

Rotterdam Worm Workshop Day 3

Wow, that was an intense day 😉
Filming paperships, swans from underwater, burning tea-saucers, sofa patterns, bridges, workers, seagulls. And it was also a darkroom day, spiraling film into Russian tanks, diving in chemicals, the magic moment when a film sees for the first time the projector light: blurring night lights (the magic B!!), snow traces, backwards walking sign-seekers, living trousers, subway lights, scary lamps … and more.
To be continued!

Snow and Music

Second Workshop day – out door experiences! 4 groups on the tracks and traces of coincidence, finding things and filming their trip. To be processed tomorrow …
I went with Esther, walking. It snowed. At one corner we were attracted by kitschy organ music (Holland clichee 🙂 and found a half covered organ from at least 2 centuries ago playing joyfully for itself.
What will the others have found? Was coincidence playing with them? We’ll see …

Tar and Feathers

The Worm isn’t only an inviter of short film makers but also a host of illustrious events such as tonight a bunch of guys presenting the Cassette Culture of the ex GDR (release of book+DVD) – very fascinating insight in the 70s and 80s underground of East German music.

And then, featherlike snow outside, warm synthesizers and red wine inside, there was Tarwater playing.

Somehow makes we want to be a hunter and collector of weird sounds. I’m quite sure that we’re going to set up a super 8 wabi-sabi band here on Monday …

Rotterdam Workshop Day 1

Yesterday it started to storm really heavily and today it was all fresh and cold and we had an amazing light outside, very melodramatic. Perfect for the first day of Wabi-Sabi-Filming!

My students are cool, the place is great, the weather plays with us, the first black+white processing made the first group film a masterpiece! More to follow. Tomorrow we will have some outdoor experiments, challenge coincidence to take us on a trip through Rotterdam. I’ll be back!!!

I’m in Rotterdam!

On my way do Rotterdam yesterday (first plane then train no boat so far) something really funny happened … there was a young man on the train looking for the toilet and he mistook the emergency break for the toilet door handle. He just pulled it, it went all smoothe, almost like in slow motion, far too easy for an emergency brake in my opinion. The train slowed down and me and my fellow travellers burst into laughter realizing what happened. The young man just stood there, fully ashamed, and then came another friendly young man, obviously an employee, checking what had happened, he saw the desaster, said „don’t do it again“ with a smile and the train continued its way. A great example how to solve problems of misbehavior!