Week Five

To prepare for the exciting guest speaker in a few weeks, we viewed the East German film A Berlin Romance. I loved this film simply because it was such a modest film. It didn’t try to be anything other than a romantic comedy. It wasn’t too over the top in its cheesiness. It was funny and sweet and incredibly politically loaded. For the time, it was probably subtle in its political slant. But, because hindsight is 20/20, and we’re sort of in a setting where we’re looking for it, its GDR politics are quite evident. There were, of course, the two representative characters of East and West, and the love story between the two of them. And, this would have been like any other romance film, perhaps even with a Romeo and Juliet hint to it. But, the story is specifically guided by the narrator. His very tone of voice, although not exactly like propaganda films, has a tone of authority. And, his comments also help to slant the viewer’s assessment of the characters. In this sense, this film as a kind of propaganda film (with specific ideas and beliefs trying to be expressed and proven to be right), I think it is far more successful. Just as fairytales, fables and myths, I feel that the use of story can be far more powerful in learning something or trying to convince someone of an idea.
In last week’s workshop, we ran our new documentary idea by Eric to see what suggestions he had. I was getting a little nervous because the idea seemed a little too one-dimensional. How interesting would filming us meeting people be? Discussing the new idea with him definitely helped make it even more interesting. The finalized idea is (to take from the original plan to show the relationship between us and the city) we will each define a certain goal for ourselves regarding what we want to get out of our time in Berlin. And, we’ll use talking head, confessional type interviews with ourselves throughout the rest of the term to document the exploration of those goals. Eric mentioned (and I agree) that this idea will also allow each of our personalities to come our on screen and each goal is pretty different, so it will hopefully be interesting. Dung’s goal is to learn enough German while he’s here to write a poem in German and to give a reading of it by the end of the quarter. Josh expressed interest in doing a city-scape type film, and include footage he shot back in Seattle. And, Sean wants to explore the food culture in Berlin. All of the ideas are really different, but I think we can make it work together.
For me, I had been struggling with defining exactly what I wanted to do. And, literally today, on my train ride to Torún, Poland, I realized what I wanted to do. I was thinking about how before my trip I had interviewed a few of my friends and my sister. I asked them for predictions as to what they think I would experience while in Berlin. It wasn’t really serious at all. I had planned on making a video blog while I was here. I had even started editing the Pre-Berlin blog, with the prediction interviews, but the blog never actually took off. But, I really like how the interviews turned out. They’re pretty funny and I had been talking about using it somehow in the film. So, as I was thinking about what I actually had to work with, I realized that I could use these interviews as a sort of jumping off point. I noticed that in all of the predictions, there was a general stereotype of what many people think is the “German or Berlin experience,” which of course include beer, diskotheks and sauerkraut. But, what really is the German experience? It can’t just be that. From there, I can show the stereotypical German experience, but from my perspective—my German experience. In my mini-plan so far, I figure I can also try to interview other people in the program, and, perhaps, even some Berliners too. It’s still a rough idea, but I feel like I at least have something to work with now.