Kinematek

Hey. It’s me, A. I’ve been enlisted to scribble out a few thoughts about the next couple series of events from our trip to Berlin. I'm told that this is a "conversational" blog. So I'll spare my normal professorial pretensions. And, if you want, I totally understand if you just want to skip my entries entirely. No harm.

I’m starting with this one, and maybe I’ll post another one tonight. I’ll start with our first trip to the newly reconstructed space-age shopping center known as the Sony Center at Potzdamer Platz.

Potzdamer Platz is a terrifically interesting place- this is a central commercial zone in Berlin, and has been reconstructed in steel and glass like the most spacey-aged places in the world.

In the 20s and 30s, Potzdamer Platz was the busiest commercial center in Berlin, populated with shops, restaurants, cafes, all that; and the bustling throngs of Wiemar flappers and gents in tightly tailored tuxedos. During the war, the intersection was all but destroyed in the bombings, and was bisected by the Soviets and Allies. It quickly became an urban wasteland, split by the border between the stagnant forces, and was a wide death strip between the east and west walls.

This was actually the first place that D and I saw any of the wall and discovered the cobblestone strip that runs throughout Berlin marking the exact location of the wall. The wall sections at Potzdamer Platz aren’t all that interesting. They basically have been placed directly on the cobblestones as a demonstration of their placement, but they clearly have been moved there, mostly for a temporary exhibition and photo-op for tourists [oddly, we didn't take photos...].

Potzdamer Platz, all shiny and glittery, is dominated by the insane semi-open coporate-shopping center known as the Sony Center [take a guess at who won naming rights there, kids!]. This was designed in the 90s after reunification by several known architects, among them Renzo Piano, who designed the Centre Pompidou here in gay Paree. Now, I really like the Centre Pompidou. The basic concept of Renzo and the other postmodern architects from the mid 20th-current 21st century period [that’s official historical period definition, btw] is a semi-playful explosion and deconstruction of the building materials itself. So, everything that would normally be inside the building is now outside, and you can see it. That’s why the outside of Centre Pompidou shows its ducts. All in a row. [heh heh. Ouch- D, don’t hit over bad jokes!]

The Sony Center is basically a gigantic chunk of glass that is supposed to look “Cool.” I guess it does. It has a big building that is curved glass on one side, and a perfectly straight side on the other, big whoop. It’s most interesting feature is the “Covered” courtyard in the center, which houses the restaurants, movie theatre [more on the movies we saw in Berlin later], and a rather dull animated water fountain. The cover itself is basically a gigantic umbrella hovering overhead, whose central shaft culminates in a huge pointed arrow, and looks rather dangerous in the case of suddenly shifting geography.



So. D and I want here not to see the umbrella and fear for our lives, or to have our love for Renzo Piano’s work smushed in front of us [D has, btw, seen Renzo’s mysterious labs in Paris. She’s walked past, and wondered “what the hell is the deal with the office that just makes ugly balsa wood models”]. We went to meet Svanur, a fellow cinephile, to check out the Berlin Cinemateque and Film Museum, or, Deutsche Kinemathek Museum Für Film und Fernsehen.

I don’t know if this was a hilight on D’s list, but German film history is astounding and interesting, so I was all jazzed, and so was Svanur. We were particularly excited about the early silent cinema, the Nazi propaganda room, and the post-war cinema periods [yeah, I know that basically covers every period of cinema in Germany. Don’t be rash. This is for your edification, not analysis]. We don’t really have any photos of the Museum. No kameras allowed in the Kinematek.

The exhibit itself starts bizarrely and confusingly: TVs showing clips from the great German silents jut out from the mirrored walls- it’s like you’re walking through a hall of mirrors, but with Nosferatu jumping after you. Pretty fantastic.


Then, some exhibits on early film technology, early working cameras, some of which worked, etc. I got to explain to Svanur the radness of a very early ratcheting gear mechanism for camera exposure instead of the currently used all-pervasive claw-method used today. Looked like they were on to something to me! As we moved through, we saw some great stills and props from such works as Metropolis and M, some of our favorite Fritz Lang films. Things are looking good so far.

Metropolis:


Then, a gem: a sound-recording of very very early Marlene Dietrich test film. Very beautiful and amazing to see, a true treasure.



However, immediately following that, we went through about a billion more things of Marlene Dietrich. Yowza. I really like her, she’s great. But... yikes. We saw her luggage [all 12 huge trunks stamped with all the places she's been. I wonder if they float like in Joe vs. The Volcano...?], the mild-to-extremely racially insensitive “mascots” or dolls she carried with her everywhere, letters from Hemingway, her dresses, more dresses, shoes, hats, feathers...

Pretty Marlene intensive.

After wading through all of that glamour, we finally found ourselves in the second most anticipated room: The Nazi-era propaganda room. Many of us know and recognize Leni Reifenstahl and her great Nazi propaganda films, primarily Triumph of the Will. But the Nazis had nationalized the UFO [not the space ship, the film production company] and used it to crank out Triumph along with hundreds of other “commercial” films for their cause. Included in some of the clips were some very anti-Semitic narratives, a few bizarre rip-offs of American films, and my favorite, a German produced, German language, [literally] Nazi Western, filmed in early 1940 just outside of Los Angeles [yikes!]

This room was fascinating and utterly perpexing, and its net result was a mind-numbing confusion. As with most things Nazi-reconcilliation, the great problem is one of presentation. The Kinematek chose a method of presentation that was supposed to be “inclusive” and “interactive.” The room itself is entirely encased and covered in zinc panels, and everything must be opened in order to see it. So, you basically walk into a completely blank-but-shiny-room, and you have to open a bunch of drawers on the walls. As soon as you do open the drawers, a movie plays some bizarre Nazi stereotype, and you’re shouted at with angry German.
A bit tough to digest.

On to the next room, the one we’re all really jazzed about, the Post-War Room!

Except.... the door is locked! And there’s a sign on it! Svanur reads this and tells us that the Post war room, and the rest of the museum, is closed for renovation. Damnit.

After we got shut out of the exhibit we wanted to see, we went to the TV side of the museum, where the hilight was a room showing TV through the ages in Germany. This was an astounding room, a huge kaleidoscopic myriad grid of hilarious and poignant German television from the East and West in a beautifully rendered way. It starts as a few clips shown against a wall, which is itself in another hall of mirrors, so it seems as though it goes forever [what’s with Germans and infinite-mirrors?]. As the decades progress, the hilarious and fascinating TV increases in volume, color, and absurdity, until it is an endless grid of non-stop nonsense, bursting forth forever. Probably better if you A) know German, and B) have seen any of the shows. But it was still spectacular and hilarious for us.

So, that was the Kinematek and the Potzdamer Platz Sony Center. If you like Marlene Dietrick... I mean, really really really like her, I mean, like, you would-stalk-her-if-she-weren’t-long-time-gone liked, then you should definitely make the trip.

I'll be back next with photos we actually took, including the adorable Knut!

Yours-
A.

Why we missed last week's Star Ac...

We are having a bit of trouble this week adjusting to the cold and the work, mostly because we just got back around midnight Monday from our birthday trip to BERLIN!!! It was such an awesome trip that it will most likely take several blog posts to recount in words and images all the awesomeness of the city, and our trip. Mostly it was great because many friends showed us around some places we would never have found ourselves with our fairly staid guidebooks. We walked miles and miles, leading to a potentially broken foot, and colds for both of us, and we stayed out until nearly 4 am one night, which neither of us has done in many, many years!

I should just start writing about the trip though, before you get totally bored with my summary. On the flight home, I started writing a letter to my parents, but it was already 5 pages long when we landed, and my hand was so tired, and my handwriting so unreadable, and I only got through something like a third of the action, that I decided to just post it here on the blog for everyone to read. I have also asked A. to contribute some commentary. I apologize to those readers who know and love Berlin and will find this blog post so dull... but the rest of us have been so clueless to its charms!

Dear Mums and Dadums,

I am on the flight back from Berlin, so I thought this would be a perfect time to write you a letter, since I actually have something interesting to talk about.

Berlin is awesome! It clearly is the city in Europe that is the most interesting at the moment. I think it's partly to do with the history there, but also because it's incredibly cheap and has attracted a young artistic and fun crowd that really loves the city and is happy to show it off.

My German is ridiculously bad. Most of the time when I would try to have a basic conversation, half the words would be Dutch, or a random mixture of Dutch, German, and English. But that is not a problem at all in Berlin! In Paris, if you even ask if someone speaks English, you automatically lose several notches in their esteem. In Berlin, people seemed more than willing to help us out, and, even if they thought it, they typically didn't show that they thought we were totally stupid. They also (in nearly 90% of our experience) spoke unbelievably fluent English. The only bad experience was the taxi driver who lectured me for most of the ride home when I misstated the name of the street we were going to, and then proceeded to explain why what I said was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. I knew enough German to pick that much up. Unfortunately that experience has not ameliorated my irrational fear of taxis.

The best thing about the trip, though, was meeting up with my friends Svanur and Naomi (and meeting a bunch of her awesome friends - yay German Fulbrighters!) who took us to some wacky places we would never have found by ourselves. But we will describe some of those moments later.

We stayed in a hotel on the Western side of the city, in a chic neighborhood near the Tiergarten (a huge wooded park in the center of Berlin). The first night we were walking around in the rain and came upon this church that looked nearly destroyed, except that there were lights all over the inside (thanks to the Festival of Lights that was going on last week. Oddly there were also a lot of lasers in the sky). As you can see, instead of windows, there are just holes and the steeple/bell tower thingy is half gone. It is actually the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, a monument of the Hohenzollern imperial dynasty that was mostly destroyed by a bombing raid in 1943, but was left mostly as it was (not torn down or rebuilt) as a peace memorial. After they war, they built a chapel and bell tower on either side that are almost entirely made of blue stained glass.





There is also inside a 'Coventry Cross,' which is a small cross made from nails found in the rubble of Coventry Cathedral. We actually saw another one in the church near the Berlin Wall Memorial, so there must be a few of them floating around. My guess is that Dresden has at least one.


While much of that area was totally destroyed, it later became the center of West Berlin so most of the buildings there date from the early 1950s and aren't all that interesting.

The day after we arrived, I made poor A. walk all the way across the city just to prove to some random unnamed detractor that Berlin was a walkable city. It kind of is. It's probably about as big as Paris in terms of distance across, but walking across all of Paris isn't all that much fun either (sorry to everyone who I made do that). But we walked through the Tiergarten, which was planted after WWII in a natural forest way (since they didn't have money to make fancy French manicured gardens, I heard) and is a fantastic park. Apparently in summer, lots of American tourists are shocked when they accidentally happen on the nude section - that would be fun to see!

The Tiergarten has a huge boulevard running through it that leads to the Brandenburg Gate. In the middle of the park is the Victory Column (celebrating originally German victories in the various Prussian Wars of the 19th century) with the big gold statue of the winged victory that you might remember from the German film Wings of Desire that we watched several years ago; the angel in the film sits on top of the column and watches over the city. It is also where Barack Obama spoke last summer and drew a crowd of 200,000 (and according to my journalist friends, Berliners never turn out like that!).

Further on in the park, we came to the Soviet War Memorial, which is interesting mostly because of the sculpture of the Soviet soldier with his hand reaching down, and for its location. We learned a day after on our Cold War walking tour that Stalin supposedly demanded this memorial be constructed on this location because it was the spot where the last Soviet soldier died in the liberation of Berlin. Other theories are that Stalin wanted a foothold in the Allied sectors, and more interestingly, because this location was supposed to be the main square of Hitler and Albert Speer's architectural vision of "Germania" - the capital city of the mythic and victorious Third Reich. Apparently it never would have worked out anyway because Speer's "neo-classical totalitarian" style buildings would have sunk into the silty soil.



Anyway, the monument is pretty interesting, although not as interesting as the other Soviet memorial in the Eastern side, which we saw Monday morning, and that I will talk about later.

From there the Reichstag is very close, although we didn't go in because the line was too long, and the dome was closed for repairs. And the big draw there is, of course, the Brandenburg Gate. It's an interesting place. Now it is also the location of a brand new American Embassy (and French embassy too!) and several other buildings in the current architectural style (anything post-reunification is made of glass and steel). Apparently the Americans demanded a 100 meter security perimeter around the embassy (which is literally the building right next to the gate) and some hilarious person in the German government replied, "Would you like us to move the gate, or just tear it down?" Ha ha! In front of the gate, you can pay a lot of money to get your picture taken with some fake soldiers.



If you turn around, you can also see the window that the Hotel Adlon where Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of a few years ago - also an important monument! And there is now a Starbucks in the building that was apparently the Berlin office of IG Farben (who invented Zyklon-B, the product used in the gas chambers) during the Nazi years. Something ironic there perhaps...


Almost everything immediately east of where the wall stood is brand new. South of the Brandenburg Gate (and bordering the American Embassy) is the new memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is (if I remember correctly) the only major Holocaust memorial in Berlin. There is also a Jewish museum, but we were actually quite surprised with how little information it had on the Holocaust. But back to the monument - it's hundreds of slabs of concrete that are placed at different heights and when you walk inside it, it really echoes and feels like a strange sort of prison. It's quite haunting.



And south of that is Potsdamer Platz, which was one of the busiest intersections in Europe before WWII, was totally destroyed in WWII, and was part of the "death strip" between the two Berlin Walls (yes there were two!) from 1961 to 1989. Now it is home to something that looks like the Berlin version of Times Square. There's lots of glass of course.

The Cold War walking tour we did was really interesting. We walked along the edges of the wall, which is marked throughout the city by a row of brown cobblestones - you see them everywhere once you start to look for them. We also went through some ghost train stations on underground lines that crossed into DDR territory, but weren't allowed to stop - they were kind of spooky. Then we went up north to Bernauerstrasse where there is a large section of the wall still remaining (although it's clear people keep chipping more and more bits off, so it may not be there for long!) and an interesting museum. These are mostly pictures of the wall in that location.





We also talked a lot about lots of different escape attempts and how the Stasi cracked down on the East Berliners, in particular with the increasing militarization of the area between the walls and or course their insane surveillance. (We also went to a small Stasi museum in the center of town, and later on Monday to the main Stasi museum in the old office complex, which I will talk more about later!).

We walked a lot around the Eastern part of the city, which is actually called "Mitte" or middle (since it's in the middle - so methodical and logical!). There are tons of shops and restaurants and bars in this section, and is really a fun place to be. But we will talk more about our adventures there in future posts.

There are also lots more pictures posted on my Picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/dfontaine20/BerlinOctober2008

Stay tuned for: a night out in a DDR ballroom, Stasi surveillance gadgets, and KNUT!!!

J'adore Julien Doré

Somehow or another, I managed to miss out on the Julien Doré phenomenon here in France. He won the Nouvelle Star competition (the American Idol of France) when I did not yet live here, and his album came out the same day I flew back to the United States in June. That being said, I'm pretty much jumping on the Julien Doré bandwagon.

I first came across these videos when A. showed them to me a few weeks ago, and I think they're awesome. It's the same song, and essentially the same video, but still all strange and awesome. Then Julien showed up on Star Academy last night (yes, it is a different American Idol-like show, but one that forces the candidates to live isolated in a beautiful house down the street from the National Archives in Paris, where they are filmed 24/7 - kind of like a combo of AI and Big Brother). He was, as A. put it, "a charming scamp." I told him, "He's totally cute, I so get it!" Then after he sang, he managed to annoy the crap out of the stupid, primping, conceited host, which was pretty cool too.

After a bit of research into his background, I learned that he won Nouvelle Star with an excellent and dour cover of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" (why is that song so much better when anyone but Britney sings it?) and has helped bring about the revival of the ukulele in France, and we all know how I feel about ukuleles... and banjos... (learning to play the banjo is near the top of my list of things I need to do before I die in the scary Swiss particle accelerator).

I'm sure he will be coming soon to a Rolling Stone near you, but until then... enjoy some Julien for yourselves! I like the second video best (and there are others available on you tube or similar sites), but it makes more sense if you see the first one.

Julien Doré - Les Limites
envoyé par Rasoukine62

Clip Les Limites Julien Doré (1)
envoyé par madmoiZelle

Uggh!

I am once again in grant proposal hell. I know that many of you are in similar positions, or the even harder position of applying for jobs and things, so I won't spend all my time complaining. I just want to say that I hate this time of year. The city of Paris is beautiful and I should get out and see it before all the leaves fall off the trees, but alas I spend my weekdays hiding in the underground library and my weekends freaking out about grant proposals and when I will actually be able to begin writing my dissertation.

On the good side, I wrote the first two sentences of my dissertation yesterday! Of course they were a historiographical overview of a couple of books written by former students of our lovely department, but hey - you've got to start somewhere, right? I had hoped to write another two sentences or so today, but I got sucked into the Flight of the Conchords and the actual reading of documents. Unfortunately I am somehow starting with the hardest chapter to write, which is the opposite of what you are apparently supposed to do. I also already submitted a conference proposal for a paper that will come out of this chapter for next spring, so now I have to write something before I leave for North Africa. Yikes!

I went to the marché biologique (in other words, the very expensive market) down the street this morning and bought a 3 euro mango from an Algerian guy who told me that "Barack Obama is my friend, and George Bush is my enemy." I said "Me too!" and then he shook my hand and left me to pay for my incredibly expensive mango (but not as expensive as the 3 euro bell pepper that somehow slipped in there).

Tomorrow I am going to once again tackle the autobiographical essay for the AAUW. I have given up on it more times than I will admit, but I have to do it tomorrow because on Tuesday we are headed to Berlin for a week to see Knut the polar bear, and I won't have too much time when we get back.

Ok enough blah blahing from me. I am going to go drink a lot of wine and pretend I don't have to get up tomorrow morning.

A. is secretly a hipster; and the most important invention in human history

Well. I am currently dealing with a bit of pain in my neck and head thanks to the fact that I am unable to photocopy or photograph any of the documents that I really really need from any of the archives/libraries I am working in. This means that I must type everything out, and with the addition of all the French accent marks, it makes my arms really hurt. This causes me to have very bad posture in the library (no help from the horrible chairs either) and I think I pinched a nerve in my neck that is sending pain shooting into my skull.

Fortunately A. has made me feel better by entertaining me with internet videos he has found. I have also found a few on my own, thanks to my French popular cultural discoveries on the television program Star Academy this week. A. has promised to do a guest blog post on an amusing incident he witnessed outside our apartment window last Saturday night... but so far it has not appeared. I am blackmailing him with this blog title. But he also deserves it because he is strangely enchanted with the music videos of the French hipster star Yelle. This video is one she sang with a French comedian named Fatal Bazooka. The title of the song in French is "Parle à ma main" or "Talk to the hand", a phrase which has apparently just arrived on the continent (only 10 or so years late). It is very strange, but oddly catchy. Plus the dance moves are a total hit in our household.



In addition, I give you this video. It should, in my opinion, be nominated for some sort of Nobel Prize. Perhaps the Nobel Prize of awesomeness! The "instrument" is, by the way, called the KazooKeylele.



Enjoy! I'll try to find something amusing to write about this weekend. Once I am done spending a tragic amount of time working on futile grant proposals, that is!

Beeez

Part of why I love living in Paris so much is that the Parisians may be the ultimate cityfolk, but they never really reject the countryside. There are the markets everywhere and fresh cheeses and meats from the farms, and in some of the most elegant parks in Paris, there are orchards, and small private vegetable gardens and other lovely surprises.

We were somewhat mysteriously let in on a little Parisian secret this fall: there are a large amount of beehives kept by beekeepers in two parks in Paris. And for a weekend each fall, you can purchase the special honey that they create. It is apparently quite famous honey, and it is only sold for these two weekends at little stands in the parks. We missed the sale at the Jardin du Luxembourg a few weeks ago because it slipped my mind. By the time we got there on the Sunday afternoon, it had been long gone. Apparently all the French senators line up early for the honey in the Luxembourg gardens (where the French senate is housed in Marie de Medici's palace) to give away as Christmas gifts.

Fortunately being the enterprising young man that he is on the internets, A. found that they were also selling honey this weekend in the Parc George Brassens in the 15th, way south in the city (and according to Wikipedia, built on the site of a former slaughterhouse). So we hopped on the metro fairly early this chilly (but sunny!) morning to go find the honey. And we got some! So some of you lucky readers will get the luxury of mysterious Parisian honey from the George Brassens bees. It has a very interesting flavor - not at all like cheap honey you buy in the store. You can taste the environment in it, like herbs and flowers and things. They were also selling honey vinegar and mustard and other delectable treats made with the honey. I imagine this honey would make a killer honey-mustard sauce if mixed with a spicy Dijon mustard! Alas I cannot really try it as I live with the world's most fervent mustard hater.




After we got the honey, we took a turn around the park and discovered some other awesome scenes. I heard the sounds of a marching band across the way, and we discovered them camped out in the orchard, playing and partaking of some grapes that had just been harvested off the vines. A little ways further we found a lovely pond and some interesting transportation solutions.






Paris parks must be some of the nicest in the world, and even the tiny ones have their own character. I'm on a quest to see more of them, especially the shining star: the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Until then, enjoy some pictures of the Park Georges Brassens and a bit of autumn color on the wall of an apartment building near the park.