People of the Twenty-First Century
16mm color 45 min 2007 , DVD 45 min 2007
Camera: Miriam Fassbender
Editing: Johannes Kochs
Sound: Romain Le Bras
Sound Mixing: Rainer Heesch
Directed by Johannes Kochs
Production: shorefilm
Sponsored by the Abteilung Stadtentwicklung, Amt für Planen und Vermessen, Fachbereich Stadtplanung (Division of urban development, office of planning and surveying, department of city planning)
Sponsored by the European Union, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the state of Berlin, as part of the Urban II program
Up until the collapse of Communism in 1989 Viktoriastadt-Lichtenberg was a district in the German Democratic Republic’s capital city, Berlin.
It subsequently attracted the interest of punks, squatters, and building speculators. The Senate decided to landmark the district and to declare
it a redevelopment area. As a result, financially favorable options made
it possible for residents, tradespeople, and artists to acquire property
in order to repair the ramshackle structural fabric of the district’s buildings. Johannes Kochs, autodidact and filmmaker, is one of these people. In his first full-length documentary film he introduces the district and shows what it looked like and what has become of it thus far.
His stylistic devices are older visual materials, personal statements, and still lifes of buildings, courtyards, and squares, shot in 16mm film.
He unearths the past in the present and vice versa.
Among those who have their say are the district chimney sweep and
the owner of a feather cleaners who grew up in the neighborhood.
The commentary supplied by a worker from the former tensioner
factory attests to the fact that people want good but cause evil,
recalling the Aristotelian principle of conversion and giving
indispensable relevance to the surrealist postulate of the unity of
art and life. Elsewhere we learn how a tree in bloom, surrounded by rubble and trash, reverses someone’s decision not to move to the
area. The humorous sketch likewise finds its place in this film,
in the form of a short scenario between employees and their boss. Arising from all these down-to-earth and subtle details, which the viewer is responsible for extracting, is the question: what is the
society of the future?
Karl Heil
16mm color 45 min 2007 , DVD 45 min 2007
Camera: Miriam Fassbender
Editing: Johannes Kochs
Sound: Romain Le Bras
Sound Mixing: Rainer Heesch
Directed by Johannes Kochs
Production: shorefilm
Sponsored by the Abteilung Stadtentwicklung, Amt für Planen und Vermessen, Fachbereich Stadtplanung (Division of urban development, office of planning and surveying, department of city planning)
Sponsored by the European Union, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the state of Berlin, as part of the Urban II program
Up until the collapse of Communism in 1989 Viktoriastadt-Lichtenberg was a district in the German Democratic Republic’s capital city, Berlin.
It subsequently attracted the interest of punks, squatters, and building speculators. The Senate decided to landmark the district and to declare
it a redevelopment area. As a result, financially favorable options made
it possible for residents, tradespeople, and artists to acquire property
in order to repair the ramshackle structural fabric of the district’s buildings. Johannes Kochs, autodidact and filmmaker, is one of these people. In his first full-length documentary film he introduces the district and shows what it looked like and what has become of it thus far.
His stylistic devices are older visual materials, personal statements, and still lifes of buildings, courtyards, and squares, shot in 16mm film.
He unearths the past in the present and vice versa.
Among those who have their say are the district chimney sweep and
the owner of a feather cleaners who grew up in the neighborhood.
The commentary supplied by a worker from the former tensioner
factory attests to the fact that people want good but cause evil,
recalling the Aristotelian principle of conversion and giving
indispensable relevance to the surrealist postulate of the unity of
art and life. Elsewhere we learn how a tree in bloom, surrounded by rubble and trash, reverses someone’s decision not to move to the
area. The humorous sketch likewise finds its place in this film,
in the form of a short scenario between employees and their boss. Arising from all these down-to-earth and subtle details, which the viewer is responsible for extracting, is the question: what is the
society of the future?
Karl Heil
