Berlin/NY film series -- Brutalität in St ein + Berlin Babylon

18 January 2008, 6:30pm Tafel Hall
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place between Bleecker + w 3rd
FREE

Part of the Berlin/NY film series curated by Beth Stryker + Prem Krishnamurthy

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About Brutalität in St ein (Brutality in St one) 1960,
West Germany, black and white, 12 minutes
Directors: Alexander Kluge and Peter Schamoni

German Alexander Kluge’s first film examines the Nazi system through an analysis of its architecture. Nuremberg’s Party Congress Hall, visited a quarter of a century after Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, sits forsaken and vacant. Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer’s designs, conceived as manifestations of ideology, are critically re-framed. Compelled by a mandate to never forget, the film calls to task National Socialism’s past.

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About Berlin Babylon
2001, Germany, black and white/color, 88 minutes
Director: Hubertus Siegert
German with English subtitles

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, huge sections of the city were left an urban void. These empty spaces became sites of imagination for massive building projects, both utopian and commercial in nature. For over four years in the 90s, director Hubertus Siegert followed architecture in the city, documenting the construction of Potsdamer Platz, the now-complete Lehrter Central Station, the government quarter, and the area around Alexanderplatz. The film features interviews with architects, planners, and politicians who were instrumental in Berlin’s new construction, including Rem Koolhaas, Josef P. Kleihues, Renzo Piano, Hans Stimman, and I.M. Pei. The pioneering West Berlin industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten (whose name means “Collapsing New Buildings”) composed the film’s original soundtrack.

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29 January 2008, 6:30pm Tafel Hall
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place between Bleecker + w 3rd
FREE
To be announced

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About the Berlin/NY film room

January 4 – 29, 2008, South Gallery
The Berlin-New York Dialogues Film Room presents a cinematic exchange between the two cities, exhibiting works by New York artists who have engaged with the Berlin cityscape through the medium of film over the last four decades. Despite the temporal separation of the films on display, they share a common attention to the incongruities that persist in Berlin—in the city’s absences, memories, and border zones. The artists exhibited in the Film Room neither record Berlin through traditional documentary means nor attempt to unravel the mythologies built up around the city. Instead they offer idiosyncratic and experimental takes on Berlin, through the lens of New York.

Includes films by Gordon Matta-Clark, Ken Kobland, Jack Waters, and Matthew Buckingham.