B Movie: Lust and Sound in West Berlin
Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck & Heiko Lange | Germany | 2015
Rating: R16 Sex scenes, violence, drug use & offensive language Runtime: 92 minutes
| Direction, Production, Writing: Jörg A. Hoppe, Heiko Lange, Klaus Maeck | Editor: Alexander von Sturmfeder Music score: Micha Adam, Mark Reede |
One of the iconic scenes in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987) takes place in a bar where Australian troubadour Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are playing a gig – the familiar jangling motifs of their 1986 song “The Carny” rings out. Cave was drawn to Berlin during the post-punk period of the late 1970s and 80s, saying “In Berlin, there are the most beautiful women, the best drugs, and a lot of people who give artists the respect they deserve”.
While the Cave gig is a pivotal scene in Wenders’ film, it could have taken place on any given night in West Berlin. The city is a shambolic mecca of noise and experimentation, encapsulated by raconteurs like Mark Reeder, a musician and producer from Manchester, and the film’s focal point.
Reeder’s relocation in 1979 to Berlin enabled UK bands such as Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, and New Order to play to new audiences in the German city, with Reeder soon becoming the German representative for Factory Records.
Painstakingly assembled through never-before-seen archival footage, B-Movie shows the slippery counterculture underbelly of Berlin that drew artists, musicians and iconoclasts into its heady orbit. With the Wall slicing through the city, the hedonism of West Berlin is cranked up to 11 compared to the Soviet regime of the East, and the contrast is not lost on the inhabitants of the city. B-Movie courses through many of the moments that make this time and place so important in the history of popular culture.
This is a film for those who were there – or those that wish they were!
Presented in cooperation with Goethe-Institut. Members free – public by koha at the door.