Everything We Want – by Beatrice Möller
Berlin documentary filmmaker, Beatrice Möller touched on several cultural nerves in her new film Everything We Want. Born in 1979 in Düsseldorf and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, she made her first documentary in 2003, entitled Omulaule heißt Schwarz (Omulaule means black), followed by Shalom Salam (2006) and Shosholoza Express (2010), which documents a train ride through South Africa and the experience of Apartheid.
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De-constructing Patriarchy… in Hollywood
Towards the end of 2012 a few mainstream films were released that mark a new direction in gender dynamics on-screen. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock (2012), and the HBO production of Philip Kaufman’s Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) are all untraditional bio-pics about famous men, whose wives are presented as braver, stronger, wiser human beings, who upstage their husbands behind the scenes.
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Kids Are Worth It – Barbara Coloroso
Barbara Coloroso is the author of Kids Are Worth It! Raising Resilient, Responsible, Compassionate Kids (2010). Her book is a great guide to understanding all kinds of family dynamics, not only essential for future and current parents, but for anyone who ever wondered why we are the way we are, and how we pass it on from generation to generation. Here are some of her insights.
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Detropia – by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
After the decline of the auto-manufacturing industry in Detroit, the city has shrunk due to the massive exodus of the upper-middle class population and businesses, and has been transformed into an urban void, similar to that of Berlin in the early 1990s, shortly after the fall of the Wall. Similarly to Berlin, artists, musicians, and other creative young people began moving into the open spaces and (re)creating creative communities and subcultures in the midst of the urban ruins.
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“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” (Albert Einstein)
“We learn by doing. There is no other way.” (John Holt)
“Curiosity does no less than devotion pilgrims make.” (Abraham Kaley)
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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – by Aimee Bender
Aimee Bender‘s last book is a fascinating study of our underlying emotional worlds, often unbeknown to ourselves and the people closest to us, which her female protagonist, Rose Edelstein, can taste in people’s cooking. This premise allows for interesting contemplations on relationships, especially with her mother, who, as in many traditional families, is the primary cook in the family.
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What most people don’t know about LOVE
Over the last decade, the feminist cultural critic, bell hooks, conducted very thorough research on love, covering all areas of the topic, starting from the need of a shared definition, to providing clarity on confusions about love in all our relationships, going back to our families of origin, and outlining the misconceptions and oppressions upheld by patriarchal structures and ideology. Her books change the way we view love as a society, and call for a more mindful love ethic.
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A Pace of Grace – by Linda Kavelin Popov
Linda Kavelin Popov is a psychotherapist based on Salt Spring Island, BC. Her second book, A Pace of Grace (2004), is part-autobiography, part guide-book to a physically, emotionally, and spiritually sustainable life. She challenges her readers to evaluate their lives.
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Solids and Liquids – A Cultural Assessment
Ever wonder why we seem to be living in an age with so little stability and security – whether it is job security, relationships, political or social security, or even a sense of solid identities? Or why we seem to be constantly running and racing and chasing and never really feel fully satisfied or sustained? Sociologist and cultural critic Zygmunt Bauman provides some theories in his books Liquid Modernity (2000), Liquid Love (2003), and Liquid Times (2007).
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One of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in a long time is Daniel J. Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music (2007). It covers a wide range of disciplines (neuroscience, psychology, musical theory) to explain the various processes that go on in our brain when we listen to music. Why do we really like certain types of music and completely dislike other types? Why does certain music touch us at an emotional level even more than language or poetry?
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President Bartlett (in staff meeting): Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. After, therefore because of it. What it means is one thing follows the other, therefore it was caused by the other. But it’s not always true, in fact, it’s hardly ever true. We did not lose Texas because of the hat joke. Do you know when we lost Texas?
CJ: When you learned to speak Latin?
President Bartlett: Go figure.
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Woody Allen’s latest film is a lovely homage to, and summary of all the fascinating highlights of Paris in the 1920s. Te film is fill of literary, artistic and cinematic references. All the performances are great, but in his 10 minutes on screen, Adrien Brody, as Salvador Dali, almost steals the whole movie.
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How to Become a Berliner – New Berlin Fiction
The term used to express this anxiety in light of looming change is “gentrification” – how does one raise the wages, generate profits, and provide for the young and the old, without sacrificing freedoms and comforts? This is a question for future economists and sociologists. In the meantime, Berlin is caught somewhere between nostalgia and exhilarating progress. And it’s a fascinating journey.
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Haunted Sites: Forgotten Places in Berlin and Surroundings
Arno Specht’s book Geisterstätten: Vergessene Orte in Berlin und Umgebung (Haunted Sites: Forgotten Places in Berlin and Surroundings, Jaron Verlag, 2010) is a “search for traces and ruins of Berlin’s youngest history … a history and a past that has not been worked over in museums, where the history of the buildings and their inhabitants is narrated, but rather it is a history of coincidental traces, un-arranged and un-curated.” (p.5)
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Street Art in Berlin – Kai Jakob
Street Art in Berlin (Version 4.0) is the fourth edition of the collection of Berlin street art photographs by the freelance photographer Kai Jakob. Capturing a temporal artistic medium, the book presents the work of Berlin street artists such as: XOOOOX (working with stencils in Berlin since 2001), El Bocho (the creator of “Little Lucy”), Just (since 1999), Emess, Dolk, Linda’s Ex, Alias, Tower, SP 38.
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As the first floor of Dussmann Kultur-Kaufhaus dedicated to literature on Berlin expands with more and more Berlin novels and non-fiction books (now it also has a whole new, two-level store-addition of English books), and as more and more people feel the desire and necessity to write about Berlin, I try to follow their creations and publications in order to trace what they have to say about this city. Here are some of the new trends and works I’ve found:
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Wilfried Nelles – Men, Women, and Love
Wilfried Nelles‘ talk, entitled “Men, women, and love. From childish entitlements to mature needs” addressed some pertinent problematics in today’s relationships: what are the implications when love is the sole element for relationships? What is a mature relationship?Why are there so many problems with relationships?
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East/West narratives – It’s raining Generations
Jana Hensel‘s generational memoir, After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life That Came Next. Transl. by Jefferson Chase. New York: Public Affairs, 2004 (Zonenkinder, 2002) describes the experiences of the “last generation of GRD kids” growing up in reunified Berlin. Full of insightful observations about a whole generation whose childhood took place in a country that no longer exists, and adult years were spent listening, learning, and adapting to West-German (pop-)culture, styles, and vernacular.
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The Berlin premiere of a new documentary about Susan Sontag: Thinker and Diva (dir. Birgitta Ashoff, ARTE, 2010, 52min) took place at the Literaturhaus Berlin with the film maker in attendance. The director met with Susan Sontag before her death in New York in 2003, and then went back again after her death in 2010 to interview people who were close to her.
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Annett Gröschner – Living and Writing Berlin
In her 2008 book Parzelle Paradis: Berliner Geschichten (Lot Paradise: Berlin Stories) Annett Gröschner‘s protagonist moves through the different neighbourhoods of Berlin and watches the people, the buildings, and spaces, and the words that make up the many stories of the city.
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Mauerpark, a documentary film by Dennis Karsten about Berlin’s most-visited Sunday hang-out, premiered last week at the Achtung Berlin Film Festival of new films about, and produced in Berlin. Filmed in the summer of 2009, with a Panasonic Gh1 camera that allows to selectively leave certain parts of the frame out of focus, Karsten’s film is a beautiful homage to Berlin’s subculture and its eccentric, creative, and talented outsiders.
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Larry D. Rosen – Rewired
Does technology affect the way we think? The way we see and speak, the way we read and write, the way we make sense of the world and communicate? Many recent publications deal with these and similar questions, most notably, perhaps, the question we all want to have answered: how does the internet affect our brain? Larry D. Rosen examines the generational differences of technology consumption and new patterns of learning, multitasking, and communicating in a world redefined by Web 2.0.
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Michael Nast – The Better Berliner
Berlin’s My Space blogging celebrity, Michael Nast made his name writing about life in Berlin, first in blog-form, then as audio book Berliner Schule (2008), and then a collection of amusing dating adventures and stories in the life of a thirty-something Berliner and the people he encounters in Der bessere Berliner (2009). Nast is currently writing his next Berlin novel.
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Happiness Research
Sooner or later we all stumble over questions of happiness. What exactly is it? What makes us happy? Why is it so elusive? Usually, when things are going well, we tend to take it for granted; when things are not going so well, we begin our research and analysis, and design our own happiness projects.
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Miranda: Do you have a rolling pin?
Carrie: On me?
Miranda: In your kitchen.
Carrie: Are you kidding me, I use my oven for storage!
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Drifting along the orbits without contact 
L’Eclisse, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni (1962). “It is the things, objects, and materials that have weight today.” (Michelangelo Antonioni) The Eclipse is a study of relationships. Just as the occasional and temporary overlapping of the moon and the sun along the earth’s orbit, the characters drift in and out of each other’s lives with the same randomness and recklessness they enter and exit the frame of Antonioni’s camera. Seemingly chaotic, but actually tied to specific patterns of behavior, the characters interact with each other in what appears to be a sporadic manner.
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What is it about a girl named Alice, who goes on an adventure, that inspires our collective imagination? Alice! A childish story take, /And, with a gentle hand, /Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined / In Memory’s mystic band, / Like pilgrim’s wither’d wreath of flowers / Pluck’d in a far-off land. (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p.8)
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Michiko Kakutani, the reviewer for The New York Times, claims that Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go (2005) is “a meditation on mortality” (quoted on the book cover). Originally published in 2005, it was recently released as a feature starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield (who gives another stunning performance after his powerful portrayal of Eduardo Saverin, Mark Zuckerberg’s only real friend in The Social Network), and Keira Knightley.
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Berlin Ghosts and Other Inhabitants: New Berlin Fiction
Many foreigners populating the streets of Berlin, and particularly Prenzlauer Berg, have begun writing about their adopted city, thereby adding to the already-existing, rich, local Berlin cultural discourse, and creating a relatively new trend of expat-fiction set in Berlin. Some of them manage to find something interesting to say about Berlin, others not so much.
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One is not born a woman, one becomes one. Simone de Beauvoir was right. And Coco Chanel showed us how it’s done. With style. Simone de Beauvoir was the first feminist to offer a sustained critique of fashion and femininity, commenting on the “woman of elegance” that “What she treasures is herself adorned, and not the objects that adorn her” (Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949, p.545).
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California Dreamin’ – Cinephilia and Cinephobia in L.A.
L.A. is one of those cities uncannily recognizable from many films and TV shows. Walking down Broad Walk on Venice Beach or turning a corner downtown, you walk onto a set you have seen before. “How can you visit NY City without that experience being informed by all the New York Cities you know from movies, TV shows and news reports? We experience the world through a kind of filter of preconceptions and expectations fabricated in advance by a culture swamped by images.” (Jean Baudrillard)
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East-West Discourse in Transition
In May 2006, just a few months before the World Cup in Berlin, I asked Ingo Schulze a question after his book reading (from his Neue Leben, 2005) in Kreutzberg: “What do you think of the “new” Germany?” not even suspecting that we were speaking different discourses.
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Berlin is the city of cinephilia. One constantly encounters what Christian Keathley describes as the “cinephiliac moments” throughout Berlin’s topography. Walking around the ruin of Anhalter Bahnhof (now a ruin of a former train station), one catches a glimpse of the old bunker (today used as Das Gruselkabinet – haunted house) and immediately sees the inscription: „Wer Bunker baut, wirft Bomben“ (those who build bunkers, throw bombs), and thinks of Peter Falk, walking across the vast void (now filled with a soccer field) in Wim Wenders’ Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, 1987).
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Kat Sark
