Zero Hour: The First Days of New Berlin

Berlin, in times of freedom, has always been a haven for artists, outsiders, and freethinkers. But Berlin's freedom sometimes turns on a dime. The barriers that separated East Germany from West Germany fell on November 9, 1989, allowing freedom of movement between the previously-segregated sectors of Berlin for the first time since 1961. However, the technical reunification of the two nations was only accomplished a year later. Meanwhile, a group of young anarchists leapt to fill the political power vacuum in Berlin. They began by taking over an abandoned apartment building.   

They appropriated the five-story building, 47 Schreiner Street, and, in so doing, sparked a chain reaction across the city. Throughout 1990, DJs, artists and wannabe artists, middle-class students, activist filmmakers, clubbers, musicians, and other free spirits would occupy hundreds of apartment buildings, vacant shops, shuttered warehouses, and long-forgotten subterranean vaults. They came from East and West Germany, as well as from across Europe and beyond, to initiate Berlin’s rebirth as a cosmopolitan center after decades of reclusion. The Iron Curtain’s breach and Communism’s demise unleashed a groundswell of utopian energy and DIY zeal, most powerfully focused in the occupied spaces of East Berlin’s inner city districts, such as Friedrichshain. One couldn’t have known it at the time, but this ethos would infuse Berlin for years to come and does even today, earning Germany’s capital a reputation as one of Europe’s hippest metropolises.

In late 1989 and 1990 I watched East Berlin’s transformation through the lens of the 47 Schreiner Street squatters. I was twenty-something myself, a novice journalist living between Budapest and Berlin during the year of tumult. The Wall’s breach ushered in an exhilarating period of people power, improvisation, and revelry, which I both chronicled and took part in.

The anarchists were active both before and after that year, but for a brief space in time were ascendant in Berlin. Read that little-known chapter in history at the Boston Review.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Unknown)


Comments (0)

whomever this Ricardo director is, sign me up for a fan! If he can do this with 5k imagine a real 50 million for a budget. I'd back him if I had that kind of money.
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Anyone know what camera he's using? Would like to get the same effect without the Digital Camera look. Hope he's not using a RED. Those are too expensive
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Touching on what Ric said:

Meanwhile the SciFi Channel (I refuse to call it by it's new name) continues to spend gobs of money to produce spectacularly bad movies with cheesy effects.

The producers of these shows claim that the special effects eat up their budget and my question is why?
Maybe they're hiring the wrong people? Just saying.
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I would rather pay to see a movie directed by this guy, all with actors I have never heard of, than another over priced peice of crap from Michael Bay.
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Plot holes.

1. If this guy can perform telekinesis on this level, why go to the trouble and danger of throwing objects AT the droidy things, why not just throw the droidy things etc.

2. Assuming the droidy things are droids, are we to believe they can't, using a big ass fully automatic weapon, at close range, not even manage one hit.

3. If we say that the guy's powers also allow him to evade bullets, without watching them, why bother running.

Too much suspension of disbelief here. Fancy effects, well shot perhaps, but story silly.
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And also, the guy in the walking tank thing had no problem with blowing away some random guy who shouted at him and posed no possible danger, but when the raven guy comes out, that same tank doesn't dare shoot at him - even though other units have clearly been trying to gun him down so it's not like there could have been any pressing need to catch him alive.
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Wow, if this were real I would love to watch this in theaters. Seems much better than the typical cookie cutter hollywood crap that keeps coming out...
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