night figures
Who is sitting next to you in the cinema
Updated: 09/01/2023, 05:00 | Reading time: 4 minutes
Dieter Puhl worked for the homeless in Berlin for more than 30 years. In addition to social issues, he also addresses aging in his column.
Photo: Reto Klar / FUNKE Photo Services
Columnist Dieter Puhl has recently been spending time in the cinema and with old films. It’s amazing who comes to watch.
“I thought you’d been dead for 20 years!” That wasn’t particularly charming of me, but at least I was being honest. But he wasn’t upset at all. I hadn’t heard from him for a long time, and I didn’t even know him personally, only from the media, from magazines, from the evening news. He used to be a cult in Berlin, every cinema freak knew him well. “Well then, write that I rose from the dead,” he replied, laughing mischievously. Place: The Eva-Lichtspiele in Wilmersdorf a few days ago. An encounter with the film director Lothar Lambert and other interesting people and bizarre types.
That had a lot to do with coincidence. My girlfriend and I went on a tour together with my Vespa on Sunday, when the weather was perfect. We took a break at the ice cream parlor in Monheim, I haven’t been there for years. First tip for today: Also a good store.
But this isn’t supposed to be a guide to cafes or ice cream flavors today. By chance we strolled past the “Eva”, I’ve probably been a guest there in 1976, a great, big traditional cinema.
You can read more columns by Dieter Puhl here.
Going to the movies every day at 81
“EVA-Lichtspiele” – advertises the cinema invitingly. We looked at the showcases, some films we knew, others we considered. I was magically drawn to the advertisement for “The Old German Film” every Wednesday at 3:45 p.m. Titles like “Alarm auf Station III, (D 1939)” with Gustav Fröhlich and Kirsten Heiberg or “Zwei Welten (D 1939/40), director: Gustaf Gründgens, music: Michael Jary”. It wasn’t quite my time, I was born in 1957. Some names, like Erik Ode, born in 1910, also tell you something.
“Who’s looking at this? centenarians? Nazis? Or crazy people?” I’m a curious person. Wednesday came, I feared for a moment that I would be alone in the cinema. My astonishment increased when I saw many people, some engrossed in the notices on the showcases. They were older, some well into their 80s. A compliment: there were real guys there! “I don’t have a TV, but I go to the cinema twice a week,” the man was 83. An 81-year-old said he went to cinemas every day. There you can also look at “olle Kamellen”.
A couple from Chicago own their own movie theater
But there were younger people too. The woman has been coming regularly for 24 years. She is 48 today and is therefore almost the “baked fish” in the group. “The first few years I came with my aunt, who has unfortunately passed away in the meantime”. That guests of the cinema two years ago collected for a new curtain – an episode on the side. A couple from Chicago, both 35 years old, had the longest journey. You have your own cinema there for 35mm films. Nothing surprised me anymore. There were 48 paying guests that day. On even better ones it should even be 100, I found out.
At the small bistro tables there were freshly baked cakes. I was touched, where is there something like that? It was an extremely interesting afternoon. A special art form, a different experience, it was slower, did me good, I liked music and singing, unfamiliar editing and dramaturgy, stars that had almost been forgotten. There is almost always an introduction before the film!
Incidentally, in 1939 my father was 18 years old. Back then, the cinema in Posen in the country was far away for him, and a short time later he was already a soldier. There was already much talk of camaraderie in the film, of men having to do their duty. If I understand the time and my parents better, I can also track myself more closely. That’s still interesting at my age. I’ll be back.
And maybe in the future, after going to the cinema, I’ll join the group that goes to the Serbs or Italians afterwards. I think Frank is there too. He has a cinema museum on Schönleinstrasse. I will visit him there too.
2023-09-01 04:28:59
#sitting #cinema
