The first impression: amazement. It’s amazing that something like this is still produced and broadcast on television. A documentary series about Berlin, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the referendum on the expropriation of Vonovia in 2021. Extensively researched in the moving image archives, not the usual boring ready-made kit of well-known motifs that the broadcasters consider emblematic and which only documents their lack of visual imagination. Five episodes whose titles describe a development: “Summer of Anarchy”, “Megalomania”, “Crash”, “Poor, but Sexy!”, “The City as Prey”. A chronicle of decline that begins with ruins and is about ruin, about living and living in the metropolis, urban dreams and nightmares, East-West tensions and why Berlin became the way it is today. And how much of a beginning there was after the fall of the Berlin Wall!
Peter Pear
Editor in the features section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.
This is “Capital B – Who owns Berlin?” Directed and written by Florian Opitz, who has made himself known through woke political documentaries. At the beginning there is a rapping opening credits, breathlessly mounted, which hints at what awaits you. Below that is “Black to Blue” by Peter Fox: “Good morning Berlin / You can be so ugly / So dirty and gray / You can be so beautifully terrible”.
2023-10-01 05:42:58
#Documentary #series #Capital #owns #Berlin
