week nine

week nine was the short week for thanksgiving break!
we had no classes or readings for eric this week and only thorsten's class & excursion happened.

in this classes that we did have, we discussed the "final solution" and wannsee conference in pretty great detail. nathan and frodo gave their presentation, and our excursion out to wannsee was very pleasant besides the obvious considering how those crazy nazi men could think of this "solution".

because we did not have much classwork this week, i had a lot of time to think about my film.
at the beginning of this week, i simply decided that i absolutely hated my idea for the part of the film. it had no great plot/ filler to the story and i was really unsatisfied with what i had. for a few days, i didn't even want to think about it because it depressed me so much about my story.

on tuesday afternoon before class, i played a part for the josh-kelly-sean group's film, which is a kind of "love affair" with the city of berlin. we filmed a lot near the victory tower/tier garten area, then moved on to film more at the brandenburg gate. at first i thought it was silly that i was working on someone else's group's film and neglecting my own film so much, and then i realized that being around people like josh and kelly who are really into filming things was really, really refreshing. it definitely gave me the fresh breath of air i needed to start thinking about my own film again.
after some hesitation, i decided to tell them that i was completely stuck on my film after awhile and they gave me some really great ideas about what direction i should take my story in. i've never been a great fiction writer (always preferring to discuss real events) so writing this story had been so hard to do. however kelly, who apparently is a good fiction-type writer was full of ideas for me and i felt so happy to hear her fresh ideas. i spent the next 3-4 hours writing like crazy with tons of inspiration flowing and feeling fabulous about the future of my part of the film.

i have already set time to begin filming, and i am so excited to start with my part.

week eight

week eight was like the others i suppose, an interesting week and a bit of a different week for me. i came home early from prague on monday to meet my dad and his wife for dinner that night. it was so nice to see my dad after not seeing him for over two years. the next day i showed him around the main touristy berlin sights (unter den linden, potsdamer platz, topagraphy of terror) which i think he enjoyed.
after he left i just kind of was left in a funk for a few days for some reason and didn't feel much like going out in the city. i feel like this is also partly because i had realized that our program has just reached the "only one month left" mark, which makes me a bit sad since i love this city so much and could definitely see myself just staying here.

in thorsten's class tuesday we discussed daniel libeskind's design of the jewish museum for a portion of the class, but we also delved more into the subject that chris and i presented at saschenhausen that last friday-- the question of how one goes about memorializing something and controversies surrounding memorializing. i was really glad that we went back to touch on this subject because i didn't get to speak hardly at all about this at our presentation.

this week was a good one for our film group because i felt like a lot got filmed and talked about. the workshop on friday was particularly successful in helping each other understand more about our group goals, where we are heading with our filming, and what our game plan is for the next week or so.

as it is right now, most of the time usually one person accompanies the person whose turn it is to film their part of the film. i went along with ed and joel to film a lot of footage for ed's quarter of the film, but felt like i wasn't being a huge help to the process because both ed and joel already knew what they were doing and there wasn't much else i could do. i feel like just two people filming at a time is a good enough system because it really only takes one person to film and the other to be in the film. on the other hand, i really appreciate the other ideas from my group members, and this is why i wouldn't mind if everyone wanted to be there when i film my part.
i feel that our group is working really well together so far. we are all really open-minded about eachothers' ideas and fortunately there has been zero conflict so far. if anything, i feel like i would like to do more when it comes to the editing process. joel is very good with editing and really likes doing it, so it is very easy to have him quickly edit what needs to be fixed. hopefully in the future, i will be able to learn from him so i can get a feel for this editing software as well.

i really enjoyed this week's film, lola rennt-- specifically how the director shows prominent areas of berlin as the back-drop for lola's drama. it reminded me of how i would like to make sure to show berlin in a way that could only be seen as "the streets of berlin" for example. i don't think this will be hard since there will be a lot of u-bahn type shots but hopefully i can capture the same sort of "berlin spirit" that is captured in lola rennt.

week seven

week seven was a big one for me! we had just returned from our class trip to hamburg/luebeck and it was time for me to crack down on my project for thorsten's class that i was to present on friday with chris h.

my project that i wrote my paper on (and was to present) was comparing the class readings on saschenhausen concentration camp to texts written by two different authors (isabella engelhardt and harold marcuse) about dachau concentration camp and the way in which the memorials there differ from other camps. also, these texts bring up "big" questions about memorialization (which apparently, microsoft word says is not a real word?) in ways that i have never thought of before and which continue to baffle me.
some of these questions that are raised are so difficult that i feel like they can't be definitively answered, such as "who has the power to create memorials?" and "what makes a memorial successful?". both authors have similar arguments that differ only slightly.

chris and i spent lots of time going back and forth from the topographie bibliothek at potsdammer platz to re-check out our two books because they only let you take them for one night and you have to bring them back early the next morning. later, i felt thankful they at least lend them for one night since the jewish museum library doesn't lend out at all!
i felt really happy with the paper i had written for the class and i tried to examine the arguments about memorialization the best i could. it is possibly the most difficult subject i have written a paper on before because there is almost no right answer to these questions!

in eric's class this week we watched the film, die mauer.
my first impression was that i wasn't so entranced by this film than i was when i watched wings of desire. however, i feel like seeing these pieces of the wall and everywhere that the director/camera takes you through out the film was a point of view that really made me feel like i could have been there and talking with the people that he talked with during the film. it was very real and raw and showed real people in a really unabashed way. for example, the older woman at the beginning that tells the japanese tourists to stop chiseling at the wall so she can hear what is going on. the little boys talking with the director about the pieces of wall they are selling. the director/camera taking the viewer to a new years' party at the brandenburg tor that really makes us feel like we are there. the film leaves in parts that normally would be taken out by other directors but we get the opportunity to see it (like the newscaster practicing his "spiel" several times before it is taped), and this makes the film really real, and therefore likeable to me.
at times the footage was a bit slow, but still kind of beautiful and easy to appreciate from a filmmaker point of view.

as for my group film, progress was slow this week due to every single one of my free hours being put into reading and writing for thorsten's class project. as i write this now, we have plans to film tomorrow. i feel excited about our film, yet a bit apprehensive because it is going to be difficult to get our completely different stories to tie together in a thoughtful manner. i am always trying to think of ways it could that would be thought-provoking to the viewer. as for my own portion of the film, i have planned out mostly all of what i am going to do and what the camera will do but i am a bit stuck on how it will end, again, in a manner that will be thoughtful to the viewer. this aspect is in my opinion one of the most important when i watch films so i would love to have my portion at the very least be one that really makes the viewer think a bit and say, "........ huh". i feel that when we are filming, our group will be able to collaborate together as we make our film and bounce ideas off each other to create the best possible film that we can collectively make.

week five and six

During week five, we focused on different eras of German history in both Thorsten’s and Eric’s classes.
In Thorsten’s class, we largely focused on the readings about the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe which gave me more of a background on the history of the actual site that later became the memorial. It was interesting to me because I had visited the memorial last year when I visited Berlin for a few days but really knew nothing about it. I knew what it was a memorial to, but for a site so large it had little explanation or plaques to read so I couldn’t really get a good feeling about how I should be “experiencing” the monument unless there was a German present who could explain it to me (which there was). Revisiting the site for Thorsten’s excursion later that week made the experience a lot more meaningful because of the readings. Also, I would say that I valued the time inside the small museum underneath the memorial a lot more than even the memorial itself. The museum displayed a very detailed history of how the Holocaust came to be paired with really provocative photos from private collections. Unfortunately we did not get to spend very much time there, but the next site was almost equally as interesting—a photo exhibition about the Jewish Memorial.
This exhibition touched on a topic that I have been thinking about a lot myself between readings of Brian Ladd and other assigned readings that deal with the city and memory: As a citizen of a city, how does one treat a memorial as part of the city landscape? The city is a public place for everyone to go about their daily lives in. So where does an extremely large memorial taking up the space of several city blocks fit in? The photo exhibition showed pictures of Berliners and tourists lounging around on the blocks during their lunch breaks or just enjoying the sun, using the area of the memorial like any other area of the city. Some people believe that these memorials should be treated with the most respect and reverence—but what if the memorial is so large and has very little explanation that it actually is a memorial??? I guess these are the kinds of questions we try to investigate during our class discussions.

In Eric’s class this week, we watched the film “Berliner Romanze”, a very sweet little love story from the 1950’s…. at least, that’s what I thought right after watching it. After doing the readings about Wolfgang Kohlhaase/the film and talking to my roommates about it, I realized that this film was absolutely saturated in symbolism. I didn’t even think about the fact that the film was made with a completely East Berlin bias while watching it, so it blew my mind when we discussed all the little eastern biases together in class.
So far through the quarter, I’ve been learning to read a little more into the film while I’m watching and not after. So often, I find myself getting sucked into the story too much to realize little things that are pretty important to the social-cultural context of when the film was made or who made it.


Week six really marked a point in this study abroad for me in which I realized how precious my time here in Berlin is. I had taken a weekend trip to Franconia/Northern Bavaria that weekend so I was actively thinking about everything I have to accomplish over the next few weeks here. My assignment for Thorsten’s class was always on my mind in that I needed to start working on it as soon as possible to present to the class at the end of week seven.
This week in Thorsten’s classes, we focused in on the Topography of Terror with both our readings and our weekly excursion there. I had visited it last year on my “Berlin whirlwind” of museum-going but this year there were English translations, which obviously greatly helped my comprehension of the exhibit. What I found very interesting was that the Topography featured detailed biographies of each of the Nazi party leaders, including what happened to them after April 1945 and what they ended up doing for the rest of their lives.

This week in my film group, our goal was to research or plan out different shots and what exactly the plot will be for each of our four portions of the film. I made a sheet full of different shots I wanted to make sure that we filmed, and also ideas for where I wanted my plot to go. I really wanted my part of the film to make you think, but so far I have found it to be pretty difficult to think of something that I am satisfied enough with. I figure that during the filming of my portion, I will realize how best to end my story with the input from the rest of my group members. Next week we are planning to begin our filming with Ed’s portion. His film involves him actually getting a tattoo which he wants to do soon, so it will be nice to get off to a good start with this.

In Eric’s class this week (Halloween night!) we all ate candy and cookies and watched the film “Wings of Desire”. I went into this film feeling pretty skeptical because other people who had seen it had said things like “weird”, “bizarre”, “long”, and other semi-negative adjectives such as these. Maybe I am just used to these “weird” films because I absolutely loved it.
I think it’s because I deeply feel for films that show just this raw emotion on the part of the characters. It makes you look at life and the people around you a little differently than before.
I felt the suffering of the random characters that you see once and then never see again. I felt the pain of Marion wanting someone to love and someone to love her. I felt Damiel’s longing to be human so he can feel, experience, and just be. When Peter Falk started talking to Damiel at the Imbiss, I felt some kind of hope. The man jumping off the building! The little boy feeling lonely and isolated from the other boys.
It really just is the kind of film that makes you feel what the characters feel. Even with the characters that we see once and never see again, I thought it was perfect to get a glimpse of all of these different kinds of Berliners and what they were going through in their lives.
The way that the city was portrayed in the film was absolutely beautiful. I don’t think I would have appreciated this as much if I was not in Berlin or had not lived there for a period of time. Images of the angles on the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church and the Victory Column made me think about these Berlin landscape icons in a different way from now on. The way in which the Berlin wall was portrayed in the film was like nothing else I had ever seen! Usually if the wall is pictured in a film, the entire story revolves around it but in this film, it was simply a fact—the wall is part of the landscape of the city that everyone is used to.
I was really excited to share thoughts on this film in class, but I honestly was bummed out that at least half of the class discussion revolved around an article written by a woman who did not like “Wings of Desire” because of its “obvious” (?) portrayal of male superiority and the dominance of the “white race”. This film does not have to do with either of these things, and I wished that didn’t have to spend a lot of time talking about one woman’s opinion instead of how beautiful this film was and the differences between this film and the ones we have seen in the past. I guess that race is an important issue to talk about but I felt another film may have been more appropriate in dealing with issues like these. To me, a story is a story and stories do not need to always be overanalyzed to death. Sometimes, films should just be taken for what they are.