ND – Deutsches Neuland
Germany | 2004 | Documentary | 65 min | DVCPro50 16:9
A massive building that looks like a ship run aground extends along the Strasse der Pariser Kommune in Berlin’s district of Friedrichshain. Once the GDR’s Media Palace, the remaining neon signs on the roof have been switched off long ago. They form the letters NEUES DEUTSCHLAND (New Germany), name of the states official newspaper. Inside, time appears to be at a standstill. A porter left over from another time oversees the lobby with its smell of linoleum and its out of order paternoster rotary lift that somehow seems to be continuously carrying up the ghosts of a lively past.
This documentary is a portrait of an uncanny place suspended in time where the GDR continues to dwell in odds and ends from another era. The past sheds its yellow neon light on those who have built their new little kingdoms in the vacated niches. No longer editorial offices of the Neues Deutschland daily paper, but a rather bizarre melange of German realities, past and present. A world apart, threatened to vanish under the unified German efforts of renovation.
Directors: François Rossier, Sandra Prechtel
Writers: François Rossier, Sandra Prechtel
Cinematographer: Peter Badel
Editors: François Rossier, Kolin Schult
Sound: Sirko Löschner, Jan Weymann
Commissioning editor: Dr. Beate Schönfeldt (MDR)
Production manager: Sabina Engel
Producer: Andrea Ufer
Channel: MDR
– DOK Leipzig, 2004
– Achtung Berlin – New Berlin Film Award, 2004
– Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, 2004
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