Berlin/nilreB: Tourist Journal

Die da druben und Das da unter alles

1988, 19 min, color, sound

Writes Kobland, "It's a letter to Berlin; a graveyard meditation (with The Wall as its marker). I spent eight months in Berlin (West) as a DAAD fellow; a true guest worker, in 1986-87. I wanted to respond in some way to this strange place. I wanted to describe the landscape of Cold War Berlin, which immediately means dichotomy and invoking the imaginary; the landscape that isn't there as well as the one that is. The only spoken text in the tape are a segment of the John F. Kennedy 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech, given at the Berlin Wall in 1962, and fragments of radio news reports, from both DDR and Bundesrepublik broadcasts."

Additional Photography: Nancy Campbell. Archival Material: "Berlin: Symphony of a Great City," Walter Ruttman, 1927; "John F. Kennedy in Berlin," John F. Kennedy Library, 1963. CMX Editor: Rick Feist/The Standby Program at MegaMedia.