Search
Film/Video

The palace as a film subject - three documentary films from 1989, 1991 and 2005


{{currentEvent.start_hour}} – {{currentEvent.end | time_en}}

Past events
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('DD') }}
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('MMM') }}
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('YYYY') }}
free admission
German
Ground Floor, Hall 2
Belongs to: Transform!, Blown Away: The Palace of the Republic
This event has already taken place.
free admission
 ,
Register Book a ticket Canceled

On the theme weekend “Transform!”, the Humboldt Forum will be showing a total of six documentary films over two days that take a closer look at the social upheaval of 1989/90. The two days will focus on different topics.

Saturday is dedicated to the Palace of the Republic as a place of remembrance. Based on this, three different points in the history of the Palace will be presented on film. Firstly, as the venue for the 40th anniversary celebrations, the building will become an important station in the Peaceful Revolution. Secondly, they can encounter the building in 1991, when it stood like a time capsule in the center of Berlin, which the new government did not quite know what to do with. Thirdly, they can get to know the building after the asbestos was removed, when it was used by artists and revisited by many old acquaintances. All three moments mark a break in the relatively short but extremely eventful history of the building.

On Sunday, 6 October, the film program will focus on the political transformation of the GDR and the preparation and implementation of reunification. Many of the decisions that influenced the lives of the then 16 million inhabitants of the GDR were made in the Volkskammersaal of the Palace of the Republic. The documentary films are intended to shed light on the decisions and compromises that were made in favor of rapid accession to the FRG and how these affected the lives of the former GDR population. On three levels, the documentaries show examples of how reunification took shape – politically, economically and privately.

Curated and hosted by Dominique Falentin

Film programme Saturday

11:00–11:30 am

Makulatur 7/10/89 (1989, 22:45 min.) 

The film Makulatur 7/10/89 deals with the 40th anniversary of the Republic on October 7, 1989, which was a decisive turning point in the Peaceful Revolution and in which the Palast played a special role as the location of the ceremony. Kerstin Süske, a 23-year-old employee of the DEFA documentary film studio at the time, set off with some friends from the film school without a filming permit. The result was film material that captured the tensions between the celebrations and the rebellion among the people in a subtle and authentic way. The film group thus succeeded in capturing the ambivalence of a society in upheaval – compressed into just one day.

Director: Kerstin Süske

Camera: Uwe Mann, Aicke Fricke

Editor: Götz Filenius

Consultant: Günter Jordan

Production: Defa-Studio für Dokumentarfilme (Babelsberg), Film and Television Academy of the GDR

 

read more read less
11:30 am–12:15 pm

Der Hausmeister und sein Palast (1991, 44:47 min.)

The documentary Der Hausmeister und sein Palast (the janitor and his palace) is a melancholy but also tongue-in-cheek look at the Palast der Republik and one of its last employees still working in 1991, the janitor Fred Bartz.

He is busy mucking out and maintaining the building, which had been closed a year earlier, a task that seems pointless from today’s perspective. He has worked there since the Palace of the Republic was built, for a total of 17 years. And he talks with pride about his work there and about the good days of the building. At the same time, he is full of doubts and fears – about his own future and that of his palace. Because with each new day, it becomes more questionable whether the former splendor of the GDR will have a chance of survival in a reunified Germany.

Directed by Arpad Bondy and Margit Knapp, produced on behalf of Süddeutscher Rundfunk Stuttgart

The screening will be followed by a discussion with the two directors Apard Bondy and Margit Knapp.

 

read more read less
12:15–12:30 pm

Follop-up discussion with the directors Árpád Bondy and Margit Knapp

12:30–13:20 pm

Goldstaub (2005/2019, 51:07 min.)

Gesine Danckwart and Sven Düfer developed a multi-part video installation called Goldstaub (gold dust) for the Volkspalast 2005, which was viewed by countless visitors over a period of months. The conversations with contemporary witnesses against the backdrop of the gigantic ruins that have been scraped bare have become even more explosive today – as the ruins of the palace are no longer there as a bridge of remembrance. We spoke to employees, artists, politicians and visitors. Many of them were committed to the modified preservation of the building. This remontage of the video installation is a multi-layered portrait of the Palast and its protagonists, a reflection on responsibilities and the GDR, and a film about what it takes to remember.

Installation 2005: Gesine Danckwart / Sven Düfer

Remontage 2019: Gesine Danckwart

Editing: Deborah Uhde

The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director Gesine Danckwart.

read more read less
1:20–1:45 pm

Follow-up discussion “Goldstaub” with the director Gesine Danckwart and farewell


The curator

Dominique Falentin has been working at the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss since mid-2022. She is part of the curatorial exhibition team Blown Away: The Palace of the Republicand the associated program team. She is an art historian and has been in Berlin since 2012. She studied at Freie Universität, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Technische Universität Berlin. In 2019, she wrote her master’s thesis on the Palace of the Republic in the culture of remembrance and analyzed the topic on the basis of exhibitions which been showed in 2019.

related

part of
Stay up to date.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Programme overview