Haphazard travels of Sirman Deville across the Sprachraum

[niminy-piminy]

2007 poll No10:
EXTERNAL MUTILATION • FREMDVERSTÜMMELUNG (Christoph Schlingensief)

First installed in the Zürcher Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich, Schlingensief’s Cross Mutilation (Querverstümmelung) presents a sketch of Schlingensief’s “theater of the future.” Through a series of projections, Schlingensief creates an immersive installation that repurposes and overwrites his own material. At the center of Cross Mutilation is his short film External Mutilation (2007), which calls to mind the work of Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren. Inspired by Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), the film documents an unrealized opera work by Schlingensief.

FREAX is an opera in two acts by Moritz Eggert with libreto by Hannah Dübgen.

no beauty without the wound.

what a luck that we have killed our children.

[niminy-piminy]

2007 poll rewatch:
ENERGIE! (Thorsten Fleisch)

https://vimeo.com/5034957

[niminy-piminy]

1934 poll No10:
THE PRODIGAL SON (Luis Trenker)
https://www.kinometer.com/?id=24402

it starts like a heimatfilm.
i.e. most of the men work as lumberjacks and whenever they notice a cute decent girl (who covers her hair with hijab) they stroke their mustaches (a gesture that in a pious society substitutes jerking).



however (as said before), the heroine of this film is a decent girl and thus her heart doesn't belong to any random lumberjack, but to a specific lumberjack called Tonio (staged by Luis Trenker).


however, an idyllic/bucolic love story can't unfold because capitalism steps in as a major cockblocker. instead of moving towards marital bed, Tonio dreams about migrating to the United States to seek sweatshop employment (his current jobs as a lumberjack and a trekking guide don't seem to him appealing enough).



after staying several months unemployed in NYC (and surviving by stealing milk from cats), capitalism finally offers him the opportunity to operate a drilling machine (sic!) and participate in erecting a skyscraper (sic!) as a substitute for his abandoned sex life.


it might seem (from all written above) this film is only silly.
but don't get misguided by my misinterpretations!
it is a well-crafted movie (with engaging storytelling schemes, charming masks, and occasionally breath-taking cinematography).
i will certainly place it in my ballot. (and also in Res.)





side note 1:
in 1934 Germany, daughters were posing to their fathers-sculptors with hammer corn and sickle!


side note 2:
in 1934 Germany, shouting "Ski Heil!" already sounded a bit like "Sieg Heil!"

[niminy-piminy]

1962 poll No11:
TECHNOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION (Edgar Reitz) ... yt=1961, databases=1962

https://youtu.be/RYsEGZssHf8

[niminy-piminy]

1962 poll No21:
5/62: PEOPLE LOOKING OUT OF THE WINDOW, TRASH, ETC. (Kurt Kren)

thus i reached my 1962 top20!
https://twitter.com/jirinvk/status/1463 ... 25512?s=20

[niminy-piminy]

1986 poll No15:
TAROT (Rudolf Thome)

- A crisis is a good sign as well. (pic 2 ↓)
- You have to suffer for art. (pic 3c ↓)

https://twitter.com/jirinvk/status/1476 ... 73637?s=20

1/ as already mentioned in another thread (viz viewtopic.php?p=36339#p36339 ) a weird role is played in this film by red Renault 4 (a type of car in which the dead body (assassinated by Red Brigades) of Aldo Moro was found in Rome, in 1978 — this assassination being depicted in THE MORO AFFAIR (1986), i.e. in the same year like the release of TAROT. initially, this reappearance of the red coffin/car might seem only like a random oddity. however, ultimately (if proceeding with watching TAROT), a newborn baby of the main heroine (owner of the car) gets feverish, is being carried to the hospital in the car, and still on the way (still in the car) dies (pics 4c 4d ↑↑)! two dead bodies found in the same type of car (of the same hue) in the cinema of 1986 seems already like a pattern and not a chance?!?!?! my ratio still tries to resist the interpretation Rudolf Thome is making some weird joke with this particular type of car but (as Aleister Crowley would say) i am perplexed! moreover, in one of the initial scenes of the film, the same heroine is placing a bouquet of wildflowers below a windshield wiper of the car. at first, it seems like a little romantic gesture but in retrospect, it can be viewed rather like a (premonitory) adorning of a coffin with mourning flowers (pic 4a ↑).

2/ another inanimate object that can be perceived as a strong character of the Tarot's tale is the mighty yellow countryside villa (the setting of the tale, pics 3b 3d ↑↑). i didn't notice this villa in any other film yet & i have no clue if anything disturbing happened inside in the past (in real) but i would not wonder if figuring out something alike in the future.

3/ to abandon the realm of implausible speculations and to re-embrace fact-based film-reviewing practice, gonna make two more points...

4/ all those who ever perceived Rudolf Thome as Rohmeresque storyteller will get proof of his affinity to Rohmer in this particular film because it has not only the (usual) Rohmer flavor but, in one of the scenes, characters are watching a film by Éric Rohmer (FULL MOON IN PARIS, 1984, pic 3a ↑).

5/ another matter of fact is that TAROT is a second loose adaptation of Goethe's "Elective Affinities" by Rudolf Thome — the first one was DIARY (1975). it is rather unusual the same director making an adaptation of the same book twice, but at least one can see Rudolf Thome was truly obsessing about the "elective affinities" type of narrative structure, and thus watching DIARY & TAROT seems like a compulsory task for any (eventual) Thomephile.

[sally]

oh sounds good, can you share? (if has subs)

[niminy-piminy]

yes, i can! (as Obama would say)

[niminy-piminy]

?

there!
for you and for anyone who wants to watch one more 1986 flick before the year poll's deadline — that will be announced by fireworks all-around the globe!

[sally]

thank you! (i think i must have the slowest internet in the world, says it's going to take 6+ hours to download, will probably have to wait till 2022 now!)

[niminy-piminy]

yw!

1986 poll No16:
BERLIN BLUE (Hartmut Jahn, Peter Wensierski)

The Berlin Wall as a surface reflecting art, activism, history and visions. A playful portrait.

https://twitter.com/jirinvk/status/1476 ... 91138?s=20

Far away from this joyful place,
time goes by and does not return.
Time goes by, not returning,
carrying away our affections.
Far away from this joyful place,
time goes by and does not return.

Warming, gentle breezes,
pour on us your caresses.
Warming, gentle breezes,
bestow on us your kisses.

[niminy-piminy]

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/08/fassbind ... my-faction

Fassbinder and the Red Army Faction
by MEAGAN DAY

...

Addicted to both work and cocaine, the quick-tempered and insatiable Fassbinder made more than forty feature films and television series and wrote or directed thirty plays in just fifteen years. Today, he’s not widely regarded as an explicitly political artist, since most of his output dealt with other subjects entirely. In his enormous body of work, Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day stands alone as a testament to the director’s cultivated literacy in socialist political ideas and his optimism that they might be of use in the hands of the German public — perhaps even that their aims might one day be realized.

But this optimism was short-lived. When Fassbinder’s work touched on left-wing politics in the years to come, his perspective tended to be either gloomy and dejected, as in Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975), or cutting and sardonic, as in The Third Generation (1979). These later films angered his leftist contemporaries, creating a rift that hadn’t healed by the time of his early death. The breach was so wide that, at one point, Fassbinder found himself at a screening on the receiving end of boos and jeers by radicals who denounced him as a reactionary, to which he allegedly replied, “All leftists are idiots.”

...

In August 1967, Fassbinder stumbled into an underground theater in Munich, established six months earlier as an art house showcasing work primarily by the Oberhausen group. Action-Theater, writes Fassbinder scholar Wallace Steadman Watson, was “fifty-nine chairs . . . und saloon tables in what one critic called a ‘gloomy dive.’” Under the creative direction of its founders, a married couple named Ursula Strätz and Horst Söhnlein, Action-Theater had been transformed into a venue for avant-garde live plays.

Fascinated, Fassbinder joined the loose collective and was quickly jockeying with Söhnlein for authority. It was at Action-Theater that he collided with the student movement, which at that time was reaching fever pitch in cities across West Germany. And it was at Action-Theater that he came to know a few of those who would push the movement into its next, more violent phase — including Söhnlein and his political friends, future RAF core members Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin.

...

A few months later, in April 1967, a group of anarchists led by the young Fritz Teufel were arrested with great fanfare for plotting to throw bombs at visiting US vice president Hubert Humphrey. When it was discovered that the “bombs” were actually just yogurt and flour, the press dubbed them the “Pudding Assassins.” Later, Teufel would gravitate to the RAF and engage in actual political violence. But for now, the incident only embarrassed the police and popularized the movement further. The youth of Germany were inclined to side with the pranksters and their leader, Teufel — which is the German word for “devil,” enhancing the general aura of mischief — over the clueless authorities.

In June 1967, matters became serious when a student named Benno Ohnesorg was killed by a police officer at a demonstration in West Berlin. A photograph of a young woman protestor kneeling over Ohnesorg’s body — strikingly similar to the iconic Kent State shooting photo from the United States a few years later — flooded the press, generating popular sympathy for the young dissidents. The student movement’s ranks swelled, and its protests increased in frequency and intensity. This was the political context in which young Fassbinder arrived at Action-Theater late that summer.

...

Director Klaus Lemke began work on a feature film, The Arsonists, inspired by the Frankfurt bombing, which centered on a band of left-wing terrorist youth looking glamorous in sultry makeup and leather jackets. Cinema student Holger Meins made an instructional film about how to fashion Molotov cocktails.

...

Sometime between the Springer play and the shuttering of Action-Theater, Fassbinder slipped off to Paris, where he was arrested during the cataclysmic youth revolt there — “whether as a participant or an observer,” Watson writes, “is not clear.” It was an apt metaphor for Fassbinder’s relationship to the Left for the remainder of his life and career.

...

Fassbinder’s Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven was released in 1975. It was quite plainly a film about the Left, and the Left hated it. Thomsen describes its reception this way:

The audience at the premiere consisted precisely of the groups at whom the film was aimed, that is, journalists and militant students. The atmosphere was so volatile that the film’s dialogue could not always be understood, and a planned discussion between Fassbinder and the audience was completely drowned out in abuse and insults. To the angry question, why the film only dealt with the idiots on the Left and not with its more constructive tendencies, Fassbinder replied bad-temperedly, “All leftists are idiots!” At that there was a deafening commotion in the auditorium, and the discussion had to be broken off.

...

Many on the West German left at the time thought that the director, who by then had become one of the most internationally celebrated figures in Germany, had abandoned them in his pessimism. But perhaps not. Rainer Werner Fassbinder died in 1982 at age thirty-seven from an overdose of cocaine and barbiturates. In his apartment, surrounding his body, were notes for a new film project: “Rosa L.,” about the life of the socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.

[niminy-piminy]

the first viewing of 2022...
OSKAR LANGENFELD 12x (Holger Meins, 1966)

- Shit... shit...
- Shit? What "shit"?
- Just say "Shit!" Curse "Shit!"
- Shit!
- Repeatedly.
- Shit!
- Look at the camera.
- Shit!

https://twitter.com/jirinvk/status/1477 ... 34080?s=20

https://retentionalfinitude.blogspot.co ... 2-mal.html

Before he took up armed struggle against the state as a member of the Red Army Faction and became an icon of the left by dying from a hunger strike while in prison, Holger Meins studied film at the Film Academy in Berlin, making films alongside Harun Farocki and Helke Sander. Yet his aesthetics and politics, cinematic protest and guerilla resistance, cannot be kept wholly apart. His most infamous film https://youtu.be/iczvwyzM_EQ details the making and use of a Molotov cocktail. And while underground with the RAF, Meins tricked a metal sculptor into producing functioning weapons as props for a film project, what Meins described as "a kind of revolutionary fiction." In the twelve brief chapters that compose the short film Oskar Langenfeld, Meins paints an unsparingly harsh portrait of his subject, an impoverished, aged man who attempts to maintain a dignified pose despite the humiliating power others hold over him, his miserable living conditions, and the uncontrollable coughing of his sickly body. Meins's film takes up an openly invasive perspective, pushing the viewer into an uncomfortable proximity with Langenfeld by showing intimate scenes such as his dressing or by regularly presenting extreme close-ups of his wrinkled face, even when mucus is apparent in his mouth. Meins also uses an extremely elliptical form of editing, jolting the viewer by abruptly starting and ending scenes. After mapping out the diminished, degraded scope of Langenfeld's existence, the film ends with Meins instructing Langenfeld, "Go on, say shit." Langenfeld then makes a number of attempts to satisfactorily express the dysphoria the filmmaker desires, to call the economic system that oppresses him what it is: "Shit."

[niminy-piminy]

watched two docs about Holger Meins...

ON HOLGER MEINS: AN ATTEMPT, OUR VIEW TODAY (Gerd Conradt, Hartmut Jahn, 1982)
STARBUCK HOLGER MEINS (Gerd Conradt, 2002)

https://twitter.com/jirinvk/status/1478 ... 49728?s=20

despite both docs have the same person in focus and occasionally use the same footage, both are still worth watching (in a way, they are complementary).
the first one is more experimental, Holger's father speaks extensively, film festival in Knokke 1967 is sumptuously featured, etc., etc.
the second one is more polished, Harun Farocki gets the word, Holger's "sisters in arms" are interviewed, Holger's paintings are displayed in detail, etc., etc., and those of you who recently discussed Moby Dick (in another thread) might be interested to hear the imprisoned RAF comrades started to refer to themselves at one point by nicks appropriated from this particular novel (pic 3 ↑) — Holger Meins being "Starbuck" (viz the title of the second doc).

Symbolism of Starbuck in Moby-Dick → https://study.com/academy/lesson/symbol ... -dick.html

[niminy-piminy]

due to being preoccupied with Holger Meins recently, i finally watched THE RED SHADOW (Dominik Graf, 2017) mentioned in another thread (one year & one month ago). viewtopic.php?p=25248#p25248

https://twitter.com/jirinvk/status/1478 ... 78884?s=20

unfortunately (fortunately???), my way of reasoning is utterly incompatible with the cop's rationale.
when cops weave their hypotheses exposing culprits, i just see stage magicians pulling rabbits out of their hats. #SpottingCriminalsLikePullingRabbitsOutOfTheHat
smuggling guns into the prison seems (to me) as a task far less difficult than following a storyline of a Kommissarfilm.
moreover, the cops in THE RED SHADOW speak in a cadence as if they would have the livestock auctioneers' background or as if THE RED SHADOW would be a remake of Werner Herzog's HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK... #HowMuchCoupCouldACopchuckChuck
Kommissarfilm is a genre that always disorients & alienates me. #IAmPerplexed

[...]

It only seems like magic because cops are so advanced in their psychological training, way ahead of the rest of us mere mortals who might feel uncertain about questions of character and action. Cops see right through that smoke screen and are expert in fereting out the real motivations behind the crimes and nailing the depraved criminals who commit them. Which is why we never have any social problems and can rest easy knowing peace will be upheld and justice will always prevail. Unless, of course, the lousy bureaucrats or mushy liberal types get involved.

[niminy-piminy]

being misunderstood by the law transgressing mortals might actually bother the cops as well.
guessing by the highly popular song (probably highly cherished by all the cops of the world) by "the police"...

Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh
Another lonely day, with no one here but me, oh
More loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah
A year has passed since I wrote my note
I should have known this right from the start
Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life
Or love can break your heart
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah
Oh, message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah
Walked out this morning, I don't believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone at being alone
Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I'll send an S.O.S to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, oh
Message in a bottle, yeah
Sending out an S.O.S
Sending out an S.O.S
Sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
Sending out an S.O.S
Sending out an S.O.S
Sending out an S.O.S
Sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S
I'm sending out an S.O.S

https://youtu.be/MbXWrmQW-OE

so, out of remorse for misunderstanding the cops, i might not give up at Kommissarfilms and will try another one called "Magic Cop".
after reading the synopsis, i feel this is a copflick plotline i might be able to follow (without losing the grip of reality)...

Uncle Feng, an experienced policeman, lives a quiet and beautiful life in Tung Ping Chau. One day, the old lady living next door comes to ask him to go to Hong Kong Island to return the body of her daughter, a stewardess killed by the police after being suspected of being a drug smuggler. Feng finds that the "stewardess" had actually been killed before her return to Hong Kong. She had been turned into a "living corpse", and is being controlled by a Japanese magician for smuggling. With Feng's supernatural skills and detective techniques, they finally find the location of the secret altar of the Japanese magician.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Cop

[niminy-piminy]

2009 poll watchlist:

ROCK ME AMADEUS BY FALCO VIA KARDINAL BY OTTO MUEHL (Ben Russell, 2009)

A closely hewn remake of the first half of Viennese Actionist (and convicted sex offender) Otto Muehl's 1967 film Kardinal with the following minor substitutions: the original woman is played by the artist, the original artist is played by a woman wearing a powdered wig, and the film is presented as a Karaoke sing-a-long to a tune by one of Otto Muehl's more effete 80's popstar countrymen.

https://vimeo.com/8096763

[niminy-piminy]

2009 poll watchlist:

HANGING UPSIDE DOWN IN THE BRANCHES (Ute Aurand, 2009) ... in Res.!

A montage of brief recollections filmed in the years before the death of my mother in 2000 and the death of my father in 2007. I stand as an adult in the midst of childhood feelings, gazing at the disappearance of my family home and the changing relation to my parents.

"More than any other single film that I have seen so far in this year's Wavelengths programs, Ute Aurand's achingly lovely Hanging upside down in the Branches is a paradigmatic example of programmer Andréa Picard's unique vision. Perhaps too personal, too domestic, to register with certain other tastemakers, Hanging upside down in the Branches is precisely the kind of "small" film too often overlooked because of the fundamental modesty of its approach. (...) Aurand is zeroing in on the absolutely singular, exquisite textures of the daily life around her - (...) Separated by white flash-frames, individual moments pop like fleeting revelations, the seconds whose very preciousness is defined by their ineffability. (...) Hanging upside down in the Branches is, in some way, a diary film, but one that records sensual phenomena rather than narrative event. Or, perhaps more properly stated, Aurand generates flashes of illumination, collecting them from the slow drift of everyday existence, allowing them to achieve a hieratic character. And yet, in their filmic arrangement, in the assembly and temporal re-experience, they become a different kind of narrative, a story of us all that insists on absolute particularity, insisting that these images only mean anything because they are of these people who Aurand has deeply loved." Michael Sicinski, TIFF 2009

[sally]

thanks font man (a real name! still freaking out)

[niminy-piminy]

yw, sally lady.
being a fontman is a substitute for not being able to be a frontman in a boy band!

[sally]

material - thomas heise (2009)

o humans are ghastly. maybe putin should nuke us all. (this one has much footage of fall of berlin wall, disintegration of gdr, collaborator trials, neo-nazis...) maybe i'll give the docs a miss for a bit and watch some nice stupid morally offensive rom com

[niminy-piminy]

2009 poll watchlist:

KRAUTROCK: THE REBIRTH OF GERMANY (Benjamin Whalley, 2009)

comment by "cultural vegetables" ↓
A whirlwind look at Germany's influential rock scene borne out of post-WWII experimentation. A reliably well-researched production, quirky inter-views with it's niche legends will likely delight fans and bewilder everyone else. In true BBC fashion, all roads invariably lead to David Bowie.

https://youtu.be/QP5dOKTB3ng

[niminy-piminy]

material - thomas heise (2009)

the last film i am gonna watch for the poll.
considering its length, i hope i will finish by the end of the month.
and considering i liked 3 other films by TH (i watched so far), it might sneak on my ballot last minute.

https://vimeo.com/239337048

[sally]

i've only seen vaterland by heise as well, i've not figured out what he's about yet.

also material is so depressing. as are, come to think about it, most german films that don't contain willy fritsch or heinz rühmann. not sure that's going to change much for 1946....

(hold on omg there is a comedy - geza von bolvary's die fledermaus. and ugh it's a musical too, well that'll be interesting if i can make it thru the song & dance ghastliness)

[niminy-piminy]

vaterland

besides HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME (2019) and MATERIAL (2009), i also watched SOLAR SYSTEM (2011) and THE HOUSE (1984).

quasi-socialist "welfare state" and its social housing bureaucracy...
https://youtu.be/c6jsxO-I-Rk

andes, minimal dialogue, qulla people → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qulla
https://vimeo.com/19974303

i like about him he constructs (in his docs) the picture of reality from minor details (that usually slip one's attention).
i see him as a cine micro-historian who provides an important ingredient that allows coping with a big history (whatever it might mean — be it reinforcing or contradicting the big story).
minor-fragments-based-type-of-story-telling (scattered brain film observations) somehow convene(s) my anti-foundationalist psyche, so i am not tired to watch TH's films.

[sally]

oh thank you ! that helps! i remember i got annoyed at something so much in vaterland that i didn't really grasp anything about the film. (though actually what, i can't remember, or maybe i just watched it too close to pilz's fucking dreadful himmel und erde and was terrified of all german-lang docs for a while) this makes heise make more sense now...

[niminy-piminy]

in the past, i started and didn't finish "pilz's fucking dreadful himmel und erde".
i watched (at best) 1/4 and then gave up.
i remember i felt like getting more and more sunk in a bottomless pointless everyday (youtube-like) triviality.
(somehow) i perceive thomas heise differently.
despite his story-telling is fragmental (as if scatterbrain) i still perceive he is "focussed" (on details that usually slip attention and that can either reaffirm or contradict the "obvious" big narrative).

Karel Vachek's "Elective Affinities" → https://dafilms.com/film/2144-elective-affinities is also a bit like that.
this documentary also predominantly focuses on minor details but by doing so it is revealing the naivety of all the good men (heroes of Prague Spring) who a few months later signed the Moscow protocols.
Karel Vachek is much more ironical than Thomas Heise but i feel a certain "kinship" (which makes me interested in Thomas because i was "nurtured" by Karel).
Thomas (in his hunt for revealing details) stays being observational, Karel doesn't mind fooling around to trigger those details (tho in "Elective Affinities" he is rather self-restrained like Thomas).

[sally]

i was just thinking about karel vachek films yesterday! in that, despite them all being on dafilms, i have a big gulp hesitation about watching any of them. i watched some, at least two of the longer ones, out of chronological order, years ago before any of them were on letterboxd and now i can't remember which ones i saw (apart from moravian hellas because that's very early and short) and due to my innate loathing of rewatches plus bad memory i could be hours and more dedicated hours into a film before i remember that i've already seen it, and the thought of that! oh dear. wait. watch something else.

i will watch them all eventually, looking for karel's (i love the name karel) films was the reason i originally found dafilms but i have to be slightly less of an idiot first....

[niminy-piminy]

a bit problem with these "scatterbrain/nitpicking" documentaries is that one needs to be familiar with local trivia to fully savor them.
thus these flicks can hardly ever reach a wider audience.
i adore Karel Vachek (many local documentarists represented on dafilms are certainly heavily influenced by him) but i can imagine that many of his "inside jokes" go in vain when a "foreigner" watches his flicks.
it is maybe a bit similar to excursions of Robinson in Patrick Keiller's films — without familiarity with local trivia one misses many ironical references.
and it is also the case with Thomas Heise's "Material" that would certainly be much more relishable if i would be able to identify all the ppl and be familiar with all the occurrences that are being observed.
however, Karel Vachek used to repeat that it is important to expose oneself to books, films, etc. that are not comprehensible (those one doesn't understand).
so, it makes sense even for the foreigners to watch his, or Patrick Keiller's, or Thomas Heise's, etc., etc. films (even at the cost that many revealing details captured in those films will slip our attention).

btw. while watching "Material", i spent quite a lot of time trying to solve the enigma of, "depressing news and pictures from Prague".


the guy (Egon Krenz???) who says it (on Nov 4th, 1989) makes probably a reference to the exodus of East Germans to the West via the West German embassy in Prague.
at first, the Iron Curtain opened in Hungary in May 1989.
so, East Germans started to escape via Hungary.
then, the East German government imposed visa on travel to Hungary, so they started to flock around/inside the West German embassy in Prague (demanding escape).
at first, they lived and waited for an escape approval in residential quarters of the embassy but as the number of runaways was growing they started to live in tents on embassy's plot.




after some negotiations, it was announced (on September 30th) that runaways will be allowed to board a train in Prague that will take them to West Germany.

footage from October 3rd ↓
https://youtu.be/5ctmascW0i0

so, onwards many (in sum, ca. 15.000 East Germans, till early November, Berlin Wall fell on November 9th) escaped to the West via the West German embassy in Prague — leaving behind all their tents and all their cars (mostly Trabis), parking in the streets adjoined to the embassy.
to commemorate all these occurrences (and abandoned Trabis) a sculpture called "Quo Vadis" was erected in the gardens of the embassy later ↓


so, i was able (i believe) to decipher one of the minor references (and it was interesting to hear Krenz's??? claim about "depressing news and pictures from Prague") but related most of the other details i can only repeat the final words of Aleister Crowley, "i am perplexed".
however, watching perplexing footage is indispensable for one's "growth" (Karel Vachek says).