Northwest Film Forum

David Bowie made the city famous after his Berlin trilogy of the mid- to late-1970s and in his wake, young British Bowie disciples descended on the divided city. Mark Reeder, an aspiring artist-musician arrived in 1978 from Manchester at the age of 20. A walled-in city, West Berlin was surrounded by Communist East Germany, and always seemed on the verge of emergency. It was cheap to live, and transient; below the radar, the creative melting pot of West Berlin’s post-punk underground music scene thrived. Fortunately Reeder actively documented the city’s late-night, drug- and booze-infused scene, and the documentary collages together unearthed Super-8 films from dozens of other filmmakers to form the basis of B-Movie. Never-before-seen archival fragments of icons of the time such as Gudrun Gut, Blixa Bargeld, and Malaria! with visitations from Nick Cave, Tilda Swinton, Keith Haring, and New Order. Winner of the Heiner Carow Prize of the DEFA Foundation 2015. Presentation made possible by the cultural assistance of the Goethe Institute of San Francisco, with the cooperation of Klaus Maeck.

"B-Movie is not only a history lesson, but a lesson in living reconciliation. Here reported a stranger from the fascination for a place that was firmly linked to his parents by the words "war" and "enemy." It is the report of a postmodern adventurer who wants to learn the customs of the local people, lured by the wild sound of a born Chaos utopia. A packaged in celluloid plea for understanding." - Jurek Skrobala, Der Spiegel