CHANNEL ONE. TALKING HEADS
VIDEO BY THILO FISCHER AND DAVID VON DER STEIN
SOUND: MAX HEESEN
43 MIN., 4:3, STEREO
GERMAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH WITH GERMAN SUBTITLES
2021
“Channel One. Talking Heads” shows 70 years of authentic Berlin conversation, culture and war history from the Berliner Festwochen and Berliner Festspiele, all condensed into a 40-minute collage with top-class representatives from art and politics. They range from Willy Brandt to Judith Malina, Volker Braun to Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Luther King Jr. to Hildegard Knef, and Fela Anikulapo Kuti to Steffie Spira, and from Angela Hampel to Udo Lindenberg. What are their expectations for the arts? Should art serve only itself, or should it serve the whole complexity of reality? What consequences does Berlin’s former structure as a divided city have on the arts, culture and society? And which legacies of the Nazi era still shape the arts, politics and society today?
With: Leonard Bernstein, Willy Brandt, Volker Braun, Frank Castorf, Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hrdlicka, Jürgen Gosch, Tadeusz Kantor, Allan Kaprow, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry Kissinger, Hildegard Knef, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Les Amazones de Guinée, Udo Lindenberg, Friedrich Luft, Judith Malina, Heiner Müller, Nicolas Nabokov, Thomas Oberender, Camilla Spira, Sugar Cane Harris and Sir Peter Ustinov
Screenings:
28 May - 17 Octobre 2021, as part of the exhibition "Everything Is Just for a While", Museum Gropius Bau Berlin
5. September 2021 - 3. Januar 2022, as part of the internet film series "Breaking News, Talking Heads and Arts" on berlinerfestspiele.de
10. - 17. October 2021 at Festival "The Sun Machine is Coming Down", ICC Berlin.
Cooperation partners
RBB, 3sat, Deutschlandfunk
Partners
Akademie der Künste, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Medienkunst e.V., Associazione Grupporiani, Berlin Art Link, Boosey & Hawkes, Bundesarchiv, Transit Film, EAI Electronic Arts Intermix, Edition Peters Group C.F. Peters Ltd & Co, Felix Bloch Erben, Filmgalerie 451, Japan Actors Association, Kobalt Productions GmbH, MONA productions, Sammlung Video-Forum des Neuen Berliner Kunstverein e.V. (n.b.k.), Phenomen Berlin Filmproduktion GmbH, Progress Film GmbH, Suhrkamp Theater Verlag, Shochiku Co. Ltd. Tokyo, Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Südwestrundfunk (SWR), Telewizja Polska S.A., ZDF / Arte, ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe
With special thanks to
Botschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bujumbura (Burundi), Botschaft der Volksrepublik China in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bunraku Kyokai, Osaka (Japan), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Galerie Hauser & Wirth (Zürich), Goethe-Institut Tokyo und Kyoto (Japan), Goethe-Institut Kigali (Rwanda), Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin, Japan Foundation in Berlin, The Living Theatre, La MaMa Archive, Landesarchiv Berlin, National Ballet of China, Neue Nationalgalerie (SMB), Nohgaku-Kyokai (Association of Noh Actors), Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Wolf Vostell Estate as well as René Block, Maksym Demydenko, Guido Diekmann, Ulrich Eckhardt, Helfrid Foron, Petra und Erhard Grosskopf, Felix Gruntz, Werner Heegewaldt, Nathalie Huck, Mona Intemann, Peter Konopatsch, Torsten Maß, Udo Lindenberg, Ida Müller und Vegard Vinge, Heinz-Dieter Reese, Frieder Schlaich, Julia Schmejkal and Martina Seidel.