Chris Michael 

Wim Wenders on his Berlin: ‘Oh man, has it ever changed!’

The Barbican’s City Visions film season opens with Wim Wenders’ Cathedrals of Culture, a collection of short films by a star-studded line-up of directors. Which gave us a good excuse to ask Wenders about his home city, Berlin ...
  
  

A man cycles through the Mitte district, which straddles parts of old East and West Berlin.
A man cycles through the Mitte district, which straddles parts of old East and West Berlin. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Do you feel the Berlin of now is the same Berlin you portrayed in Wings of Desire, or is it now a different city altogether?

WW: Oh, man, has it ever changed! There is a building in my neighbourhood, on Brunnenstrasse, on which it is written, in huge letters: “This house once stood in another country!” That pretty much nails it. Berlin was two cities in two countries, a quarter of a century ago, and it still represents a phenomenal change. I don’t think that any other city in the world (well, I should probably not include Chinese cities) has undergone such dramatic reinvention.

Mitte, along with Prenzlauerberg, Kreuzberg etc, has seen dramatic leaps towards gentrification over 10-20 years - do you mind it? Is it all bad, or are there positives too?

Considering the gentrification I have seen and witnessed myself in New York, Paris or London, what is happening in Berlin is not that dramatic. But obviously, with Berlin’s raising popularity, and the continuing arrival of (mostly young) people from all over the world to the city, proportions have shifted, certain quarters have become more expensive, and others are inundated with tourists, like Mitte. The other day I saw the first horse-drawn coach trot along Linienstrasse, and I find myself avoiding horse-shit with my bicycle in our quarter, so I figure we are clearly becoming a new Central Park.

Mitte now is (we think) the only district that contains parts of the old East Berlin and the old West Berlin. When you walk through the city, are you still aware when you cross the old divide? Do the different parts of Mitte feel different?

Mitte is now among the most expensive areas of Berlin, that’s true. I lived in New York in the early 80s, and I remember the shift that happened in Soho. I’m reminded of that now in Mitte. For a while, the “Old West” like Charlottenburg seemed to become quite sleepy and old-fashioned, but now the Kurfürstendamm is picking up again, and that part of the city, especially around Savignyplatz, is catching up again. These things continue to move. As I have lived in Berlin since the mid-70s, and long enough in the “Old West”, I’m still very conscious of the thresholds and divides between the former East and West. But I find visitors increasingly unsure about what was what, so obviously the two parts of the city are slowly assimilating their old borders. Sometimes it has become quite impossible to establish where the wall was actually running through …

If Wings of Desire was partly a plea for reunification, has the city lived up to it?

After the initial euphoria, the city lived reunification quite badly, I felt. There was a mutual discontent, and bad feelings. That is now slowly disappearing and Berlin starts feeling more “normal” altogether. But one still learns things. The other day I took a cab to a cinema out in the former East, and the driver said: “Oh, you want to go straight into the Bermuda triangle.” And that’s how I heard for the first time how common parlance called this area where I was going to, where Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Friedrichshain are meeting up.

In the new film Cathedrals of Culture, your section focuses on the Berlin Philharmonic building. Tell us about what it means to you.

It was a monument to modernity when it was built. When I first entered it in the early 70s – for a Miles Davis concert – I was totally overwhelmed and thought: “Wow! Now I have seen the future!” And the amazing thing is that the building, 50 years later, still has this aura. It was the first concert hall of its kind, with the orchestra and the conductor in the centre of the room, and since then many other places have been built and conceived after this model of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Architecture is usually present in films merely as backdrop: what is Cathedrals of Culture trying to do differently?

We’re giving architecture centre stage. Our films each deal with a particular building, and we even let those buildings “speak for themselves”, by giving them their own voice.

How did you choose Robert Redford and the other directors?

They needed to have an affinity to architecture and the particular building that we chose together with them. And they needed to be curious about doing this in 3D. Except for myself, none of them had previously worked in 3D, and for us at Neue Road Movies it was important to “spread the virus” and continue to prove that 3D is a highly artistic new medium that has much more potential that the current applications in blockbuster action movies show.

We gather you live on Torstrasse. What are you favourite local haunts? And what other secrets do you love about your neighbourhood?

I love “Klärchen’s Ballhaus” on Auguststrasse. Even if it’s insanely popular now it still has preserved its originality and flair. You can still go dancing every day of the week, different styles every night, you just need to know whether you want to swing, or tango, or rock. My favorite bar is across the street, still appropriately called “Meine Bar”. It used to be called “Ici”…

How would you like to see Mitte and Berlin in general develop henceforth?

I’d love to see a few of the leftover no-man’s-lands actually stay empty. It’s insane how each and every last gap is being filled as if there was no tomorrow.

Cathedrals of Culture opens the City Visions film season at the Barbican on 25 September and is released to selected cinemas across the country on 17 October.

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