Journeys from Berlin/1971

Artist and choreographer Alex Baczyński-Jenkins presents a new performance at the Lichthof of the Martin Gropius Bau on March 14th and 15th. The film JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (1980) by Yvonne Rainer played an important role in his preparations for it. As part of Arsenal on Location, we are showing the restored version of the film in the exhibition space’s cinema auditorium, which has already frequently hosted Arsenal screenings in the past.
Rainer was inspired to make this biting, often funny meditation on state power, oppression, violence and revolution by her experiences in West Berlin while on a DAAD residency in 1976/77. JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 shifts between aerial shots of British landscapes, intertitles, fragments of Rainer’s diary from when she was a teenager and a discussion by an unseen couple (spoken by Amy Taubin und Vito Acconci) about the fall of the Red Army Faction. Art and film critic Annette Michelson plays a psychoanalysis patient, while filmmaker Cynthia Beatt appears in the sequences in Berlin. (stss)