Éclairage de fond

If the whole purpose of making and distributing this documentary was so that we could get to know East Berliner Robert Paris ... well, firstly, WHY was that the whole point? Why him? and secondly, why all the other stuff: the introduction in which we watch a river being dredged and listen to a soundtrack consisting of someone trying and failing to get a tune out of a tuba, for what feels like a quarter of an hour; the builder who complains how all the jobs are going to Poles; the humdrum pans over concrete-block architecture?

This is the kind of documentary you get when you point the camera at nothing in particular and intersperse the footage with shots of your friends having conversations about this and that, conversations which we'd no doubt find interesting if we were ourselves taking part in them, but we're not. Without being bad in any positive way (apart from the awful tuba noises), Reidemeister's film makes you count down the seconds and then breathe a deep sigh of relief when it's over.

There's been a lot of German movies and documentaries made about the unification of West and East Germany, but I think this one is one of the most interesting ones I have seen. Following the life of a troubled photographer and some of his friends that are trying to adjust to this new capitalist system, he feels left behind and disappointed by the Western way of life and the changes made to his home city, Berlin. The city provides a great background against which these stories are told, and the photography in the film is really beautiful. Being a photographer myself I was moved in many ways by this documentary, and I believe that many people would enjoy it, even if they're not involved in photography. It's a very interesting work.