Rabbit à la Berlin & Wir bleiben hier (2009/1990): Block Museum - Northwestern University
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Rabbit à la Berlin & Wir bleiben hier (2009/1990)

Rabbit à la Berlin & Wir bleiben hier (2009/1990)
Cinema
February
15
7 PM-10 PM

Event Details

Date & Time:

Fri February 15, 2019
7 PM-10 PM

Location:

The Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208

Audience:

Open to the public

Details:

Rabbit à la Berlin / Wir bleiben hier
Friday, February 15, 2019 7:00 PM FREE

Rabbit à la Berlin (Bartosz Konopka, 2009, Poland/Germany, BetaSP 52 min.)
In German with English subtitles

The fall of the Berlin Wall affected many demographics in different ways, demanding people adjust to a new life in a new post-communist world and reunified Germany. Bartek Konopka's Oscar-nominated documentary Rabbit à la Berlin tells the allegorical story of Berlin’s wild rabbit population, which had inhabited the death zone of the wall, reflecting on various forgotten, ignored or marginalized peoples during and after the Cold War. Assembling archival footage from multiple sources, the film dives into the perspective of the rabbits in their own habitat and a new Europe.

Wir bleiben hier
(Dirk Otto, 1990, Germany, digital, 32 min.)
In German with English Subtitles.

Dirk Otto’s Wir bleiben hier (“We’re staying here”) is centered on the peculiar situation of Vietnamese immigrants in Eastern Germany after the fall of the wall. After constituting the largest immigrant group in an otherwise homogeneous East-German population, they suddenly found themselves in an undefined limbo state when their work and residence permits were not valid in the new ‘host country.’ Otto, an Eastern-German filmmaker himself, closely follows one family in particular—a young couple and their daughter, whom he met after immersing himself in Berlin’s Vietnamese community. He follows them to Hamburg and back to Berlin, capturing their struggle in a sober, observational mode, and interviews them about their decision and struggle to "stay here," in spite of the political shifts.

Subtitle translation by Barbara Stone

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

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Part of the film series
Migrating Berlin: Multinational Perspectives on Germany’s Years of Reunification

Curated by Northwestern University doctoral candidates Evelyn Kreutzer and Esra Cimencioglu, the Block Museum’s film series Migrating Berlin arrives on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, promising to shed new light on this crucial moment in European history. The fall of the wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany a year later, often considered markers of the end of the Cold War, represent major ruptures in Germany’s post-war history. As a site of division, trauma, and political and military struggle, Berlin holds a particular fascination, with the symbol of the wall haunting the city long after its collapse and architectural transformation. However, in the rich history of representations of the divided city, Cold War narratives focused on East-West German tensions have remained dominant, often obscuring the fate of already underrepresented demographics and built environments beyond the wall itself. Integrating multinational and immigrant perspectives on the division and reunification of Germany into these established East/West narratives, the film series Migrating Berlin shines a new light on this period of transition. The five films in this series depict the alienation and socio-economic struggle of Germany’s/Berlin’s migrant population and the radical reconstruction of the city after the fall of the wall. Stylistically diverse documentaries like Duvarlar-Mauern-Walls (2000) and Bartek Konopka's Oscar-nominated Rabbit à la Berlin (2009) explore fascinating ‘micro-histories,’ such as the rise of right-wing violence against Turkish immigrants in the Berlin neighborhood Kreuzberg after 1989 and the fate of Berlin’s wild rabbit population in the dead zone of the Wall.

Promotional support provided by the Goethe Institute

Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu