die fünfte Woche

WEEK FIVE

Our reading for Thorsten's class on tuesday was about the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe; the decision to create such a memorial, the extensive debate over what sort of memorial would be appropriate, and the final outcome of such debate. Because the memorial is meant to commemorate the murdered Jews of Europe, a large portion of tuesday's class was devoted to a brief overview of the events that lead to the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe. I felt that this was important so that when discussing such a memorial and further issues, we are all on the same page as far as major events go. After Young's reading and class discussion, I really see how difficult holocaust commemoration in Germany must be, and that there are several factors that can influence such work- politics, artistic expression, and personal emotion. On friday we visited the memorial. I have been there a few times, and this time was not much different. Aesthetically, I love the memorial. I love walking through it and feeling lost and alone, and to me it is so powerful in that in can evoke such feelings. In this way it is a successful memorial, but I do not feel that it is specific to the holocaust. Several things can make one feel lost or alone, and I feel the memorial should be more specific to the holocaust. However, we also visited the museum under the memorial, which I found very powerful. I was very moved by the different family histories and the room with letters from victims. To me, the museum was much more moving and more of a commemoration to the murdered Jews of Europe.

This weeks film screening was A Berlin Romance, dir. Gerhard Klein and Wolfgang Kohlhaase. I really enjoyed this film, especially because it had more of a storyline and it was less politically active. However, I enjoyed the subtle policitcal voice and the slight "push" toward the east. To me, Uschi promoted the east and communism by giving an example of what NOT to do. Throughout the film, her dream is to become a model and go to the west with Hans, but she continues to be scorned by her parents for making foolish decisions. When she finally decides to go to the modeling school in the west, she backs out at first but is encouraged by Hans to apply, but it ends up a disaster because she is not able to pay for the tuition. When she goes home after staying out with Hans all day, her mom yells at her and Uschi appologizes and tells her mother that she is right, and reinforces this by asking her permition to invite Hans over for dinner. Hans to me represents the emptiness of the west. Throughout the film he is struggling to find work and his mother is always troubling him about his unemployment. Furthermore, everything he "owns"- the radio and the apartment- are not really his at all. He cannot pay for the radio and he pretends that the apartment is his to impress Uschi. We experience his guilt and shame when he finally admits this to Uschi, and he is almost repenting for this empty capitalist ways. As a GDR film, I feel that it successfully employs "Hollywood-esque" aspects in order to glorify communist ideals.

Film group. The majority of this week's work was dedicated to our short film project. Our assignment was the acoustic film. We had a collection of sounds from both Koldenhof and Berlin, and from them we wanted to create a comparison of urban society and the country. We wanted to make two crescendoes; one from the country sounds and one from the city sounds. I think we successfully completed the project and I was satisfied with our results. Thanks to looping and overlapping, we were able to build sounds upon each other and create a "world" of sound. Props to Kerry for organizing and labeling all of our clips!