Original subtitles

- Germany! - Are you okay?

Germany!

Germany!

Has he been run over?

Germany! - Come on, get up.

Germany! - Come on, get up.

Terrible.

You are listening to the news broadcast Berliner Rundfunk.

The celebrations of the 32. anniversary

of the German Democratic Republic began with a parade

of the National People's Army in Berlin.

Fucking is fun! - Spastic! Go and wank yourself off!

Turn off the fucking camera!

Ok, my name is Silke

and I was born in the East but now I live in West Berlin.

"Property of class 10 B."

And now your first view of the Berlin Wall, which is right in front of us.

Behind the Wall is the Berlin TV tower, the fourth highest in the world.

The Wall is 45 kilometres long within Berlin

and extends for a further 115 kilometres around Berlin.

In most places it's 3.5 metres high and has one-metre-deep foundations.

We will not be able to guarantee your safety if GDR border officials intervene…

Leave the territory of the German Democratic Republic at once!

DIRECTOR FASSBINDER DEAD IN FRONT OF TV

Today I want a fix as well! - Wrong question.

I don't believe there's a real difference between a snort and a fix.

Sure is. A fix is like an explosion…

Can I use your needle?

What's wrong, have you run out of cans?

We're not New Wave and we're not a punk rock group,

and we're not… What are we?

We don't want to pigeonhole ourselves, we play the music…

that we like, regardless of what's fashionable.

Although Joy Division are really in, we don't play like them.

At that time I was working at Zensor in Schöneberg,

where I sold records.

And Joy Division were the absolute megahit, of course,

and that really got on my nerves.

They all wanted Joy Division and nothing else.

It was a bit like selling Madonna in that little shop.

I couldn't stand Joy Division anymore and I was really pissed off.

It was much too popular, but it was great, of course.

They were the heroes of the scene back then.

I sang in English at first.

It's easier because you can hide behind words like "baby" and "ooh ah".

You're more naked and direct in German because everyone understands every word.

You have to use body language. The audience know if you're faking it.

SQUATTED AND RENOVATED

Please get back behind the barrier. Get back behind the barrier, please.

Just a moment! - Get back behind the barrier, will you?

Pursued by the police, the crowd ran towards Potsdamer Strasse,

where the traffic was still flowing.

Klaus-Jürgen Rattay, 18 years old, was hit by a bus and fatally injured.

MURDER

BERLIN'S BURNING: FIRST FATALITY

WE DON'T JUST WANT A PIECE OF THE CAKE WE WANT THE WHOLE BAKERY

What's wrong?

Mark Reeder was our manager. What do I mean by manager?

It wasn't professionalized back then.

He was English, knew his way around in the music world,

and the scene was small.

He was full of energy, he thought we were great, and he helped us.

He didn't want to be referred to as our manager, but he was.

We always said: "Mark Reeder is our manager." It sounded better.

When we started we just thrashed away and made noise.

Then we kept listening to the cassettes we'd recorded

and started trying to develop our own special sound.

Initially a lot of people came because we were girls, but they didn't like the music.

We make much harder music than any boy would.

Our music is much more brutal, people find it brutal.

At the moment I enjoy working with girls much more than I do with boys.

Boys always want to tell you what's right and what's wrong,

but I think I know myself what's right and what's wrong.

The sun's shining, the birds are twittering, the world is beautiful, people are good.

West Berlin was a very strange little creative island

but it was also my yardstick for normality.

Everything else was different to West Berlin.

Rents were way below those in West Germany.

It was possible to survive on next to no money in West Berlin.

At the same time, the whole situation, the atmosphere there, caused many people,

not just from West Germany but from other countries, too, to stay in West Berlin.

Hold on a sec. Mark!

Exactly.

What are you doing here? - What I'm doing?

What do you want to do? - God! I live here.

Yes, sure.

What did she just ask? - How do you see Berlin?

The "real" Berlin. - It's the most interesting city.

ANYONE WHO FOLLOWS COMMERCIAL MUSICAL TASTE SERVES THE REACTIONARIES

I asked myself: What is my authentic situation in life?

What is my personal environment,

for me as a West Berliner, without an ID card, without an address, without a job,

without any income, without qualifications?

Then I was in one band after another

and one of them was Einstürzende Neubauten.

Then we went off on expeditions.

We set off into the industrial landscapes

and began to make music with nothing.

We played in secret, forgotten places, hollow spaces in motorway bridges or under railways,

places that have something magical about them and have incredible acoustic qualities.

If you're sitting in a 1.5-metre-high space inside a steel girder

that's maybe 40 metres long and you can hear the trucks whizzing along above you,

it's difficult to develop something connected to the peace movement.

We didn't just work in the hollow spaces inside motorway bridges,

we worked with absolutely everything imaginable,

and especially with things that were completely unimaginable.

Berlin is the classic American colony as far as rock music is concerned.

We all grew up with AFN and Coca-Cola here,

so we've been exposed to a lot of cultural influence from there.

And Berlin is a pretty damaged place, so our music is, too.

And that was our golden child, Nena, once again.

I want to marry Nena. - I want to marry Nena, too.

I really want to marry Nena.

Of course, bands from New York and England are the crowd-pullers,

and then I give them a band from Berlin, whether they want one or not.

Who's the hottest girl here tonight?

You, Pink, come here!

In a spectacular act, East and West made the long-awaited exchange of prisoners today.

This took place on a bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam in the GDR…

Mark, what are you up to?

Well, at the moment I'm working on this programme

it's for "kids" in England

they want to know what you can do here in Berlin.

You can go out.

Yes but it's 2 in the morning

what can you do at this time of night

Lots of things

clubs like "Safe Sex" or "DNC"

HANSA RECORDING STUDIO

Look.

OK, but let me down. - All right.

An accident has occurred at a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in the Ukraine.

A reactor was damaged.

According to an unconfirmed report, the reactor core has melted.

Such an incident is known as a Maximum Credible Accident.

Ever heard of a disease called AIDS? - AIDS? No, I've never heard of it.

Berlin is a special city that's exposed to American, German and Eastern influences.

Russia's the major factor there.

This creates a special kind of tension.

We live in a world,

we draw our ideas from it and express them with a particular medium.

It can be music, it can be film, it can be painting,

it can be writing.

And we mix them all together in our show to create our concept.

I had it this way round…

THE GDR A PEACEFUL STATE FOR 35 YEARS

SUCCESSFUL - HIGHLY EFFICENT - DEPENDABLE

It takes a while at the border. - Where? - Party.

Taken to court: the fake Heino who claimed to be the real one.

I'm the real Heino.

I'm the real Heino. - I'm the one and only real Heino.

I'm the real Heino. - Me, too.

No question about it, I'm Heino. - I'm the real Heino.

He was ordered to pay a fine of 10,000 marks

for not making it clear enough that he wasn't the singer Heino

but Mr. Hähnel from Berlin.

That was the ruling of the regional court in Bonn. Good evening.

OCTOBER 1986 TEMPODROM BERLIN

Has anyone called an ambulance?

END

Wake up, we're closing!

Here is the news:

The American president, Reagan, began his visit to Berlin this morning…

The Wall must go!

On 6 June 1987

a large group of decadent looking youths

gathered around Hermann-Matern-Strasse.

The music from the stage in West Berlin could be clearly heard in this area.

By 7 p.m., the crowd had grown to a size of between 250 and 300 persons.

OK, it's like this: DJs are the new pop stars,

DJs are no longer the little go-betweens between the audience and the musicians,

they're now the musicians in a completely new music scene

where a new game's beginning.

No, I need both hands.

You need both hands for scratching,

you don't just do this,

you do this as well.

The principle of sound sampling… - Don't twiddle those knobs…

If you'd just speak into the mic.

That's your voice.

Can you show it? - One, two…

You want to make it big with that? - Yeah.

There are now quite a lot of DJs

who understand that this is a new form of music, a new genre,

and I think it parallels new developments in technology.

I'm totally shocked at having to watch something like that.

At my age, it's just too much.

I wasn't scared, but it was crazy.

The film was simply stunning, my innermost self.

I thought it was brilliant, excellent!

It was fucking top!