Berlin Calling

If somehow you've been swept into Berlin, step out on a Saturday night sometime between eleven and three at the Warschauer Strasse station. What unfolds before your eyes is what the Germans call die Szene. Crowds of young people from every corner of the world. A human sea flooding out across the East Berlin clubs and bars. The alluring charm of youth, insane energy, recklessness, letting loose, a wildly vivid palette of the international. And freedom - genuine and honest...

The plot of the film Berlin Calling is fairly simple, if not primitive. The Berlin composer Martin, the so-called DJ Ickarus, moves from club to club and waits for the release of his new album. Then he lands in a clinic because of drug problems, more or less copes with the difficulties that have suddenly befallen him, finishes off or reworks - it doesn't much matter which - his album, which as a result, naturally, becomes utterly fantastic, leaves the hospital and happily carries on touring every kind of techno venue in the world.

«When they make a film about a musician, it's usually one who's already dead,» says the director of Berlin Calling, Hannes Stöhr, «they tell of his life only in the context of the time in which he lived. Why do we need to dig around in the past, when the present is quite enough?»

«Berlin Calling is not a biography, it's art and madness, intoxication and ecstasy, hope and the future, friendship and family, it's music and, of course, love, it's simply the Berlin of today,» adds Stöhr.

You shouldn't break this film down into its standard components, such as plot, or actors, or cinematography. More precisely, you probably shouldn't. Because each of these aspects is so-so.
A so-so plot.
So-so actors.
So-so cinematography.
Taken separately it's all rather weak, yet the film draws you in. It doesn't need to be watched, it needs to be felt and, ideally, with every sense. First heard, because there's music in abundance and the music is superb. Then seen.

The film hooks you. From this frame on

it sinks into you with a death grip and drags you off into its Berlin. Now you don't merely hear and see - you breathe this city. You're in it, and it's in you.
Forever!

Paul Kalkbrenner in the role of DJ Ickarus, against the backdrop of an industrial district washed in sunset tones. And techno. Excellent, dense techno.

It turns out that to make a good film, nothing more is required. A popular DJ, a magnificent soundtrack and Berlin. Stir, but do not shake. Serve chilled in small shabby Berlin cinemas together with a nought-point-three-three of Beck's.

A telling moment is when Kalkbrenner, in a metro carriage, records the sound of the closing doors on his iPhone, and a few seconds later we hear a track built entirely on that melody. The film's soundtrack is not just sixteen quality audio tracks, not just good techno-style music. It's the avenues of the Mitte district, a euro's worth of coffee in a cardboard cup at Zoo Garten, a punk with a red mohawk on the platform at Ostkreuz, November fogs and FC Union. It's the whole of Berlin in mp3 format. One could talk about it endlessly, but it's better, without further ado, simply to load the soundtrack onto your iPod and add the whole album to your playlist, because that's exactly where it belongs.

Berlin Calling is not a biography. It's a film about people - strange, sick and free. It's a film about music that is more than music. It's a film about a city that is more than a city.

If somehow you've been swept into Berlin in August, step out at eight in the evening onto Warschauer Strasse, buy a couple of beers at a shop and walk along Rudolphstrasse to where it crosses Modersohnstrasse, then turn left and stop on the bridge over the railway tracks. The clock will read half past eight. Open a beer and put on the Berlin Calling soundtrack in your player. Before you is a city that will turn first orange, then pink, then red. It'll smell of marijuana, urine and coffee. Beneath the bridge an S-Bahn will rumble past.

At that moment you see, feel and hear the real Berlin. Berlin Calling!