Thirty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, film-makers who documented life on either side say divides between communities are becoming more prevalent, from Brexit to tensions at the US-Mexico border.
The subject of the Berlin Wall and its effect on East and West Germans is being explored in two film seasons: the Barbican’s Borders and Boundaries, and Home in Manchester’s Beyond the Berlin Wall, which focuses exclusively on female directors.
Wieland Speck, the director of Westler, a drama about a gay romance divided by the wall that is described as “an unjustly neglected curio in queer cinema history”, said lessons from Berlin continued to be ignored.
“You don’t see us learning from it at all, in fact the opposite is the case,” he said. “Of course, these other walls and barriers are a sign of power. But also, I think it’s a sign of powerlessness. Because it’s the only thing you can do.”
Speck said Westler, part of which was filmed in East Berlin using hidden cameras that were banned at the time, shocked young contemporary audiences. “You have a romantic love story and you give it a little bit more weight by saying, ‘You know what, it’s not like a Grimm fairytale, this is actually what it was like’.
“It was one of the first gay films where the gays were not dead at the end.” Speck believes the film was accepted by Germany and helped shift society because it presented a problem, the wall, that was bigger than homosexuality.
Pia Frankenberg, the director of Never Sleep Again, which features in Beyond the Berlin Wall and focuses on three women navigating the city just after reunification, said she was not aware of how momentous the coming down of the wall was. “It was not like you really feel the importance of history in the moment – it just happens,” she said. “You live through it.”
Frankenberg said her film was about a city coming to terms with a new reality but also three women who embraced their own personal freedom and a “more nonchalant way of living and doing the same things as men do but in their own way”.
Borders and Boundaries also has films that expand beyond the Berlin Wall, such as Simone Bitton’s documentary, Wall, about the building of the separation wall in Israel. The film, which was made in 2004 and features interviews with construction workers who built the wall and those whose lives were disrupted by it, was “an act of resistance” in a more insular post-September 11 world, she said.
“I think that this wall really became a state of mind for the whole planet,” said Bitton, who thinks her film captured the start of a global movement whereby governments have moved away from a more pluralistic view of the world. “It was the first of a very, very long series of concrete and abstract walls that were erected. We are living in the period of walls and separation.”
Gali Gold, the Barbican’s head of cinema, said its season showed how prominent the issues film-makers in Berlin struggled with before reunification still were. “The issue of border and a physical border resonates with the here and now and that was our opportunity to link to the here and now,” she said.
Gold added that “Brexit looms large” over the season but she wants it to be a chance to re-examine lessons from history. “We are making use of the fact it is a living experience – we want to open it up, look at it and question the notion that the subject is dry and institutional. Borders are only becoming more prevalent,” she said.
The Borders and Boundaries season runs at the Barbican from 8-27 November; Beyond the Berlin Wall is at Home Manchester from 24-26 November