„Mauerflug“

The Fall of the Berlin Wall is in these days on everyone’s lips. Everywhere you can watch films about it, see photos and join different events regarding the jubilee. You cannot avoid the topic in this week. I searched because of that in our library and found a DVD which looked really interesting. It is called “Mauerflug” and you can watch it in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, so really interesting for foreign-language people.

In the documentary you can find three short film chapters. Two of them were filmed from above, in birds-eye perspective from a Mi 8. These short films deal with Potsdam and East Berlin in 1990. The third one gives impressions of the wall and its removal in 1990/1991.

The most interesting film of these three is in my opinion the film about East Berlin. It is also the longest one. In this film you can see interesting views at a city which was for such a long time marooned. You can still see parts of the wall which mark the border and the area around the wall, the wasteland of the border installations. Furthermore you can see buildings which were at that time still on their position and which are destroyed today. For example the film shows the “Palast der Republik” and the “Palasthotel”. If you know East Berlin around the “Alexanderplatz” and “Unter den Linden” today, you will be surprised how much changed in the last 25 years. How many new buildings arise, how the streets change and how some old buildings disappear out of the city shape.

The documentary in total isn’t that long; it only has a running time of 35 minutes. But, the footage is unique and really interesting. So the short documentary is recommendable and watchable especially in these days which deal so much with the Fall of the Wall.