prⅳate cinema this sunday: kreuzberg 1980

[prⅳate cinema berlin]

Easily the most memorable two hours of cinema ever shot in Kreuzberg (*), 
Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession" follows the disintegrating marriage of Anna 
(Isabelle Adjani) and Mark (Sam Neill) "like a fast-forwarded Ingmar Bergman 
film on bad acid" (rogerebert.com) through the subway stations and side streets 
of SO36 in 1980, along the Antifascist Protection Wall -- which at the time, 
conveniently, also kept backpackers, party tourists and real estate developers 
at bay -- all the way to Sebastianstraße 87, where a bloodbath begins to unfold 
that even for its survivors would remain a life-changing event: Zulawski's film 
was banned for 15 years in the UK (and never released in Germany until 2009), 
Isabelle Adjani won the Best Actress award in Cannes for her performance, and 
the octopus she has sex with towards the end of the film made such a splash 
that the guy who designed it would one year later score the job to create E.T.

Anna's and Mark's rapidly deteriorating existence -- where to draw the line 
between household accidents and domestic violence? how to tell the difference 
between an abbatoir and just a messy apartment? and where exactly does public 
indecency end and dangerous interference with road traffic begin? -- provides 
for a series of highly iconic scenes of picture-perfect West-Berlin desolation 
that make for an exceptionally authentic and period-accurate Heimatfilm. Yet 
seen from today's point of view, the inner and outer void that the English-
speaking, single-income, one-child and upwardly mobile (even if only in 
the last scene) couple inhabits, and the way their personal disaster remains 
strangely detached from the ruin of the city, seems to foreshadow the even more 
depressing reality of Kreuzberg loft life in the 2010s. If we had to remake the 
film today, we'd set it 100 meters further north, Dresdner Ecke Waldemar.

(*) and occasionally beyond -- for a comprehensive photo tour and map, see
www.spectacularoptical.ca/2014/02/the-psychotronic-tourist-possession-1981/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                                      possession
                                                                andrzej zulawski
                                                            1981 123 min 4.69 gb

                                                                          sunday
                                                                         july 26
                                                                            9 pm

                                                            prⅳate cinema berlin
                                                                saal 2 kreuzberg
                                                                u kottbusser tor

                                                                  12 seats, rsvp
                                                          first come first serve
                                                       location in separate mail

                                                                       trailers:
                                      www.piratecinema.org/trailers/#20150726-01
                                      www.piratecinema.org/trailers/#20150726-02

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

         ()
         ><
prⅳate cinema berlin
www.piratecinema.org