hurrengoa
b movie: lust and sound in west berlin (1979-1989)    From generation to generation, we tend to cast a melancholic reminiscent eye on those days when it was always better. This film, to a certain extent, takes this stance. From minute one you want to be back in the Berlin of that time. That’s almost certainly because it’s really funny, it’s full of fascinating film from the archives (you would never imagine they had filmed stuff like this back then), the soundtrack is great and, above all, you couldn’t buy a central character like the one that appears here: Mark Reeder. Manchester had Michael Winterbottom’s 24 hour party people...and now it’s Berlin´s turn with B Movie Lust and Sound in West Berlin. So what does a Manchester music fan have to do a couple of years short of the beginning of the 80s? Well, nothing really. Just stay there. And wait for this sad grey city to become the music capital of the world. That’s what everybody did. Well, everybody except for one. Mark Reeder knew the whole music scene was going to kick off but he fell in love. Indeed, he fell in love with this new music coming out of Germany. So off he went to Berlin, Berlin, sadder and greyer than Manchester.

From generation to generation, we tend to cast a melancholic reminiscent eye on those days when it was always better. This film, to a certain extent, takes this stance. From minute one you want to be back in the Berlin of that time. That’s almost certainly because it’s really funny, it’s full of fascinating film from the archives (you would never imagine they had filmed stuff like this back then), the soundtrack is great and, above all, you couldn’t buy a central character like the one that appears here: Mark Reeder. Manchester had Michael Winterbottom’s 24 hour party people...and now it’s Berlin´s turn with B Movie Lust and Sound in West Berlin.

If you remember the 80s you weren´t there.

What does an English guy who likes to dress up in military uniform do in Berlin at the beginning of the 80s? He hounds the musicians he admires. He hits the clubs, and gets to know the local scene at night. He takes drugs and works for Manchester record label Factory. He sets up the band Shark Vegas. Takes more drugs . He promotes the only gig Joy Division played there. He records bands. He tries to get laid. He gets involved in the squatting movement. More drugs. He lets a young Nick Cave crash at his place for a time. Tries for more sex. Promotes more gigs. Records more
bands. He helps make programmes and recordings for the BBC. He travels to East Germany. More sex. Manages bands he likes . Drugs. He organises the first and last punk gig in East Berlin with his friends from Die Toten Hosen. He gets himself blacklisted by the Stasi as a subversive. Drugs. Sex...

That was till the 90s came around. And it came with a massive hangover. Lots of clubs were losed and many bands disappeared. The first bodies of the debauchery began to be counted. The city was on its musical deathbed. And to Mark Reeder’s incredulity, young DJs who played others’ music rather than make their own began to turn up on the scene. He quickly realised that the 80s were dead and gone, but that the electronica music explosion was about to burst forth from the ashes of the previous decade. And Reeder got involved in trance music...but that’s another story.