EXBERLINER Issue 170, April 2018

Achtung!
Berlin’s biggest local film
festival is back. Don’t miss
our English Days at
Lichtblick, Apr 14-16.
(p.24)
POLITICS REPORTAGE ZEITGEIST ART MUSIC FILM STAGE
Brazil in
Berlin
With over 12,000 Brazilians living.
here, the scene goes far beyond.
samba. Time for a staycation in the.
land of Forró, capoeira, feijoada.
and caipirinhas...(p.6-20).
170
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Eduardo Paolozzi, Pop Art Redefined (Lots of Pictures – Lots of Fun), Detail, 1971 © Trustees of the Paolozzi Foundation, Licensed by/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
09.02.–28.05.2018
EDUARDO PAOLOZZI
LOTS OF PICTURES – LOTS OF FUN
Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin, Wed–Mon 10am–6pm (Tue closed)
#EduardoPaolozziBG, #berlinischegalerie, www.berlinischegalerie.de
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Media Partners
Berlin in English since 2002

CONTENTS
Exberliner 170 – April 2018
Special:
Brazil
06
Portraits
The ballet wunderkind, the actress,
the painter and more snapshots from
Berlin’s big Brazilian community
12
Capoeira
The man who brought true capoeira
to Berlin, and three classes where
you can try it
14
Forró for all
The Brazilian dance craze that’s got
Berliners hooked
16
Best of Brazil
Where to drink, sing, get waxed
and more
18
Why I married my German wife
Four Brazilian men dish the dirt on
their visa marriages
20
Brazilian bites
From feijoada to meat on a sword,
Brazilian cuisine for everyone
Features
. 21
Verbatim
Hamze Bytyçi on “coming out” at
Berlin’s first Roma Biennale
Regulars
03
Konrad Werner
The new old debates
04
Best of Berlin
A trippy bookstore, virtual golf,
Hungarian craft beer and Marxism
for dummies
48
Berlin bites
Four pizza places with “benefits”
50
Save Berlin
Dan Borden watched Mute so you
won’t have to
51
The Gay Berliner
Behind darkroom doors
52
Ask Hans-Torsten
Running for office and added costs
What’s On
24
Achtung Berlin
A preview of the homegrown
film festival
26 .............................. Film
30 ........................... Music
35 ............................. Stage
38 ................................. Art
42
Events calendar
44
The Berlin Guide
51
Comic
Instabunnies
CC-230x152.qxp_CC-230x152 claim 05.09.17 17:06 Seite 1
young
spontaneous
everywhere
sit at the front for a year
opera and ballets for 10 EURO
concerts for 8 EURO
all advantages for 15 EURO per year
> 030-20 35 45 55
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Komische Oper Berlin
Konzerthaus Berlin
RIAS Kammerchor
Rundfunkchor Berlin
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Staatsballett Berlin
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
www.ClassicCard.de
> forallunder30s
1

Double Englishness
at CineStar Original and IMAX with Laser!
Enjoy Berlin’s widest range of undubbed English versions
all-day at CineStar Original and select shows in English
at IMAX with Laser.
Info and tickets at cinestar.de
Tickets 030. 883 15 82 // www.bar-jeder-vernunft.de
L'Ailleurs de l'autre
Musical Theatre by
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21 22 April
www.radialsystem.de · 030 - 288 788 588

COLUMN— Political Notebook
The new old debates
Konrad Werner explains German politics.
This month: Hasn’t he heard this one before?
Cover illustration by Ellie Dempsey
Editor-in-chief
Nadja Vancauwenberghe
Deputy editor
Rachel Glassberg
Web editor
Walter Crasshole
Film
Paul O’Callaghan
Art director
Martin N. Hinze
Publishers
Maurice Frank
Nadja Vancauwenberghe
Ioana Veleanu
Editorial
Design
Music
Michael Hoh
Art
Anna Larkin
Stage
Daniel Mufson
Food
Françoise Poilâne
Graphic design
Dom Okah
This month’s contributors
Aqueena Crisp, Ellie Dempsey, Francesca Elsey, Alice
Klar, Emily May, David Mouriquand, Ruth Schneider,
Jane Silver, Zhuo-Ning Su. Photography: Alyona
Baranova, German Palomeque. Illustration: Ellie
Dempsey, Alyona Baranova, Agata Sasiuk. Editorial
assistance: Isabella Renner Jones.
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It’s started. Now that the SPD is safely under
the warm duvet of a new coalition with
Angela Merkel, the little dead-skin-feeding
silverfish are emboldened to crawl from under
its edges. There’s Horst Seehofer, Bavaria’s exstate
premier and ex-leader of Merkel’s allied
party the Christian Social Union (CSU), now
Germany’s Minister for the Interior, and for
the untranslatable thing Germans are pleased
to call Heimat. Last month, he uttered the
phrase “Islam does not belong to Germany,”
re-opening a very meaningless “debate” that
some Germans cannot stop brooding over.
And there’s Jens Spahn, a young, increasingly
noisy pretender to Merkel’s chancellery
who’s getting ahead of his relatively
minor role as Germany’s
new health minister by stealing
the AfD’s main media strategy:
saying something obnoxious
to bait normal people. He too
is bringing back debates that a
fair society should have ended
decades ago. We should be settling
other planets, or uploading
our brains into sex robots. But
instead, thanks to this pair of
chancers, we have to push our brains through
articles like “Does Islam belong to Germany?”,
“Should doctors be allowed to offer abortion
advice on their websites?”, and “Does being on
Hartz IV mean you’re poor?”
Being a journalist and fairly lazy, I can of
course be grateful that I don’t need to have
any new thoughts anymore. I can dredge up
the 2011 editions of this column – back when
Berlin’s ex-finance minister Thilo Sarrazin was
complaining about ill-educated Turkish immigrants
in his book Germany is Abolishing Itself
– and my hilarious metaphors and ineffectual
arguments will re-run their course like plastic
toy mice on strings. Politicians and columnists
get old, but the abstract rows they
have just keep grinding through time.
I can understand. It takes psychological
discipline to open new intellectual doors.
But it is annoying that Spahn’s heartless,
dull pronouncements are somehow being
sold to us as the “great new hope” of German
conservatism. He’s supposed to represent
the young and funky CDU, the one that
will arise once Merkel has finally retired
from “dragging” her party to the left.
In fact, Spahn is everything the CDU has
always stood for. He’s just a younger body
filled with the same principle-free careerism
based on the party’s mantra:
be good to German corporations.
Back in 2006, for instance,
when he was a young Bundestag
member who specialised in
health policy, Spahn co-owned
an agency named Politas, which
provided consultancy to pharmaceutical
companies. In the
time-honoured manner of CDU
politicians, taking advantage of
Germany’s paper-thin lobbying
rules, he kept his financial investments just
below the threshold necessary to disclose
them. Politas advertised its services by noting
that it had good contacts in the German
parliament. “Whether it’s a hearing, an offthe-record
discussion, or a plenary debate,
we’re there for you,” the company’s website
said at the time.
If you ask me, it’s a scandal that this man
can become health minister. But there’s no
talk of it in the news. Instead we have to
think about Muslims and abortion again.
Come on everyone, we’re supposed to be
better than this. n
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BEST TRIP LIT
BEST OF BERLIN— April 2018
BERLIN
For a “psychedelic bookstore and
teahouse”, Kali is in fact surprisingly light
on drugs. Yes, the back room of this little
Friedrichshain shop is painted floor-to-ceiling
with kaleidoscopic patterns that would look
great from an “enhanced” POV, and the toilet’s
decorated with cartoon mushrooms spouting
stoner wisdom like, “If the voice in your head
is you, who is the one listening to it?” But the
strongest substance you’re likely to find here
is the organic Earl Grey, and only two of the
10-odd hand-built bookcases are dedicated to
LSD, DMT and Timothy Leary. The rest of the
new German- and English-language fare is an
esoteric grab bag chosen by Kali’s three owners
– particularly founding guru Phoenix Kaspian,
a British app developer turned consciousness
explorer who’s just returned from sabbatical
in California. Beat poets and Indian philosophers
share space with tomes on feminism,
guerilla gardening, PTSD therapy, decluttering
and cryptocurrency. Basically, your friend
who won’t shut up about the time he tried
San Pedro at Burning Man and learned all the
secrets of the universe will want to live here,
but you don’t need to be on that wavelength to
settle into one of Kali’s cosy reading nooks with
a marigold blossom infusion (€2.80). Should
you find yourself ready to get your mind blown
after all, head to a workshop like this month’s
“Microdosing for Start-ups” (Apr 3). —AJ
Krossener Str. 18, Friedrichshain, Tue-Sat 13-20
(silent meditation 20-20:30)
BEST HUNGARIAN
BEER LAB
Ava Johnson
It’s no longer accurate to call craft beer a “trend”
in Berlin – it’s a permanent invasion. IPAs and
Imperial Stouts can be found in even the dingiest
of Spätis and Eckkneipen, and now an entire craft
beer bar has spawned in the side room of 10-year-old
student hangout Szimpla. Opened in February, Labor
Berlin is the creation of Hungarian brewery Mad
Scientist, which has a similar location within Szimpla’s
namesake “ruin pub” in Budapest. There as in here, the
“science” theme runs strong. Against stark white walls
and a menu resembling the periodic table, bartenders
in lab coats tap kegs into 40cl Erlenmeyer flasks. The
brews themselves tend toward the experimental, like
the fruity Mango Bay (€5.50) or the creamy, mochainfused
New York Mocaccino (€6.50). The selection of
12 rotates constantly; try the award-winning, 9 percent
ABV Liquid Cocaine if it’s on tap or, for something
closer to home, have a pilsner from Berlin’s own Brlo
(€5, the cheapest option). Mad prices to be sure, but
unlike Berlin’s other craft beer bars, this one comes
with an escape hatch: if your friends want to keep experimenting,
you can always mosey into the next room
and bring back a €3.50 Pilsner Urquell. —AC
Gärtnerstr. 15, Friedrichshain, daily from 17
4 EXBERLINER 170

BEST ONSCREEN
GOLF GREEN
Chances are that when you hear the the word “club” in Berlin, you’re not likely
to think “Fore!” Of course, there’s Schwarzlicht Minigolf by Görli, and serious
golfers can get a membership card and practice in the open at the “Golf Resort”
in Pankow. But until now, there was nothing like Golf Studio Berlin. Located
in a Prenzlauer Berg office building just outside the Ring, it’s a bit like Wii Golf gone
pro: you use real clubs to thwack real balls into projected virtual environments as
fancy new Trackman technology records your motions. You can watch that swing
back in slo-mo and analyse your performance (€29-35/hour for up to six people,
depending on day of week/time of day). On the other side of the room, a junior challenge
course lets up to eight people play through simulated versions of 28 famous
courses, from Scotland’s Gleneagles to San Diego’s Torrey Pines (€33-39/hour). If
you’re not so much into stats, there are three games you can play for target practice,
including a “whack-a-mole”-style one for the kiddies. Unconvinced? The monthly
beginners’ course runs just €19.90, and after an hour of the supportive staff telling
you you’re a “natural”, you just might be tempted to make golf your new hobby. —FE
Greifswalder Str. 88, Prenzlauer Berg, daily 10-22
BEST OF BERLIN— April 2018
German Palomeque
WORST MARXIST KINDERGARTEN
Berlin has a museum dedicated to currywurst, so why
not a Museum of Capitalism? Both are befitting a city
as famed for its Marxist leanings as it is for its love of
sausage with ketchup. Every Berliner and their mum knows
that capitalism exploits human beings and creates inequality,
and this “museum” (set up by an “interdisciplinary group
of young people”) tries, like most museums these days, to
shove these facts down your throat through tactile learning.
At one station, for example, you crank a hand pump that fills
up a tank with water (representing “capital”) while some of
it drips into a cup, representing workers’ meagre wages. A
text explains: “You have created more value than you have
been paid! That’s called exploitation.” The whole thing
can be consumed in 20-30 minutes, unless you actually sit
down and fully engage yourself with the various pedagogical
games. It ends with a chance to dream about how society
could be improved by dropping wooden dice down holes
representing your top priorities (the environment, abolishing
poverty, minority rights, etc). It’s all hopelessly lowbrow,
imprecise and lacking any reference to the history of capitalism
or its famous opponents (Marx, Castro, Luxemburg?).
Nor does it dare to name today’s capitalist bad guys, like
Deutsche Bank or VW. Overall, you’re better off skimming
the Wikipedia page on the subject, though it might be fun
for under-10-year-olds on a rainy day. Entry is by donation,
so you don’t have much to lose. —SG
Köpenicker Str. 172, Kreuzberg, Wed-Thu 16-20, Sun 14-20
VOLKSBÜHNE
Yael Bartana
What if Women Ruled the World
12.04., 13.04., 14.04.18
Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
www.volksbuehne.berlin
5

Brazil in
PROFILES
Berlin Rags-to-riches
wunderkind
Berlin’s Brazilian community
is larger than you might
think. There are some 5500
Brazilian passport holders living
here; counting those with German/EU
citizenship, the Brazilian
Embassy puts the total number at
about 12,000. Some have been here
for decades; others are recent arrivals
looking to expand their creative
horizons. They’re dancers and
capoeiristas, but also painters, actors,
tattoo artists and much more.
Meanwhile, Brazil’s influence has
spread far across the city. Inspired
by a South American holiday or
simply smitten with a culture that
seems the polar opposite of theirs,
German Berliners are taking up
Forró dancing (page 14), learning
capoeira and performing candomblé
rituals (page 10). Exoticism?
Maybe. But most Brazilians we
spoke to found it more endearing
than offensive.
They told us about their art, their
lives, what they miss (besides
the weather) and where to find
the best caipirinha...
With no fewer than six young dancers from
Brazil and more to come next year, Berlin’s
State Ballet School is playing incubator to
Brazilian talents. One of the most promising:
Matheus Barboza. By Ellie Dempsey
In February 2017, 16-year old Matheus Barboza stepped off a plane into
the grey environs of Tegel airport, with not a euro in his pocket and only
one shot at realising his dream: to become a professional ballerino. In
two days it would be Tanzolymp, Berlin’s annual international dance talent
show, and Barboza’s chance to fund his ambition by scoring a scholarship
with a major ballet school.
Born and raised in one of the poorest suburbs of São Paulo, it was already
a wonder he’d made it that far. His parents couldn’t afford a ballet school,
let alone a plane ticket to Berlin, so he was accompanied by the two women
who’d funded his trip: his ballet teacher Nina Canadari and benefactor Cristina
Mesaneli.
On February 16, in front of an audience of professional scouters and with
1000 other hopeful dancers competing against him, Barboza gave it all he had
on the Admiralspalast stage. The response surpassed his hopes: six scholarship
offers from international dance schools! With a banquet of prospective paths
on the table, Barboza needed no time for contemplation. Berlin’s Staatliche
Balletschule (State Ballet School) offered him not only full tuition, but room
and board as well. Six months later, Barboza left São Paulo behind for the confines
of a campus on the northeastern edge of Prenzlauer Berg.
Ballet was an unlikely dream for a Brazilian boy raised in the impoverished
suburbs of Guaianazes by loving but cash-strapped parents. According to Barboza,
it all started in 2010, when the nine-year-old was watching the Winter
6
EXBERLINER 170

BRAZIL IN BERLIN
Olympics on TV and glimpsed Russian figure skater Evgeni
Plushenko twirling across the ice to the tune of a violin concerto.
“That’s when I thought, yes! This is what I want to do!”
And if he couldn’t learn to spin on ice, then pirouetting on
stage would be his next move.
The following year, Barboza began ballet classes at the
Municipal Theater of São Paulo, a springboard that propelled
him into his next school Lume Casa Cultural at 14. The dance
academy granted him a scholarship that paid for both his
classes and his lengthy commute from Guaianazes. Every
day he took two buses, a train and a metro from his home to
school, a total of six gruelling hours there and back, to the
perplexity of his neighbourhood friends. “Where I come from
in São Paolo, ballet is not really considered an ‘art’,” explains
Barboza. Compared to home-brewed styles like Forró (see
page XX) and samba, “straight-edge” ballet seemed a little
stiff – and a boy in leotard a little, well, queer. “People told
me all kinds of stuff, but every time someone tried to put me
down, I used it as motivation to keep going.” More important
to him was the support of his parents, as well as his mentor
Canadari. It was she who spotted something extraordinary
in this young boy from the suburbs and invested herself both
emotionally and financially in nurturing his budding talent.
“She is like my second mother and my best friend,” Barboza
smiles. “We still speak every day!”
Today 17 and on what seems like a golden-ticket ride to
success, Barboza acknowledges his life in Berlin is not a bed
of roses. He has sacrificed a lot for 15-hour working days in a
language he still struggles to speak. Fortunately, with six Brazilian
dancers (and one dance teacher) already at the school,
there’s no shortage of willing translators. But Barboza misses
his friends and family. It’s especially lonely during the school
holidays when most of his classmates get to travel to their
families, a luxury he cannot afford. Has it been worth it? What
about his childhood figure skating dream? “I still love it and
watch it, but ice skating is not my dream anymore. My passion
is ballet!” he says without hesitation. If all goes well, he’ll see
the culmination of his ballerino dreams at the London Royal
Ballet. But he knows there’s still a long way to go – the competition
is fierce.
Last month, Barboza opened the Staatsballet’s annual gala
(this year at the Volksbühne) with a dazzling duet. Watching
him leap and spin in an impressive display of rubbery excellence,
it’s not so much his technique that sets him aside, but
an emotional, almost symbiotic empathy with the music: his
movements are truly captivating, showing the respect and
admiration he feels for the art that took him from São Paolo
to Berlin and transformed his life. n
“Where I come
from in São Paolo,
ballet is not really
considered an ‘art’...”
German Palomeque
PHOTO: © MARIE STAGGAT
Piano Circle Songs
Francesco Tristano
Sunday, 22. 4. 2018
Bookings
schlossneuhardenberg.de
MARCH APRIL 2018
033476 600-750
7

BRAZIL IN BERLIN
The girl
with the gun
The power of punk sent
Luci Lou on a tattoo odyssey
from São Paolo to Berlin.
By Emily May
The tattoo gun wasn’t Luci Lou’s first passion. “I found
genetics fascinating, and wanted to be a microbiologist,
or a marine biologist… but punk rock changed me,” the
São Paolo native laughs, explaining that her favourite
bands – Bad Religion, “and of course Sepultura, the biggest
metal band in Brazil!” – heightened her awareness of animal
rights. “I would have had to do a lot of tests on animals, including
vivisection to be able to graduate. I thought, shit, I have to
do something different!”
Her original solution: graphic design. She paid her way
through university by doing tattoos, a trick she’d picked up
before she was even old enough to set foot in a studio. “When
I was 16, I co-ran this record shop in São Paulo’s Rock Gallery,
and I rented the spare room to a tattoo artist. She’d ask me
to do drawings for her sometimes, and in return she began to
teach me tattooing.”
Leaving Brazil at 18 to fulfil her Wanderlust, her side gig
became her main occupation. From Buenos Aires to London
(where she completed her official tattoo training at New Wave
Tattoo), with stops in Milan and Mexico in between, Lou
moved to Berlin in 2016, on the invitation of reputed Mitte
studio Berlin Ink. “Luci had guested with us a couple of times
and she was incredibly popular,” says manager Niki Ianiro.
“As a woman it can be hard to be taken seriously in the tattoo
industry. But Luci’s experience and incredible precision earned
her respect in the profession. She’s great!”
Now Lou is one of the 10 international artists working
there on a regular basis. Customers clamour for her colourful
designs that mix art nouveau, graffiti and retro floral patterns,
and are largely influenced by her travels. “I’ve been to so many
countries and I’m a bit like a sponge,” she explains, leafing
through some sketches. “I also do a lot of mandala patterns,
which are very popular in Berlin.”
German Palomeque
German Palomeque
Lou is reputed for
her colourful
designs that mix
art nouveau,
graffiti and retro
floral patterns.
Although she doesn’t speak German, communication has
never been a problem for Lou, even when it comes to complicated
sleeves and cover-ups. “I even had a customer who was
mute! I don’t know how we managed, all I know is she must
have liked it because she’s kept coming back for more!”
The 41-year-old is covered in ink herself, each tattoo corresponding
to a friend or fellow artist. “Stizzo from Milan did a
diamond heart on the back of my knee, Allan Graves from London
did a heart with a spider crawling on it as a tribute to my
favourite Ramones song, ‘Poison Heart’...” She’s grateful for
Berlin’s massive, supportive Brazilian community – “I’ve got
some very good Brazilian friends, and also customers!” Most
commiserate with her about the culture shock of German
bureaucracy. “If you think of it in terms of art – in Brazil it’s
all about curves, and colour and improvised harmony, whereas
Germany is the Bauhaus with lots of squares and straight lines
and preordained functionality. For us, it’s sometimes difficult
to understand why things have to be so inflexible!”
She has no immediate plan to leave the land of straight lines
and Ordnung, but, she says, things could always change. “My
approach to the future is a bit like how I work on my tattoos.
I start drawing without having a perfect idea how I’d like it to
look in the end, then halfway through I might start thinking
it needs a bit more yellow here or a few more leaves. I like to
leave it open. With my life, it’s the same.” n
EXBERLINER 170

A Kreuzberger
from Rio
Her work is mostly
exhibited in Brazil , but
Berlin’s where Cristina
Canale prefers to paint,
in the “serenity” of her
Oranienstraße studio.
By Francesca Elsey
Over 20 years in Berlin, Cristina
Canale has watched the city change
from her peaceful one-room studio
on Oranienstraße. The flat, like
Canale herself, oozes warmth, with large
colourful canvasses stacked against the walls
and afternoon sunlight filtered through the
fourth-floor windows. Canale’s colourful figurative
paintings, which she produces in groups
of 10 or 11 at a time, seem filled with summer;
very different from the stark conceptual art
currently en vogue in Berlin. As a young artist
studying at Rio’s Parque Laie art school in
the 1980s, Canale’s paintings were already
bucking art world trends. She and a group
of fellow painters at Parque Laie developed
a practice that was “different to the mainstream
geometric style, very important for the
resurgence of free painting in Brazil”. Even
so, Canale found herself longing for a change
of scenery. “I’d done a couple of solo shows
and was in a good position as an artist, but
somehow it was getting boring.”
Escape came in the form of a scholarship
from DAAD (the German Academic Exchange
Service) in 1993. Shortly before receiving her
acceptance letter, she took part in an artists’
workshop in Maceio where she met Rolf Behm,
a Berlin-based painter who is now her husband.
DAAD would’ve sent her to Mannheim,
but “this love story” brought her to the capital.
Canale’s first taste of the city was of a
divided Berlin in 1987. “My first impression
was that Berlin wasn’t as beautiful as Rome
or Paris, but so very exciting – we had these
two Berlins, and that made things a lot more
crazy!” When she came back in 1993, she felt
the same appeal for the reunified city “It was
supposed to be unified, but it was obvious
that it was not. Things were still really crazy,
and I loved it!”
Within a year, she’d found both a studio
and a flat on Kreuzberg’s Oranienstraße,
where she and her family lived until 2012
despite gentrification working its soul-gutting
way through the neighbourhood. “At first we
were glad to see more international people
moving here, but soon investors came and
bought the buildings and in no time, the small
stores were gone. It changed so fast! It was
like: where’s my beautiful fruit Laden gone?
And it’s getting worse; I think [gentrification]
is a global plague. Berlin only managed to
resist it a little longer...”
Now Canale, her husband and 19-year-old
daughter live in Graefekiez, but her studio remains
the same. “On the way from my apartment
to my studio, there are two stores that
sell materials – so usually I pick a few things
up, then make a tea when I get here, and start
my workday. I’m very concentrated here.” It’s
this routine and rhythm, as opposed to the
chaos of her native Rio, that Canale thinks allows
her to develop as an artist. “When I think
of Rio, I immediately see the window of my
studio there, where everything is green and
hot and noisy. Kreuzberg feels like serenity.”
But Canale is still strongly connected to
her home country through her gallery, Nara
Roesler, which is based in São Paulo with two
further showrooms in Rio and New York.
Of course, she has had shows here in Berlin
(most recently at Charlottenburg’s Schmalfuss
gallery last October, where she was described
as “one of the most important Brazilian
artists”), but her work is mostly exhibited
back home. Her paintings can be found in
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the oldest
art museum in the city, as well as a few other
Brazilian institutions, and she makes frequent
trips over. “Maybe now that my daughter’s
finished her Abitur, I can start going to Brazil
for longer...” But after over 20 years in the
city, Canale says she feels first and foremost a
Berliner. “I’m a Kreuzberger who comes from
Rio. That’s my identity.” n
German Palomeque
BRAZIL IN BERLIN
Canale has worked
on Oranienstraße for
over 20 years.
April 6-8, 2018
EDWARD W. SAID
DAYS
On Late StyLe
Lectures, talks, & music
in Berlin’s new concert hall.
Information & Tickets
www.boulezsaal.de
t +49 30 47 99 74 11
9
Foto: Mariam Said

The German shaman
Looking to practice Brazilian religious rituals in Berlin? Candomblé
devotee Joachim Fischer helps Berliners connect with the divine
spirits from his Friedrichstraße apartment. By Emily May
“I wouldn’t be alive if
I hadn’t gone to Brazil.”
Joachim Fischer is one
of only two anointed
candomblé priests in Berlin.
German Palomeque
Never heard of candomblé? With more
than two million followers worldwide,
maybe you should have. A cross
between West African voodoo and
Catholicism that came about when African
slaves brought to Brazil were forbidden to pray
to their own gods, it centres around the worship
of divine spirits called orixás who are honoured
through offerings, dances and rituals. In
Berlin, the religion is chiefly represented by Ilê
Obá Sileké, a temple based out of Forum Brazil
and presided over by Babalorixá (supreme
spiritual leader) Murah Soares (see page 16).
But his group is refraining from public rituals
until the end of May as part of an extended
mourning period for Soares’ “spiritual mother”
Mãe Beata de Yemonjá (think Brazil’s Mother
Teresa). And so our introduction to candomblé
came courtesy of an eccentric 56-year-old
southern German who’s turned his Mitte flat
into his own temple of sorts.
“I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t gone to
Brazil,” starts Joachim Fischer, surrounded by
tarot cards, native wooden statutes and Jesus
figurines. Some 20 years ago, diagnosed with
skin cancer, Fischer visited a shaman, or pai de
santo, in the jungle outside Rio de Janeiro. As
he recalls, “I felt so much energy – I could see
the orixás! I really was in another dimension.”
After that, he claims, he was cured.
Fischer, who had worked as an industry
management apprentice, a naval officer and
even a gym owner in Barcelona prior to his
Brazil trip, saw only one way forward: to
become a Pai de Santo himself. “But I couldn’t
stay and live in the jungle, I’m a European,
it would be too much.” Instead he came to
Berlin, where he found a priestess by the name
of Mae Dalva who was, at the time, running
a Neukölln terreiro (church) called Casa de
Oxum. “She took me in like a son,” recalls
Fischer. “She didn’t speak any German or
English, so I translated for her during rituals
and offerings.” After five years of “learning by
doing” at Casa de Oxum (whose founder left
Berlin in 2009) and earning the Pai de Santo
title during a ceremony in Brazil, Fischer
decided to offer his own services to Berliners
in 2003. “I am very open-minded, which means
that while I’m still devoted to the orixás, if
someone comes to me for an aura cleaning and
would prefer to pray to Buddha or Jesus, I can
help them.” Fischer believes that in Germany,
it’s necessary to tailor his practice to European
audiences. “If you want to experience the 100
percent authentic Brazilian way, you should go
to Brazil!”
Fischer’s mostly-German client base comes
to him for card readings (he feels more clairvoyant
using Carl Jung’s cards rather than the
traditional tarot set) or €80 “shamanic journeys”,
which are actually more influenced by
Indian culture than candomblé. The client lies
on the floor whilst Fischer helps them connect
to the spirits and travel to another dimension.
“A psychotherapist would speak; I don’t.
Instead, I give people space and play my drums
and rattles, which act as vehicles to transport
you to another world.”
Clients also come to him to help battle
illnesses such as depression or cancer, or
even to support their new business ventures.
Traditionally, this would entail the sacrifice
of a chicken or a goat, which Fischer does in a
“humane way, with the help of a professional
butcher!” when he’s in Brazil. Here, German
laws mean he can’t ask the local Fleischer for
help with his animal offerings, so the spirits
must contend themselves with a refreshing
glass of wine or some exotic fruit.
Fischer says he used to cater to many Brazilians,
but would now rather focus on his “vision
quests” for Germans looking for a new path in
life. For €1590 (including flights and accommodation)
these eight-day enlightenment retreats
are conducted on El Hierro in the Canaries,
a tiny volcanic island that Fischer finds more
conducive to his work than bustling Berlin.
Participants complete workshops, rituals
and initiations before being sent out into the
mountains for a three-day solo retreat with
no food or even a tent. “I allow them to have
a sleeping bag. But it has to be hard. If you
want to get a real expression from God or from
nature, you have to suffer a bit. That’s life, you
don’t get anything for nothing.” n
10 EXBERLINER 170

Portuguese
for beginners
Her characters are as deutsch as
it gets, but TV actress Cristina
do Rego hasn’t forgotten her roots.
By Rachel Glassberg
On first impression, the only thing Brazilian about Cristina do
Rego is her name. The 31-year-old has made a career out of
playing very German characters in very German productions:
Katharina Kuhn in Berlin sitcom Türkisch für Anfänger; comedian
Bastian Pastewka’s niece Kimberley-Jolante in the long-running
Pastewka; not one but three made-for-TV movies with Schnitzel in the
title. “When I was 15, my first agent told me I should consider changing
my name because I wouldn’t get offered German parts otherwise,” says
Do Rego. “But after a few years, people knew who I was.”
It’s hard to believe that not that long ago, Do Rego was fresh off the
plane from Brazil, a seven-year-old with a hip-swaying gait that her classmates
made fun of and, despite all the efforts of her German mother, no
knowledge of the language besides the word “grün”. Born in Ancieta, she
recalls a “happy, colourful” childhood spent in the country’s northeast.
“My father’s a Brazilian theatre actor, we always had actors and singers
around... Our house was full of life.” But spurred by their desire to provide
their two daughters with a better education, her parents moved the
family to the Ruhrgebiet, uprooting Do Rego’s life. “It was January, I had
to go from walking around barefoot to wearing shoes that were so heavy
I couldn’t lift my feet...” she recalls. “When you look at my childhood
pictures, you can see my facial expression change the moment we arrive
in Germany – from a very carefree child to a serious one.”
She’d adjust soon enough, as school productions and an appearance
on the kids’ talent competition The Mini Playback Show ignited her
love of acting. But that frown was good practice for the grouchy Kim
Pastewka, Do Rego’s first big break at age 17. For the first five seasons of
Pastewka, in addition to having a permanent schlechte Laune, she had to
wear a fatsuit and acne makeup. “Honestly, I always thought the fatsuit
was a good thing for me as an actress – it was nice to play someone else,
something far away from me,” she reflects. “Also, I could go out in
public without it and nobody recognised me.”
These days, Do Rego can’t take the U-Bahn in Cologne (where she
still does most of her shooting) without getting approached. In Berlin,
BRAZIL IN BERLIN
where she’s lived for the
past 10 years, “people
might look at you, but they
don’t come up and speak
to you.” Aside from the
occasional selfie request
from teenage Türkisch für
Anfänger fans when she’s
out walking her dog Milo
around Friedrichshain,
she’s mostly undisturbed.
When she has time, she
goes to the occasional
Brazilian concert or cultural
event. “And I get books and
food at A Livraria (page
17) – it’s nice that there’s
a place where I can feel
connected to Brazil.” She’s
friends with some Brazilian
expats here, and recalls that
“it was a bit weird” introducing
them to her German
clique. “Brazilians are used
to being received with open
Nico Stank
“Brazilians are used to being
received with open arms,
which isn’t exactly the German
way of behaving!”
arms, which isn’t exactly the German way of behaving! When I’m in
Brazil, I see everyone hugging and touching each other all the time – I’m
not used to it, either.” She spends a month or two in her home country
each year, visiting her father (who moved back after her parents
divorced in her teens) and extended family, including “like 500 cousins”.
What does Do Rego’s Brazilian family think about her German
career? “Well, they don’t understand anything, but they’re impressed
that I’m on TV! And they all want me to have a career there.” But
it wouldn’t be that simple, she says. “If someone asked me to do a
project in Brazil I’d be the happiest girl on earth, but I wouldn’t want
to go through the audition process over there. I feel more insecure
when I’m acting in Portuguese – I just don’t have the same sense of
comic timing.”
She’s played one Portuguese-speaking character in Germany: Filipa,
a veterinarian on the ZDF series Frühling. But after a few episodes subtitling
her lines, the network decided Filipa should learn German. “The
audience for that kind of series is a bit older...” Do Rego says diplomatically.
“So now I’m going to be speaking in German with an accent
I invented. I heard my dad talk with a Portuguese accent while he was
living here, so I tried to talk like him... I don’t know if I did it right.” n
Il barbiere di
Siviglia
Gioachino Rossini
Buy your
tickets
now!
April 6th, 2018
All performAnces with english surtitles!
0049 030 47 99 74 00
11

CAPOEIRA
Berlin’s Angola godfather
Master Rosalvo Dos Santos has made it his mission to
train an army of German capoeristas. By Aqueena Crisp
With its combination of dance,
acrobatics, martial arts and
live music, it’s not hard to see
capoeira’s appeal. There are at
least 15 studios dedicated to the Brazilian sport
in Berlin, and countless more gyms and yoga
studios offering classes (see sidebar). But when
capoeira mestre (master) Rosalvo Dos Santos
came here in 1989, it was a different story.
“There were a few Brazilians teaching
capoeira here, but I realised right away that
none of them knew how to execute and teach
it correctly,” says the 50-year-old Brazilian native.
“There are two types of capoeira, Angola
and Regional, but they never explained the
difference. They were just combining random
movements from both without understanding
the meaning behind what they were doing.”
Dos Sontos, on the other hand, was a pure
Angoleiro. Less aggressive and more expressive
than the Regional style, Angola hews
closest to capoeira’s beginnings as a martial
art among fugitive Angolan slaves in 16thcentury
Brazil. It’s that style that Dos Sontos
fell in love with as a 16-year-old growing up
in Salvador, a coastal city reputed for the
vibrancy of its Afro-Brazilian cultural blend.
“A friend of mine from school was in a small
capoeira group, and he convinced me to come
watch them practice. After watching for
long enough, I asked if I could join.”
By 19, after some time
spent studying under
legendary mestre Cobra
Mansa, he was
already teaching
capoeira to a theatre group in his home town.
“I didn’t advertise my work – I didn’t even
charge anyone for attending my classes in the
beginning. I just thought that I would do it as
a hobby. But people kept on coming to me.”
Abandoning his original plans to become a
mechanic in his stepfather’s auto workshop,
Dos Salvos co-founded the group Filhos de
Angola (“sons of Angola”) in 1984.
Persuaded to move to Berlin by his now
ex-wife, he made it his sole mission to make
sure Germans knew what Capoeira Angola
truly was. He found a kindred spirit in Susy
Oesterreicher, a German capoerista who’d
begun practicing the sport in 1989 and was
also frustrated with the quality of the classes
in Berlin. In 1997, the pair set up Academie
Jangada, the first-ever Capoeira Angola school
in all of Europe.
Now operating out of Prenzlauer Berg’s
Kulturbrauerei, Jangada covers everything
from aerial yoga to breakdancing, but it’s
Rosalvo and Oesterreicher’s capoeira classes
that remain the most in-demand. When he’s
not teaching there, Dos Santos is spreading
the gospel at international Capoeira Angola
meetings and workshops. Ironically, with a
German teaching partner and a mix of German
and international students, he spends
little time among fellow Brazilians. “I used to
be involved in the ‘scene’, but not anymore.
After a while, you keep seeing the same faces,
it gets less exciting... and being an instructor
just takes so much out of you, you don’t have
the energy to do anything else.”
Dos Santos’ ultimate dream is to bring a
German all the way up to the mestre level,
capoeira’s highest honour. “It isn’t as simple
as it sounds. People start training, and then
something comes up and they just drop
everything and don’t return. But I still believe
that one day, one of my students will become
a capoeira master.” n
German Palomeque
GLOSSARY
JOGO: “Game,” the term for a typical capoeira session. RODA: The “wheel” where the game is played. Participants form a
circle and sing, clap and play instruments as two capoeiristas enter and show off their skills. BERIMBAU: Capoeira’s signature
instrument, a one-stringed bow that dictates the rhythm of the game. Often played together with one or more Pandeiros (a
tambourine-like frame drum) and Atabaques (a large wooden hand drum). MESTRE: Capoeira’s highest ranking, represented by
a white belt and awarded only to those who make a lifetime commitment to learning and instructing the sport.
12 EXBERLINER 170

A capoeira test drive
Want to dance, sing and fight with the Brazilian pros?
We got a workout at three of Berlin’s many studios.
By Ellie Dempsey
BRAZIL IN BERLIN
Since
when are
you multilayered?*
ABADÁ-CAPOEIRA-SCHULE
Before starting class at her 13-year-old studio,
instructor Esmeralda assigns everyone
an “incognito” name like Fada (“fairy”) or
Canela (“cinnamon”), a nod to the nicknames
used by capoeira’s original Angolan
slave practitioners in order to protect
their identities from Portuguese colonists.
Esmeralda herself is a German named Anja
Wurth, and her non-profit classes mix
Regional and Angola styles with the sole
purpose of promoting the art. Pounding a
beat on the Atabaque drum, her students
strike their legs high in the air, punting
inches away from a fatal collision with their
partners’ heads – if you’re looking to be
thrown into the pit with the pros, then this
is the school for you! But what seems like
an aggressive Brazilian brawl is in reality
surprisingly respectful. These close-knit
capoeiristas only “play” at kicking and vaulting
over one another, always ensuring their
partner knows when to duck, and there to
lend a hand to those who don’t.
Urbanstr. 93, €55/month for up to
five sessions per week
ACADEMIA JANGADA
Beginners who are seeking a gentler introduction
to capoeira should check out Rosalvo
Dos Santos’ original Capoeira Angola
academy. His German-language classes,
taught in a 120sqm studio in Prenzlauer
Berg’s Kulturbrauerei, ease first-timers into
the basic movements of the Angola style,
such as the Ginga dance pattern, the Negativa
crouching stance and the Chapa de costa
kick. Chanting out the steps in the traditional
singsong rhythm, Dos Santos guides
your intimate group of up to four through a
rhythmic dance routine that will have you
two-stepping across the floor.
Schönhauser Allee 36, €39/three months
for one session per week
WULI-SCHULE
If it’s a full-on Brazilian experience you’re
after, head to this Portuguese-language
mixed-style class in Charlottenburg taught
by the Rio-born Mestre Bailarino. Here,
every step you make is scrutinized and practiced
until you’ve mastered the art – the
Brazilian way. In a group of mixed abilities,
you’re often partnered with a pro to mirror,
which can be daunting but ultimately
rewarding when you finally get in sync. And
after two and half hours of sweat and toil,
Bailarino will gather you around the Berimbaus
in song, thrust a Pandeiro drum in your
hand, and make you play out the beat whilst
your fellow capoeiristas “play” in the ring.
Leibnizstr. 102, €22/class
Theatre with English surtitles
»¿Qué haré yo con esta espada?«
by Angélica Liddell
Direction, Set and Costume Design:
Angélica Liddell
On April 6 and 7
»Evel Knievel contra Macbeth na terra do
finado Humberto«
by Rodrigo García
Direction and Set Design: Rodrigo García
On April 7 and 8
»Inflammation du verbe vivre«
after Philoktet by Sophokles
Text and Direction: Wajdi Mouawad (Paris)
On April 11 and 12
»Saigon«
by Caroline Guiela Nguyen and Ensemble
Direction: Caroline Guiela Nguyen
On April 13, 14 and 15
»LENIN«
by Milo Rau & Ensemble
Direction: Milo Rau
On April 15
»La Despedida«
by Mapa Teatro
Concept and Direction: Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden
On April 19, 20 and 21
»Ibsen Huis«
by Simon Stone based on motifs by Henrik
Ibsen
Direction: Simon Stone
On April 20, 21 and 22
Theatre in English
German Palomeque
*»Returning to Reims«
based on »Retour à Reims« by Didier Eribon
in a version by the Schaubühne
Direction: Thomas Ostermeier
On April 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8
13
Tickets: 030 890023 www.schaubuehne.de

Forró for all
DANCE TREND
Originating in 19th-century Brazil and now popular throughout
Europe, the scintillating moves of Forró have been setting
Berlin’s dance floors – and a few hearts – alight. By Emily May
Ellie Dempsey
You’re spending your
Wednesday night as you
might any other, in a dimly
lit, spacious bar in Prenzlauer
Berg. But as the clock strikes
20:00 here at Atopia Kaffeehaus,
the tables are pushed aside and
the innocuous setting quickly
becomes a den of palpable
flirtation and intimacy, incited
by the Brazilian dance force
that is Forró. There’s a brief
class for beginners to learn the
basics, before they are thrust
into a sweaty hotbed of dancing
couples. So close they’re almost
kissing, they brush knees,
cheeks and hips, as well as other
dancers, forcing an overspill
into the bar area, where they
dodge tables of vinho drinkers.
Despite your best efforts to
remain a spectator, the irresistible
rhythms booming from the
sound system deserve more
than a mere foot-tap, and you
too are eventually coaxed from
your seat by the fire-footed
Brazilian dancer you’ve been
watching all night.
“Any mistake is my mistake,”
he reassures you before he
draws you in close, breathily
singing Portuguese lyrics into
your ear. But Brazilian Portuguese
isn’t the only dialect you
hear diffusing through the packed venue.
You catch snippets of conversations in a
variety of languages between dancers of all
ages and walks of life, from young Englishspeaking
students to mature German businessmen.
Before you know it, it’s midnight.
On the way home, all you can think about is
the next time you’ll be led around the floor
with your partner’s thigh lodged commandingly
between your legs. And that’s when
you realise: you’ve caught Forró fever.
A
folk dance originating from the north
east of Brazil, Forró (literally, “for
all”) has a growing community of followers
in Berlin, the beating heart being the
Wednesday night parties at Atopia organised
by Tome Forró, a non-profit collective
founded in 2013. Forró is renowned for its
inclusivity; according to one theory, the term
dates back to the 1900s, when workers on
Brazil’s Great Western Railway would classify
their weekend dance parties as either for
railroad personnel only or “for everyone”.
The dance culture is thriving across Europe,
with prominent festivals hosted in London,
Lisbon, Stuttgart and Paris to name just a
few. Berlin hosted its sixth Forró festival this
January, organised by Brazilian Carlos Frevo
of Wedding dance school Danca Frevo.
Festivals aside, the backbone of Forró in
Berlin is the bustling, tightly knit community
of die-hard regulars. With Brazilians,
Germans, Russians, Australians and many
other nationalities among their
number, these Forró aficionados
have become fast friends and attend
every party to satisfy their
dance compulsion. There are
Facebook groups, but the best
way to infiltrate the scene and
learn about upcoming events is
to get chatting with the partner
you’ve been closely orbiting for
the past 20 minutes. Once you
do, it’s hard not to find youself
inducted into this welcoming
band of Brazilian enthusiasts.
After attending Forró classes
for just one week, you’ll probably
begin to recognise familiar
faces and score invites to live
concerts and parties – like Ama
Forró’s Sunday night dance parties
on Oranienburger Straße.
Taking place in the red-lit,
underground environs of club
Aufsturz, these Sunday sessions
are organised by East Berlinborn
Tobias Conradi. Having
danced tango for 15 years and
worked as a tango DJ, Conradi
discovered Forró while studying
Brazilian Portuguese and
began organising parties in 2015.
“I love to dance and wanted to
give the opportunity to others.”
Comparing his two favourite
dance styles, he says, “Tango is
generally more serious, whereas
Forró is more relaxed.” And while the tango
scene boasts a 30-year history and thousands
of members, “Forró is more like a family.”
One recruit to the “family” is Angela, a
Hungarian former ballet dancer who
stumbled upon the style by accident
a year ago. “I was playing ping pong at Atopia
on my birthday when the staff came over to
say they had to get started with some dance
thing... I’d never heard of Forró before, but I
was curious so I stayed. I immediately fell for
the shameless cheerfulness of the moves and
the happy music.” In her view, this joyfulness
is what sets Forró apart: “Salsa is much more
serious, tango so dramatic. But Forró is such
an unpretentious, happy dance with a lot of
14
EXBERLINER 170

BRAZIL IN BERLIN
space for creativity and improvisation. That’s
what I love about it. It’s so full of life!” Having
never taken an official lesson, she picked
up everything she knows on the dance floor,
and whilst her background as a professional
dancer may have helped, Angela is adamant
that anyone can dance Forró. However, she
admits the girls have a slight advantage over
the guys when it comes to learning the dance
off the cuff. “As a
woman, all you need
is a good partner.
The man is leading,
so he can bring
his own style, and
when you’re with an
experienced dancer,
then it’s amazing,”
she says with stars in
her eyes.
Originally from Dresden, 40-year-old
John is one such male dancer who’s felt the
pressure to learn the steps more systematically.
“At first I was very shy to ask girls to
dance, because I hadn’t had many lessons
and thought I was a bad dancer.” A salsa
dancer for 15 years, he discovered Forró in
the villages of northeastern Brazil during a
windsurfing trip in 2016. “I saw how much
fun people had, and I decided I wanted a
piece of it, too!” Like many dancers, John
falls into the “urban professional by day,
Brazilian party animal by night” category.
He attends Forró twice a week as an outlet
from his job as a scientist at a federal research
institute. “I sit in front of a computer
all day, and Forró gives me the chance to
end the day better than just going home and
watching the TV on my own. It’s like a fitness
programme for body and mind.” It has
other motivational factors, too: “Sometimes
when I’m about to leave, I spot a new beautiful
girl who’s an amazing dancer. I’ll stay
longer just to dance with her!” he laughs.
For those, like John, who want some
coaching before diving onto the
dancefloor, Tome Forró also runs
weekly classes for beginners and intermediates
on Mondays as part of the Humboldt
University’s sports programme. These
workshops break down the basics to give an
introduction to the style but the approach
is, admittedly, slightly removed from the
raw energy of the dance and more tailored
towards a stereotypically pragmatic German
audience, with attendees urged to “be as
clean as possible.”
On the way home, all you can
think about is the next time
you’ll be led around the floor
with your partner’s thigh
lodged commandingly between
your legs.
Even so, Brasilia-born Dhiego Luiz,
who teaches another Forró class in
Grünberger Straße with his German
partner Diana Pary, praises the extent to
which Berliners have adopted the dance
form. “Meeting all
these people singing
Forró songs,
learning Portuguese
and being
so interested in
the history and
culture of the
dance, I’m even
more inspired to
expand and share
my own knowledge with them.” In fact,
many Brazilians in the Berlin Forró community
have learnt the dance in Germany
from a German teacher, largely because
the style has been developed into a more
technical, complex form here, whereas,
according to one Brazilian man at Atopia,
“at home, Forró is just like [cue a hunched
static sway with a screwed-up face].
I was more into reggae and capoeira
back in Brazil.”
Though some of these Brazilian Berliners
don’t speak much English or German, the
universal language of dance readily comes
into play, and anyway, in Forró you change
partners so often that you’re bound to find
someone with whom you share a common
language. “You don’t have exclusive partners,
you dance with everyone – the good
ones, the less good ones...” Angela explains.
“Over the weeks and months, you get to
know all the dancers, many people you’d
never get to meet otherwise.”
But does all this sensual dancing ever
lead to anything more? “The intimacy
is restricted to the dance floor,” Angela
insists. The Forró scene is keen to disassociate
itself from the infamous salsa “meat
market”, where many single women sport
fake wedding rings to fend off lecherous
partners. But it’s hard to believe that Forró
isn’t responsible for more than a few happy
couples in Berlin today, or, at the very least,
many friendships. As the old song goes: the
best things happen while you’re dancing. n
WITH
ENGLISH SURTITLES
CHILDREN OF PARADISE
(KINDER DES PARADIESES)
based on the film by Prévert and Carné
04/06/2018, 7.30 - 10.30 pm, Großes Haus
(Theatre day: reduced price of 12 €
in all price categories, student tickets 9 €)
05/20/2018, 7.30 - 10.30 pm, Großes Haus
THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE
(DER KAUKASISCHE KREIDEKREIS)
by Bertolt Brecht
04/08/2018, 7.30 - 9.15 pm, Großes Haus
04/24/2018, 7.30 - 9.15 pm, Großes Haus
CALIGULA
by Albert Camus
04/23/2018, 7.30 - 9.00 pm, Großes Haus
NEW:
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
(ENDSTATION SEHNSUCHT)
by Tennessee Williams
04/30/2018, 7.30 pm, Großes Haus
05/01/2018, 7.30 pm, Großes Haus
05/11/2018, 7.30 pm, Großes Haus
05/12/2018, 7.30 pm, Großes Haus
IN ENGLISH
GUIDED TOUR BEHIND THE SCENES
04/06/2018, 5.30 – 6.30 pm
THE TIN DRUM
(DIE BLECHTROMMEL)
by Günter Grass
05/28/2018, 7.30 pm, Großes Haus
TOME FORRÓ PARTY Atopia Kaffeehaus, Prenzlauer Allee 187, Wed 21-24 (introductory class in English,
21:00) AMA FORRÓ Sundays 18-22, April location TBA TOME FORRÓ CLASSES Humboldt University sports
campus, Ruppiner Str. 47-48, Mon 20-21 (beginner), 21-22 (intermediate), in English FORRÓ CLASSES WITH
DHIEGO LUIZ AND DIANA PARY Tanzclub City-Dance, Grünberger Str. 44, Tue 19:15-20:15; Bebop Tanzschule,
Pfuelstr. 5, Thu 19:30-20:30, in German DANCA FREVO Tanzraum Wedding, Oudenarder Str. 16-20, Tue
18:30-20, in German
APRIL 2018
15
WWW.BERLINER-ENSEMBLE.DE

BRAZIL IN BERLIN
ROUND-UP
Best of Brazil
Where Brazilians
(and the Germans who
love them) drink, shop,
sing, wax and more.
Illustrations by Ellie Dempsey
Believe the caip
You may knock a caipirinha back on a Friday
night (or any other night of the week, no
judgement here), but does that sugary drink
in your hand actually do justice to Brazil’s
national cocktail? Chances are it doesn’t.
The caipirinha’s exact origins are as unclear
as your head after a night spent drinking it –
one popular account says the recipe evolved
from a Spanish flu remedy in the early 1900s.
What we do know is that a true caipirinha
contains just four ingredients: the fermented
sugarcane spirit cachaça, limes, refined white
sugar and ice. Fizzy water, as you’ll find in
many a Berlin “Caipi”, is a strict no-no.
So do any caipirinhas here pass muster?
Ask a Brazilian in Berlin where to get the
best version of the drink, and they’ll either
tell you to fly to Brazil or come to their flat.
Press the issue and they’ll mention Café do
Brasil, the 15-year-old Brazilian restaurant in
Kreuzberg 61. The food, while unquestionably
authentic, is on the pricey side. But
come for their Thursday night drink special
and you’ll get a real-deal caipirinha for only
€3.50 (€4.80 all other days). With a hefty
pour of Velho Barreiro cachaça, the bartenders
skimp neither on quality nor quantity
– just one of these is strong enough to have
you staggering back to Platz der Luftbrücke
U-Bahn, dreaming of the beaches of Rio. —FE
Café do Brasil, Dudenstr. 2, Kreuzberg,
Tue-Sun 16-24
If you can’t say it,
sing it
Want to pick up Portuguese without putting
pen to paper? Rehearsing weekly at Charlottenburg’s
Musik Schule City West, the
18-year-old Brasil Ensemble will have your
tongue rolling and hips swaying. Grooving
behind her electric keyboard, Brazilian
pianist and conductor Andrea Botelho leads
17 women and 13 men, the majority of them
German, through Portuguese-language
bossa nova, samba and choro classics. Correct
pronunciation is a must, and she will
call you out on it! It’s not all class rules
however – the group feels more like a crosscontinental
family, helping one another
out with stressing those nasal vowels, and
indulging in some light-hearted mocking
between pieces. Listening to them harmonise
as they step-click to the rhythm of the
rebelo drum – part of the choir’s very own
live-band – you really are transported to a
sunnier climate. They’re currently seeking
experienced sopranos and baritones, so if
you fancy yourself the next João Gilberto,
head to Brasil Ensemble’s website and signup
for an audition. Mic-shy? Since 2016, the
Musikschule also offers lessons in Brazilian
piano, guitar and percussion. Or simply
come along to a performance – the next is
April 24 at Ufafabrik as part of International
Tag der Choro. —ED
More info at brasil-ensemble.de
Forum or
against ’em?
If you’re at all interested in Brazil in Berlin,
the first thing you’ll come across after a
quick online search is the 11-year-old intercultural
centre Forum Brasil. Located in a
leafy Kreuzberg Hinterhof with a winding
outdoor staircase that connects the events
E
room with the office upstairs, the volunteerrun
non-profit definitely gives the illusion
of a welcoming spiritual space. Just beware:
follow the website’s invitation to “just come
by!” during office hours and you might, like
us, end up getting thoroughly chastised
by imperious German manager Martin
Titzck. The cognitive behavioural therapist
directs the forum along with Afro-Brazilian
dancer, choreographer and candomblé high
priest (see page 10) Murah Soares, and
both reacted to our repeated interview
requests with unexpected hostility. On the
other hand, at a Friday night jam session
we managed to crash, the atmosphere was
relaxed and warm, with a mostly-German
crowd of all ages clapping along to choro
led by Eudinho Soares and Andrea Botelho
of Musikschule City West (see left). Other
events range from queer theatre performances
to Brazilian Portuguese lessons
(€42/month) to cooking classes (page 20).
Sign up online for a German-language intro
to Brazilian culture, but just don’t ask too
many questions... —RB
Möckernstr. 72, Kreuzberg
A night at
Niemeyer’s
Oscar Niemeyer is mostly known for his
masterwork, the capital city of Brasília.
But the 20th-century Brazilian modernist
architect also left his mark in Berlin’s
Hansaviertel, the quiet neighbourhood at
the northwestern edge of Tiergarten. Invited
as part of Interbau 1957, his contribution to
the housing development it spawned, which
also includes buildings by Le Corbusier and
Walter Gropius, is a geometric, eight-storey
block of flats with his signature V-shaped
ground-floor columns. The Oscar-Niemeyer-
Haus may not be as dazzling as his Catedral
de Brasília, but it does sport some quirky
features, such as the adjacent tower housing
an elevator only connected to the building
Atelier Eichhorn
16 EXBERLINER 170

at the fifth and seventh floors – bad luck for
those on the remaining six storeys. As one
resident once quipped, “He can’t even build
a proper elevator; how can he build a city?” If
you’re not put off by the prospect of copious
flights of stairs and want to see what it’s like
to live inside an architectural icon, there’s a
two-bedroom flat on AirBnB going for €125/
night and a 40sqm holiday rental on wunderflats.com
for a mere €1180/month. For just
€7 (€4 in winter), you can also get a taste
of Brazilian design at Marzahn’s Gärten der
Welt with São Paulo landscape architect Alex
Hanazaki’s “Earth, Air, Fire, Water” garden,
an interactive space filled with pools of cascading
water and sculptural stone walls. —EM
Altonaer Str. 6, Tiergarten
BRAZIL IN BERLIN
owned waxing salons in Berlin, where a
clientele of Germans and expats – men and
women – go not just for the stereotypical
full monty but for legs, arms, eyebrows,
the works. What makes Brazilian waxing
special? “We use hot honey wax,” says Marx
proudly. “And we don’t work with any fabric
to tear the hair off. That makes it a lot faster
to get rid of all the hairs, and it doesn’t hurt
that bad... if you are used to it!” —AC
Wax in the City, Walter-Benjamin-Platz 5; Alte
Schönhauser Str. 33/34 Rio Waxing, Linienstr.
214; Muthesiusstr. 12
momentum
5— 8
12—15 apr
Apr 27 / 28 / 30, 2018 8 pm / Apr 29, 7 pm
BLOODY, MEDIUM
ODER DURCH
Tickets & Infos: (030) 754 537 25
by Anestis Azas
und Ensemble
www.halle -tanz-berlin.de
phone:
440 44 292
German Palomeque
Berlin’s most authentic
French bistro
Brazil in a bookshop
The first
depiladora
Waxing took a while to grab hold (and
yank) in Berlin. Long notorious for their
au naturel body hair style, German women
favoured the razor when they finally converted
to the hair removal mainstream. In
fact, it wasn’t until 2005 that Berlin’s first
waxing studio, Wax in the City, set up shop
– and its German owners weren’t entirely
sure how to go about it. So they turned to
Brazil’s best professionals. Originally from
Rio de Janeiro, Cleide Marx had been working
as a depiladora (waxer) for eight years
when a friend-of-a-friend put her in touch
with the Wax in the City crew. They offered
her an all-expenses-paid trip to Germany,
and in November 2005 she trained the first
generation of Berlin wax practitioners –
mostly Brazilian expats, with a few German
cosmeticians in the mix. Some of her
trainees stayed at Wax in the City, which by
now has multiple locations all over Germany;
others went on to open salons of their
own. Marx herself split off in 2006 to found
Mitte studio Rio Waxing with her German
husband. Today there are some 16 Brazilian-
It’s advertised as a Portuguese-Italian bookstore,
but walk into the unassuming A Livraria
on Torstraße and you’ll find one of Berlin’s
most beloved Brazilian hotspots. Founded in
October 2006 by two friends from Italy and
Brazil, this jam-packed shop crams Italian
prose next to literary classics by João Ubaldo
Ribeiro, teach-yourself Portuguese textbooks
and live-orchestral Samba DVDs. But the
main attraction for non-native-speakers
has to be A Livraria’s selection of souvenirs,
from framed prints by folk artist Jose Borges
to football scarves to artisan-made earrings.
Wannabe-tourists can pick up a pair of
Brazilian flag socks complete with matching
cap, wallet and miniature drum keychain,
for that unmistakeable “why did I buy this?”
holiday feeling. Actual Brazilians head to the
grocery section for pan de queso mix and organic
cachaça – or they drop by after hours,
when A Livraria’s bustling basement comes
alive with Forró parties, percussion concerts,
plays in Portuguese, literature readings and
more. Check their Facebook page to see
what’s on – or just swing by the store, grab
yourself some goodies and a Portuguesedubbed
copy of Dear John, and you’re all set
for your evening of tinned feijoada and homemade
caipirinhas by the radiator. —ED
Torstr. 159, Mitte, Mon-Fri 10-19, Sat 11-17:30
Adalberstr. 83, Kreuzberg
Kotbusser Tor (U1, U8)
PFEFFERBERG THEATER
Schönhauser Allee 176
10119 Berlin
chezmichel-berlin.de
and
APRIL 13. 14. 15.
19:30
Mon-Fr: 11:30-22:30
Sat-Sun: 15:00-22:30
Reservations
www.pfefferberg-theater.de
030 93 93 58 555
APRIL 2018
17
© underskinphotography www.sicilianocontemporaryballet.com www.matresanch.com

CONFESSIONS
Alyona Baranova
Why I married my German wife
It could be a Brazilian beach flirtation turned happiness ever after, but it usually isn’t. It’s
harsh Berlin winters, cheating, lying and eventually divorce. Four Brazilian guys told us
whether marrying German women for the visa is really worth it. By Alice Klar
Sitting at a bar in Mitte, Leon* is the prototype of a
“Latin lover”: neatly combed and gelled hair, freshly
shaved, sharply dressed, a tad too much aftershave
that you smell only when he’s sitting closer. When he’s
talking to you, he looks at you like you’re the only other
person in the world.
No wonder his wife Eva* fell for him. They met during a
semester abroad in the UK, he coming from a small town
near Brasília and she from Munich, both studying pedagogy.
“Where I come from there is not much, honestly,” Leon
begins. “I have three siblings, never met my dad, and my
mum struggled all our lives to provide for us.” Education in
Brazil is free, but he had to finance the study abroad programme
himself. “I was bartending before I came to Europe
so I had some savings. Once my money was gone, I started
borrowing from other students, but I couldn’t do that forever...”
says the 28-year-old with a smile. “Ever since I was a
boy, my mother would tell me how good-looking I was. She
thought I should be a model, but I didn’t really want that. I
find it very gay… But when I got to the UK, I realised the effect
I had on European women. They were all after me, they
believed everything I told them and they were very outspoken,
thinking they could be braver with the Latino guy.”
And so Leon decided to marry himself into a better future.
For months he waited for the right girl, trying with many,
sleeping with even more. When the fairly inexperienced Eva
arrived to the programme, he knew he’d hit the jackpot. “I
was done with my semester and stayed on a few weeks when
she arrived – she came early to work before her studies. I
thought she was cute, very serious, self-disciplined but innocent
at the same time. I chatted her up at a student party
and by the end of the night I knew she was falling for me.
“Monogamy is not for
men. Especially not for
Brazilian men.”
She played hard-to-get for a few days, but two weeks later
she told me she loved me.” Leon returned to Brazil afterwards.
Eva visited twice in the next six months and asked
her parents to pay for Leon’s visit to Germany; in between,
they were busy planning a future over Skype. “I kept telling
her that the only real chance we had was to get married and
although her parents were really against it, she eventually
18
EXBERLINER 170

agreed. We got married in Brazil, and then
again here in Germany. We had to prove our
relationship to get the spousal visa but it
wasn’t a problem, really.”
After six months the two moved to Berlin,
where they’ve stayed for the past three and a
half years. “I thought I’d be happier here, and
I am,” Leon says. “I know a lot of guys from
home who live here, and we go out a lot. I
can get other girls easily because we ‘alibi’
for each other.”
He laughs, and Allan*, the hip-looking guy
behind the bar, laughs with him. He’s one
of Leon’s partners in crime – or at least, he
used to be.
“
“I realised the effect
I had on European
women. They were
all after me, they
believed everything I
told them.”
My story is actually fairly similar,”
Allan begins. “Although I
really always did have a thing for
German girls! I find them sexy. I come from
Fortaleza, in the north of Brazil, and whenever
there were German girls around, I’d
hook up with them, especially if they were
blonde.” His attraction didn’t come without
ulterior motives, though. “I really wanted
to move to Europe, so when things started
getting serious with this girl Roxy*, I thought
I couldn’t miss my chance. She was there as a
tourist but ended up staying for another two
months, living with me and my roommates.
I asked her to marry me the day she left, and
she said yes, came back to Berlin, got some
things sorted and a few weeks later was back
in Brazil, preparing our wedding.”
Before long, the two were in Berlin together.
“It all went extremely smoothly and
quickly. I did my integration course, studied
German, she supported me financially while
I couldn’t work. She knew I was a womanizer
before I met her, but she thought that
was over now. Well, it wasn’t. I just can’t
resist, it’s in my blood!” he says as he taps
a beer. But “alibi-ing” with Leon and other
friends only worked for so long, and eventually,
his wife found him out. “Not long
after our fifth anniversary she showed me
a printed copy of my Messenger chats with
BRAZIL IN BERLIN
several girls and told me that she wanted to
divorce. But at least she was a sweetheart
and waited to file the papers until I actually
got my permanent residency. So yeah, now
I’m officially a free man!”
While chatting, Leon and Allan are
constantly exchanging words in
Portuguese, shamelessly checking
out the women walking into the bar. It’s still
early, though: they’ll wait a little longer for
the right girl. For now they’re joined by two
friends. One of them, Pedro* grew up with
Allan in Fortaleza; Marcello* is a drinking and
partying buddy they met here. Both are 30,
both are married to German women, both
are cheating on them and neither seems all
that apologetic about it. As they drink, they
commiserate about the hardships of their visa
marriages. “It was actually almost over for me
before the wedding… We were already in Germany
and were scheduled to go to the Brazilian
embassy to sign the papers in a few days,
when we ran into a girl I’d slept with a few
weeks earlier, and she made a scene, telling
Jane* that I had cheated on her.” That’s the
kind of “bad luck” Pedro says he’s proud to
have skilfully countered. “Of course, Jane said
she wanted to call off our wedding, but I managed
to convince her that it was a one-time
thing because I was scared of getting married,
commitment and all... She believed it, and
here we are, three and a half years later. Only
one and a half to go and I can get my visa!”
Marcello, on the other hand, is there to
warn him that things don’t always pan out
the way you planned: his wife just had a
baby. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. The
plan was to get married, apply for citizenship
and then get divorced. It’s not that I
don’t love her, I just think that monogamy
is not for men. Especially not for Brazilian
men. But now I have this beautiful baby
girl, and I really wouldn’t like to leave her,
ever!” What’s next? “I have no idea what to
do, I guess I’m going to stick around and I
will support them. I also have to support my
father back home in São Paolo, his health is
really poor and there’s no one to take care
of him since my mother died… It’s not easy,
man, it’s not easy,” ponders Marcello in a
long sigh. “And the baby wakes up every two
hours at night. I am so tired, I don’t actually
have the energy to chase after girls. That’s
never happened to me before!”
Pedro’s wife, too, is pushing for a baby.
Maybe she feels that’s the only way to get a
Brazilian Don Juan to commit to the life they
schemed for? n
*Names changed
ApRil
26–29
100
yeaRS
oF
BEaT
ConceRts,
TAlKS, FIlM
TeRRI lyne
CaRRIngton,
Th eo PaR R Ish ,
jlIn, Goat,
Tony Allen,
TAlvIN SINGH ×
SeB ROCHFORD ×
BUDGIE
KaRl BaRtos,
FReddi Williams
Evans (lectuReS),
AND mANy mORE
MARCH 2018

BRAZIL IN BERLIN
FOOD
Brazilian bites
When it comes to Brazilian food in Berlin, there’s
truly something for everyone. We sampled the
wide range of options. By Aqueena Crisp and René Blixer
For Brazilians and
their friends
When we asked our interviewees in this issue
where they went for a taste of home, Café
Mori was the most common answer. The
Görlitzer Park restaurant’s owner, Berlinborn
Alexander Mori, learned the traditional
recipes from his Brazilian mother. The star
of his small menu is hands-down the feijoada,
Brazil’s national dish: a hearty black bean
stew served here with braised pork, basmati
rice, farofa (roasted manioc flour) and
tomato-coriander salad (€7/€5.90 for a small
portion). In the vegan alternative feijao marrom,
Mori omits the pork, switches the black
beans for pinto and adds roasted garlic for
almost the same depth of flavour (€5.80/€5).
For dessert, there are Sonho de Valsa
chocolate bonbons (€1) or good old Kuchen
like vegan apple cake (€3.40/slice) or carrot
cake (€3). Don’t forget a guava smoothie or,
if they’ve got it, Skol beer (€3.20), a popular
Brazilian brew that’s actually manufactured
by Carlsberg. And Mori’s Kreuzberg 36 location
makes it a perfect pit stop for a nonwatery
caipirinha during the annual May 1
melee. Wiener Str. 13, Kreuzberg, Tue-Sat
11:30-22, Sun 12-20
Café Mori
For hipsters and
super-foodies
Tapiocaria
You might associate tapioca (powdereded
cassava root) with the chewy blobs found in
pudding or bubble tea, but in northeastern
Brazil, the word means one thing: delicate,
stretchy crepes made with manioc flour (a
processed form of tapioca), served with a
variety of sweet or savoury fillings. Found on
just about every street corner in the motherland,
tapioca was nonexistent in Berlin
until four years ago, when German-Brazilian
couple Mariana Pitanga and Peter Westerhoff
decided the customiseable, naturally glutenfree
snack would be perfect for the Markthalle
IX crowd. Their mobile stand Tapiocaria
serves the pancakes (€4.50-5.50) with
a plethora of fillings, from chicken-cheese
to vegan chilli to tomato-basil-mozzarella.
“Tapioca Caprese” may not exactly scream
Brazil to you, but the Tropicana (guava
marmalade, grated coconut and banana)
is as authentic-tasting as it gets. Finish off
with a big bowl of açai sorbet (€6-8), which
was big in Brazil before anyone over here
ever deemed it a superfood. Markthalle IX,
Eisenbahnstr. 42-43, Kreuzberg, Thu 17-22, see
Facebook for other events
For Germans,
tourists and serious
meat eaters
What kind of Brazilian restaurant will you
find on Ku’damm? If you guessed “a posh
steakhouse owned by Russians”, you’re
right on the money. The gaudy, 11-year old
Brasil Brasiliero provides moneyed City
West residents with the Churrasqueira
Rodízio experience, in which roving costumed
waiters present your table with cuts
of grilled meat skewered on swords until
you’ve had enough. For €29.50 on weekdays,
you get access to imported Brazilian and
Argentinian beef, lamb, chorizo and more,
plus a salad bar and a rum-doused flaming
pineapple for dessert. If you’ve got a taste
for feather-bedecked showgirls and shirtless
male dancers, Friday and Saturday evenings
offer dinner and a show for €34.50. There
are a few Brazilians working in the kitchen,
but this isn’t the place your friend João goes
for an authentic meal; rather, it’s where you
take Jörg or Vladimir for some flashy distraction
before hammering out the details
of that oil contract. Kurfürstendamm 51,
Charlottenburg, Sun-Thu 18-23, Fri-Sat 18-1
For home cooks
If you feel like trying your hand at Brazilian
cuisine yourself, venture into the back room
of the Kantstraße clothes and cosmetic shop
Alexa Jeans Brazil. Past shelves of Seda hair
products, Nativa Spa moisturiser and Pit
Bull jeans (which for €149.90 promise to lift
and shape your butt better than any trousers
you’ll find in Germany), you’ll find a small
but comprehensive grocery section. Here’s
where you can get the ubiquitous ingredient
manioc flour, either plain or pre-seasoned as
farofa; instant pan de queso (cheese roll) mix;
condensed milk for making dulce de leche and
even little snacks like Passatempo biscuits
(€2.35). Goiânian owner Alexa Oliveira
opened the shop on Leibnizstraße five years
ago before expanding to Kantstraße and adding
the food section in 2016. How to use your
grocery bounty? At Forum Brazil (see page
17), Murah Soares leads German-language
courses where up to eight participants learn
how to make dishes like the shrimp stew bobo
de camarão (€35; sign up well in advance).
If you’d rather skip the cooking part, Alexa
Jeans turns into a mini-restaurant on one
Sunday per month, when Oliveira and her
small staff cook a dish of their choice for customers
(in March it was feijoada for €8.50).
On special order, they also prepare sweets,
fried snacks (like the chicken croquettes
coxhina) and unicorn-shaped birthday cakes.
Kantstr. 25, Charlottenburg, Mon-Fri 11-19,
Sat 11-16, check Facebook for Sunday events
APRIL 2018

ROMA BIENNALE
Berlin’s Romani
rabble-rouser
Performer, activist, troublemaker; proud
Roma and father... “And don’t forget I’m
politically queer!” he likes to add. Hamze
Bytyçi is arguably one of the most recognisable
and personable faces of Berlin’s Roma
community. This month, he’s inviting all
Berliners to “come out” in celebration of
International Roma Day at Gorki’s first-ever
Roma Biennale.
By Ruth Schneider
VERBATIM
After years of being avoided by official community representatives
for his brazen outspokenness and unruly ways (including
crashing Merkel’s unveiling of Germany’s Sinti and Roma
Memorial), Bytyçi has become the go-to Roma when things turn sour.
When he’s not mediating between fellow Roma, police and lefty protestors
or combating Antiziganismus in schools, he’s running for local
office on Die Linke’s ticket. Or he’s on the Gorki Theater stage donning
a wedding gown and a pair of fake lashes as part of Roma Armee.
We met in a tiny office on Leipziger Straße, from which Bytyçi
and partner Veronika Patočková run the cultural and political advocacy
non-profit RomaTrial.
RomaTrial is only the most recent of the Roma-related organisations
you’ve founded over the past 12 years. Berlin has
plenty of Sinti and Roma groups, Germany has the Roma Central
Council (Zentralrat)... Why did you feel there was a need
for more? You’re right, there are too many out there, we should
just get rid of them! [laughs]. It’s good they are there: the more,
the better. But you need to understand that those organisations
were involved with the German Sinti and Roma minorities. There
has been almost nothing for Roma refugees, all those people who,
like me, came from the Balkans decades ago, or the new ones who
keep coming – the Zentralrat was actually afraid that those migrants
had a negative impact on their image.
So why did you decide to start Amaro Drom in 2005? I founded
it with the mother of my son, when I realised how little she knew
about my culture. I would be like, “Oh damn, I can’t cut my nails,
the sun is down!” And she: “What?!” So it was a stupid thing –
nails! – but she actually motivated me to explain my culture to
her. And I thought, if we don’t make the effort, it’ll all be lost for
the next generation...
Was it also about explaining your culture to your own son? Does
he know it’s bad luck to cut one’s nails when the sun’s down?
Yes, and now he does it on purpose! So he definitely knows,
and he’s found his own way of acknowledging his Roma culture
[laughs]. Meanwhile, he has long hair, painted fingernails, and
wears pink and purple – which totally freaks out his Roma grandparents,
they think he’s so incredibly queer! He so doesn’t give a
Hamze Bytyçi
Born 1982 in Prizren, Kosovo, Hamze
Bytyçi came to Germany as a refugee
with his parents and older brother
in 1989. They eventually settled in
Freiburg, where Bytyçi studied acting
and founded Roma youth organisation
Amaro Drom (Our Way) in 2006.
He moved to Berlin the following year,
where he founded the organisations
Amaro Foro (Our City, 2010), RomaTrial
(2012) and BundesRomaVerband (Federal
Council of Roma, 2012) as well as
performing in and directing productions
at Ballhaus Naunynstraße and
the Maxim Gorki Theater, among them
the interactive performance Hilton 437
(2013) and last year’s Roma Armee. Since
2017, he has served on the Berlin executive
board for Die Linke.
21
EXBERLINER 170

ROMA BIENNALE
damn... But I think he cares a lot. The other
day he was offered Ziegeunersoße [tomato
paprika sauce] on his hamburger, and he
was shocked – “Gypsy sauce?! Isn’t it forbidden
to call it that?”
You arrived in Germany in 1989, at
age seven – do you remember? I totally
remember! The refugee camps and that
Christmas in 1991 when we sang the Weihnachtsgedichte
in the Kirchenasyl – it was a
new world! We moved from Heim to Heim
before finding a proper home in Freiburg.
We got Duldung [“tolerance”] status in
1998, and thanks to an ex-girlfriend who let
me marry her for the papers, I could stay in
Germany. Finally I got a German passport
in October 2011. I’m lucky – some people
live here for 30 years and still get deported.
Like Selami Prizreni, the rapper who got
deported last year after growing up in
Essen his whole life. He was even born
here, right? Yes, we actually included the
story of the three Prizreni brothers in Hilton
437. At some point during the show, we
called for volunteers among the audience
to marry him for the papers. It worked out
for the performance; not in reality, unfortunately.
The second brother, Hikmet, will be
deported soon, too.
Duldung is a special status in German
law, a mere “tolerance” to stay that can
be revoked anytime. And most of the
people affected are Roma minorities
from Serbia or Kosovo... In Berlin, it’s
mainly people from Serbia – we work to
help them. Actual deportations depend
on individual German states, and Berlin
is not the worst. But with that federal law
that made countries like Kosovo and Serbia
“safe countries”, Roma refugees are systematically
turned down.
You decried the German refugee policy
that distinguishes between “good” asylum
seekers and “bad” migrants, with
minorities from the Balkans in the latter
category... There will be more and more
“bad ones”. In a way, we all are “bad ones”
and we shouldn’t compete. Whether they
were in the Kosovo or Syria war was not the
refugees’ decision. And now with my “best
friend” [CSU politician Horst] Seehofer at
the Interior Ministry, it’s gonna get worse.
We have 94 AfD MPs in the Bundestag, but
that only speaks for how much our society
has changed. Remember the [1992] Rostock
attacks against refugees: it was a huge
national outcry. And now? There were 27
attacks against mosques this year, and the
first thing Seehofer does when he comes to
office is to declare that “Islam isn’t part of
Germany!” The man is an official representative
of Germany! For me, that’s a lot more
worrying than the AfD.
So you think that in this political climate,
discrimination against Roma is
also getting worse? Are attacks against
Roma even tracked? There’s a new category
in the police system, since 2017. But
people don’t really report it. It’s difficult
to prove. What we know, though, is that in
Germany institutional racism is real and
there’s discrimination at every level. Meanwhile
people like Romani Rose, the head
of the Sinti community, didn’t recognise
the term “antiziganism” until yesterday,
because he didn’t like the word “Zigeuner”
(“gypsy”). But pushing the concept under
the carpet doesn’t solve the problem!
Growing up here, did you witness antiziganism
at any point? From both sides!
At school, if someone stole something, he’d
immediately be called a “gypsy”, but I was
mostly called “gypsy” by other migrants –
the Balkan refugees, the Serbians; Germans
wouldn’t know if I’m a Turk, an Afghan or
a Peruvian! To this day, on a train, I’m the
first one to be checked... and the controller
will ask for my ID card, not my ticket. In
a weird way, I enjoy it; I flirt with it. I like
the idea that they’re taking the wrong man.
So, I turned it into a game: I make it last,
x“I crashed the Memorial and called
xout Merkel over the deportations:
xit’s a beautiful grave, thanks a lot,
xbut what about the Roma suffering
xhappening now?”x
I pretend I can’t find my ID until they get
ready to call for reinforcements, and then,
“Oh sorry, here it was!”
Few people recognise that during the
Holocaust, Roma and Sinti were persecuted
as much as the Jews... Yes, we were
considered worse than the Jews. Jews were
supposed to be exterminated, but they were
recognised as humans. We weren’t. Gypsies
are the ultimate outcasts... Even for the
most socially excluded, the poorest among
poorest, there’s always the reassurance
you’re not “that”. Antiziganism is so old
and so universal. To this day, in countries
like France or England, our people are not
allowed to exist. We’re attacked in Italy. Can
you believe that until just recently they had
a pig farm on the location of a former Roma
concentration camp in the Czech Republic?
Could you imagine the same if it were a Jewish
camp? It’s unthinkable!
You’ve worked a lot in schools; how
much do German kids know about
Roma? It mostly depends on the parents,
because our history isn’t in the German
curriculum, besides a one-liner: “BTW, homosexuals,
Sinti and Roma got exterminated
too.” So what they know are the beggars
in the streets and what they read in papers
about pickpockets. And with Bulgaria and
Romania joining the EU in 2007, they
22

ROMA BIENNALE
started to see a lot of them. By 2009, our parks were full of
Roma – that’s when we youth activists, who were mostly
dealing with culture back then, got involved in social and
political work.
One critical moment came in 2010, when Roma families
occupied Görlitzer Park and the situation came
close to escalation – how did you get involved? As
simple as a cold call from the integration office: “Hey, they
are in the park, you need to do something!” So I go there
and I witness the mess. On one side the Jugendamt and
Ordnungsamt; on the other the lefties chanting “You’re
Nazis, you want to send them back to the gas chambers”.
We tried to mediate but the situation was absolute chaos,
with each of the families’ heads appointing themselves as
spokesperson, and the journalists and the activists turning
the whole thing into a circus! The question is always:
who’s entitled to speak for whom? So many times they
battle over us, but we’re not invited to the discussion
table! Take the Roma and Sinti Holocaust Memorial, I
once crashed a meeting to ask, “Hey you’re talking about
us here!” They laughed because I was always that strange
loud activist who shouts and provokes. I guess that’s why
they didn’t invite me to the unveiling of the memorial...
But you invited yourself to the unveiling ceremony,
right? Well, there were 600 guests there to mourn the
dead and no one to raise the issue of alive and breathing
Roma refugees who live here! So we – the freshly founded
BundesRomaVerband – crashed the party and called out
Merkel over the deportations: it’s a beautiful grave, thanks
a lot, but what about the suffering happening now of those
kids uprooted from the country they call home after decades
living here?
How did Merkel react? She’s fantastic! Stone-faced, looking
right in your eyes, she tells you it’s not her decision; she
can do nothing. Chancellor Merkel totally helpless about
the deportation of Roma in today’s Germany! Then I was
dismissed nicely: thank you very much, it’s an important
question, but not the right time. They hated me for that
long after; I’d spoiled a beautiful moment.
Why choose to enter politics with Die Linke? When I see
the paternalism from the left, I realise that they don’t give
us space to speak for ourselves. So I thought I should get involved
in a party... I didn’t want the Greens because Joschka
Fischer joined the Nato airstrikes in Kosovo, and they also
supported the “safe state” ruling ending asylum rights for
Balkan Roma. So Die Linke was more of a last resort.
So what are you trying to do now as a Die Linke board
member? Halt the deportations? We can’t overturn the
“safe state” thing; that’s over. Right now we’re mainly
working to draft a contract to empower Berlin’s Roma as a
recognised minority. But our main task is to get our “rainbow”
community to work together.
That’s your ultimate goal: a rainbow Romani coalition?
That was my motivation from the beginning, but even the
Roma can’t agree between themselves! Take my parents –
my dad comes from the Ashkalija, the Albanian-speaking
Roma minority in Kosovo, said to be descending from
Egyptians; my mum comes from Turkish Roma. Both are
very proud of their own origins and they’d fight about it
all the time – my dad would joke about my mum being
“second-class Romani”. So ultimately it’s our own fault, our
selbstverschuldete Unmündigkeit as we say in German. We
Roma always try to find what differentiates ourselves from
the other instead of finding unifying features.
Unity was a grand dream of Damian Le Bas, who passed
away unexpectedly in December before he could see the
culmination of the Biennale you worked on together.
What was he to you? Damian was our President of Romanistan,
the originator of Gypsy Dada, an extraordinary artist.
For Damian, borders were not obstacles. He tore them down
with a pen on the maps that were just a screen to him. He
was always ahead of his time, a bit out of control sometimes
– but it all came from the heart. Since we met in 2012, he
was my friend and biggest idol. With the Roma Biennale,
Delaine [Le Bas, Damian’s widow] and I are carrying on his
work... This time we’re focusing on the “coming out” idea –
what does it mean to be coming out as a Roma, to be visible?
It raises the prejudice issue both ways, right? It’s hard
to be a Roma in society at large, but also not easy to be
gay within Romani society... no? Yes, but the idea also
is that everyone has to come out about something. We all
have our closet. If all of us come out, we are the majority.
That’s the wishful thinking behind it!
How does your acting career fit in all this? Is crossdressing
on stage okay by Romani parents’ standards?
When I told my dad that I wanted to act, he told me, “Well,
you’ll either turn gay or become a drug addict.” But now
they’re proud. In Roma Armee I wear a wedding dress and
somehow it’s a bit of a fantasy come true for my mother,
who always wanted a daughter. My dad was only half right:
I’m not sexually gay, I’m politically gay. [Laughs]
Aren’t you preaching to the choir, to Gorki audiences?
I know for some jealous people, RomaTrial is a premium
agency for posh art and politics shit [laughs]. But we’ve
got no choice: we’ve got to mark April 8, International
Roma Day – the anniversary of our first world congress. In
1971 a bunch of Roma people from all over met in England
and agreed – on calling themselves “Romani”, on a flag
and an anthem. That’s so amazing that it deserves to be
celebrated! So Roma from nine countries will be at Gorki
to perform and celebrate. It was never done before, and it
might never happen again. It was Damian’s clout and aura –
he was the one who got us together.
So, will there ever be a new president of Romanistan?
No, he’s not replaceable. He’ll remain the king of our utopian
Gypsyland Europe, as he called it. Anyone can be part
of that land. Everyone is welcome! n
Created by Hamze Bytyçi with British Roma “outsider
artist” couple Damian and Delaine Le Bas, the
four-day Roma Biennale includes an art exhibition;
a Roma Day parade (Apr 8, 13:00, beginning at the
Roma and Sinti Holocaust Memorial); a “Long Night
of Coming Out”; performances of Hilton 437 and
Roma Armee, and much more. Apr 7-10, Gorki Theater
23

Homegrown highs
Achtung Berlin is back with a hefty helping
of locally sourced cinematic treats.
By Paul O’Callaghan
Exberliner's
English Days
Join us at Lichtblick
for a long weekend
of Achtung highlights,
all screening with
English subtitles,
moderation and
appearances by
directors and pro
tagonists. In addition
to three outstanding
documentaries
on migration and
multiculturalism
(see left) we're showing
Nina Vukovic's
intense drama Detour
and Duc Ngo Ngoc’s
engrossing Farewell
Halong. Sunday
tickets include a
free brunch buffet
courtesy of Kreuzberg
bistro Chez Michel!
Apr 14-16, Lichtblick
Kino
Achtung Berlin is in a sense the yin to the Berlinale’s
yang. Where the latter offers an almost
overwhelmingly broad overview of new world
cinema, the former presents a more easily-digestible
snapshot of our local film scene. This 14th edition sticks
to a tried and tested formula, with 11 fiction features and
11 docs battling it out for awards glory in two separate
headline competition strands, and sidebars devoted to
shorts, medium-length titles and micro-budget indie
fare. The eligibility criteria are relatively loose: there has
to be some kind of Berlin connection, but the eclectic
programme includes films set in locations as diverse as
Tokyo and Tonga.
As is often the case at Achtung, many of this year’s highlights
are documentaries. And yes, the migrant crisis is
still the topic du jour, as seen in three must-sees featured
in our English Days programme at Lichtblick (see sidebar).
In Berlinale standout Central Airport THF (Zentralflughafen
THF), Brazilian-born director Karim Aïnouz
(see page 43) films the displaced lives of those living in
the hangars of Berlin’s iconic Tempelhof airport, honing
in on the stories of an 18-year-old Syrian and a 35-year-old
medical student from Iraq. It’s a film about solidarity that
offers a nuanced emotional perspective on an issue frequently
oversimplified and sensationalised by the media.
Ainouz also makes the most of the airport’s cinematic
potential, evoking an awe-inspiring sense of scale.
Arriving at Achtung with a somewhat thornier reputation
is Merkel Must Go (Montags in Dresden). This calmly
inquisitive doc sees filmmaker Sabine Michel wrestle
with the question of how her picturesque home city
became the epicentre of Germany’s alt-right, thanks to
the incendiary efforts of anti-Islam group Pegida. Her
approach is simply to spend an extended period of time
with three individuals affiliated with the movement,
including its co-founder Rene Jahn. When it premiered
at last year’s DOK Leipzig festival, the film was heavily
criticised by some for not overtly countering its protagonists'
poisonous views. But Michel’s point is clearly that
we can only counter right-wing populism by engaging
with the concerns and fears that fuel its proponents’
hateful rhetoric. Besides, the subjects ultimately hang
themselves with their own rope. Particularly baffling is
the world view espoused by single mother Sabine Ban,
a daughter of Hungarian immigrants who stockpiles
instant coffee in preparation for an impending German
civil war.
Offering an uplifting counterpoint to this sobering
portrait of intolerance and ignorance is Simone Catharina
Gaul’s The New Children of Golzow (Die neuen Kinder
von Golzow). It’s the story of how the mayor of a small
Brandenburg town saves its famous school (featured
in the legendary, decades-spanning documentary The
Children of Golzow) from closure by inviting a Syrian
refugee family to send their kids there, thus securing
extra funding. Said family proves altogether delightful,
changing perceptions about migrants in a cut-off, conservative
community. Gaul captures a real-life fairytale
as it’s unfolding in real time, without glossing over the
prejudice and resentment that still lurk in some corners
of the town.
The fiction feature competition is a little more of a
mixed bag: the unintentionally hilarious portrayal of
Berlin hedonism in Night Out and the May-December
romance of Breakdown in Tokyo fail to convince, but
24 EXBERLINER 170

CHICK COREA
28.04.18 · Apostel-Paulus-Kirche
THE DEAD
DAISIES
+ THE NEW ROSES
03.05.18 · Kesselhaus
G-EAZY
+ STEFFLON DON + YUNG PINCH
09.05.18 · Columbiahalle
NOAH KAHAN
21.05.18 · Maschinenhaus
CAFÉ TACVBA
24.07.18 · Astra Kulturhaus
DONAVON
FRANKENREITER
30.09.18 · Columbia Theater
Clockwise from top left: Sarah Plays a Werewolf, LOMO, Central
Airport THF, Detour, Merkel Must Go, The New Children of Golzow
WWW.CITADEL-MUSIC-FESTIVAL.DE
there are definitely quite a few standouts. Julia Langhof
remixes the coming-of-age disaster film in LOMO – The Language
of Many Others placing her tragic young hero, Karl
(Jonas Dassler), in the white, affluent suburbs of Berlin, but
focusing on his struggles to navigate the altogether more
hostile digital world. When he’s spurned by his classmate
Doro (Lucie Hollmann) after a brief tryst, he enacts revenge
by posting video evidence of their sexual exploits on his
popular blog. Suffice it to say, the consequences are savage.
Swiss-German co-production Sarah Plays a Werewolf
(Sarah joue un loup garou) sees filmmaker Katharina Wyss
take a more experimental approach to conveying the pain of
adolescence. Similar to Josephine Decker’s Berlinale darling
Madeline’s Madeline, it tells the story of a troubled teen
(Loane Balthasar) who channels her turbulent emotions into
intense stage performances, blurring the boundaries between
reality and fantasy. Both darkly funny and genuinely unsettling,
it marks Wyss as a descendant of fearless European
auteurs like Chantal Akerman and Catherine Breillat.
Each year the vibe is infectiously celebratory. Many neighbourhood
Kinos partake in action with screenings and Q&As,
and with a whole host of prizes (including our very own
Exberliner Film Award) handed out at the open-to-all closing
night ceremony at Babylon, titles from across the programme
are given a valuable moment in the spotlight. Achtung has
served as a crucial springboard for all manner of gifted local
filmmakers – low-key gems like Alexandra Balteanu’s sexworker
drama Vanatoare and Carlotta Kittel’s self-reflexive
doc Er Sie Ich both secured theatrical distribution after winning
awards here last year. So for a sneak peek at the indie
hits of tomorrow, be sure to get involved.
Full programme at achtungberlin.de
APRIL 2018
06.08.
HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES
JOE PERRY, ALICE COOPER & JOHNNY DEPP
07.06.
02.07.
24.07.
RUNRIG
SWEET
LENNY KRAVITZ
A PERFECT CIRCLE
NENA
MASSIVE ATTACK
NINE INCH NAILS
BILLY IDOL
AMY MACDONALD
JACK JOHNSON
JOAN BAEZ
STEEL PANTHER
24.08.
12.06.
18.08.
15.08.
105‘5 SPREERADIO PRIVATKONZERT
29.07.
22.06.
SAVAS & SIDO
SANTANA
MILKY CHANCE
A-HA
WWW.TRINITYMUSIC.DE
ARCADE FIRE
FAT FREDDY´S DROP
MICHAEL PATRICK KELLY
17.08.
105‘5 SPREERADIO PRIVATKONZERT
AUSVERKAUFT!
AUSVERKAUFT!
19.07.
21.08.
25.07.
ZITADELLE | BERLIN
AM JULIUSTURM 64 · DE-13599 BERLIN
09.06.
29.06.
17.06.
04.06.
29.08.
13.08.
Berlin
25

WHAT’S ON — Film
Editor’s Choice
Radical gestures
A trio of ambitious auteurs offer bold spins on
staple genres, with mixed results. By Paul O’Callaghan
DON’T MISS
Too Drunk to Watch -
Punk Film Festival
Head to Moviemento
for five days of films
that embody punk’s
anarchic spirit, kicking
off with Wildes
Herz, a rousing doc
about Jan Gorkow,
big-hearted frontman
of Ostsee-based
punk outfit Feine
Sahne Fischfilet.
Apr 11-15
Queer Faces
Migrant Voices
One World Berlin
joins forces with the
International Queer
Migrant Film Festival
Amsterdam to present
a podcast workshop
featuring LGBTQ
refugees, followed by
the Berlin premiere
of inspiring doc Mr.
Gay Syria. Apr 14,
16:00, Xenon Kino
Exblicks:
Achtung Winner
Check out the winner
of the 2018 Exberliner
Award, guaranteed
to be a highlight of
this month’s Achtung
Berlin festival. Visit
exberliner.com on
April 19 to find out
exactly what you’ll be
watching at Licht
blick. Apr 30, 20:30
Based on Jonathan Ames’
noirish 2013 novella, You Were
Never Really Here (photo)
charts the grim exploits of a New York
contract killer named Joe (Joaquin
Phoenix) who uncovers a paedophile
ring while investigating the disappearance
of a senator’s daughter, and
takes justice into his own hands while
battling PTSD. It might sound like
the premise of a recent Liam Neeson
schlocker, but in the hands of Scottish
auteur Lynne Ramsay, this lurid tale
proves an unshakeable foundation for
a confounding, remarkable revisionist
thriller. The filmmaker has pared
her narrative source as far down to
the bone as possible: Joe’s harrowing
backstory is relayed through jolting
images, presented devoid of context.
Despite an outrageous body count, violence
is rarely directly depicted, with
Ramsay preferring to linger instead
on its quiet aftermath. And Phoenix
delivers a typically enigmatic central
performance, revealing a flicker of
humanity only when goofing around at
home with his elderly mother (Judith
Roberts). The result is one of the most
breathtakingly precise, formally radical
genre films in recent memory.
With Transit, Christian Petzold (see
interview, page 28) makes a similarly
laudable attempt to breathe new life
into tired cinematic tropes. Inspired
by Anna Seghers’ 1944 novel, it tells
the relentlessly twisty tale of Georg
(Franz Rogowski), a German refugee
in Paris on the run from his fascist
countrymen. Fleeing the capital for
Marseilles, he assumes the identity
of a recently deceased writer. This
hastily made decision has unforeseen
consequences for Georg, including an
uneasy romantic entanglement with
the writer’s young widow (Paula Beer).
Petzold boldly relocates the action to
the present day, or at least some hazy,
impressionistic version of it – it’s as if
the current migrant crisis was a direct
continuation of the Holocaust. Adding
to the Kafkaesque vibe is an extremely
jarring third-person voiceover narration,
in which an unknown observer
offers a glib interpretation of the
events. It’s perhaps fitting that a film
about false identity should revel in its
own artificiality, but I have to confess
I found the relentless tricksiness
ultimately exhausting. So effective are
the film’s distancing devices, its occasional
bids for emotional engagement
fall flat. And Petzold’s adventurous approach
to filmmaking feels hampered
by a frustrating literal-mindedness, as
in the exasperatingly on-the-nose use
of Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere”
over the end credits.
Seemingly determined to solidify
his reputation as Hollywood’s preeminent
disruptor, Steven Soderbergh’s
latest venture sees the veteran
director wage war on the bloated
studio system in headline-grabbing
fashion. Shot entirely on iPhones in
under two weeks, Unsane is a slick,
multiplex-friendly thriller delivered
on a shoestring budget, which should
serve as an inspiration to budding
genre filmmakers all over the planet.
But any fears that Soderbergh might
be in danger of turning into a tedious
Apple evangelist are swiftly allayed,
with the film offering a playfully
nightmarish riff on the dangers of
modern technology. Claire Foy stars
as a young woman who clearly conducts
much of her life online, whose
life becomes an outlandish nightmare
when she’s committed against
her will to a sinister psychiatric facility.
It’s rough around the edges and
wildly implausible, but Soderbergh’s
prankish, pioneering spirit ensures
a wild ride. n
Starts Mar 29 Unsane HHH D: Steven Soderbergh (US 2018) with
Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard | Starts Apr 5 Transit HH D: Christian
Petzold (Germany 2018) with Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer | Starts Apr 26
You Were Never Really Here (A Beautiful Day) HHHHH D: Lynne Ramsay
(UK, France, US 2017) with Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov
26
EXBERLINER 170

Reviews
Starts Apr 5
Film Stars Don’t
Die in Liverpool
D: Paul McGuigan (UK 2017)
with Annette Bening, Jamie Bell
HHHH
Based on Peter Turner’s memoir, this bittersweet
romance sees a young jobbing actor
(Bell) meet and fall in love with the much older
fading Hollywood icon Gloria Grahame (Bening).
Set around the turn of the 1980s, the film
chronicles their passionate two-year affair and
the time Grahame spent with Turner’s family
after falling ill before a stage show. It’s a
compassionate and cineliterate love story that
adroitly avoids cheap sentimentality. Playful
use of flashbacks and purposefully artificiallooking
lighting conspire to highlight the transporting
yet fickle nature of performance and
the Hollywood bubble. But it’s Bening and Bell
who steal the show, both delivering warm, nuanced
turns that deserved far more attention
during the recent awards season.
— David Mouriquand
Starts Apr 5
Ready Player One
D: Steven Spielberg (US 2018)
with Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke
HHH
Film Stars Dont Die in Liverpool
Adapted from a bestseller hailed for its nifty
premise and frenetic pacing but derided for
its clunky prose, Ready Player One carries
over both the strengths and weaknesses of
its source material. Set in 2045, it envisions
a dystopian America which has fallen
into partial ruin as the result of an energy
crisis. To escape their grim reality, many turn
to the OASIS, a thrillingly immersive, heavily
customisable virtual reality game. Our
plucky protagonist Wade (Sheridan) is one of
a handful of top-flight players searching for
an “Easter egg” hidden by the game’s late
creator as a means of identifying a worthy
heir to his virtual empire. The script, cowritten
by the novel’s author Ernest Cline,
is bogged down by clunky exposition, while
the hyperactive final act really outstays its
welcome. But Spielberg delivers a handful of
flat-out dazzling action set pieces, including
one that literally takes place inside Kubrick’s
The Shining. — PO’C
WHAT’S ON — Film
Starts Apr 12
3 Days in Quiberon
D: Emily Atef (Germany 2018) with
Marie Bäumer, Birgit Minichmayr
HH
Built on the promise of revealing the woman
behind the legend that is Romy Schneider,
over the course of an intimate three-day interview
given by the iconic German actress
towards the end of her life, this well-acted
but altogether unspectacular chamber
piece offers little more than the adequate
entertainment one may expect from a serving
of middlebrow Europudding. The cast is
uniformly strong. Uncanny Schneider lookalike
Bäumer shares with perennial character
actors Gwisdek and Minichmayr several
impressive scenes, where the dynamics of
trust and manipulation between a movie
star, a journalist and a friend play out with
rhythmic naturalism. But the raw quality of
these performances can’t save this overlong
drama from losing steam. Myth-defying
revelations or not, at some point you kind
of stop caring. — Zhuo-Ning Su
Starts Apr 19
Lady Bird
D: Greta Gerwig (US 2017)
with Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf
HHHH
Greta Gerwig makes the transition from actor
to auteur with this nostalgic coming-of-age
story about a young woman trying to find her
place in the world. An understated slice-oflife
comedy that tackles the awkwardness of
youth, sex, and family dynamics, Lady Bird
feels thrillingly relatable. Most of all, it thrives
on its performances, reconfirming Saoirse
Ronan as one of the most magnetic screen
presences of her generation, and offering
Laurie Metcalf a career high as the protagonist’s
overworked mother. The tumultuous
relationship between the two gives the film
its affecting emotional core, and assures a
tweeness-free spin on an over-saturated
genre. The film decisively announces the arrival
of an exciting new filmmaking voice, with
Gerwig only the fifth woman in Oscar history
to be nominated for Best Director. — DM
Ladybird
April 11 – 18
9 th
Arab
Film
Festival
Berlin
مهرجان الفيلم
العربي برلين التاسع
www.alfilm.de
SPOTLIGHT:
Reflections on
Arab Masculinities
APRIL 2018

REVIEWS
Breathe
D: Andy Serkis
(UK 2017)
H
Despite a fine lead
performance by
Andrew Garfield,
Serkis’ directorial
debut somehow
renders the inspiring
true story of a brave
disability advocate
intensely irritating, by
misguidedly focusing
on the ways in which
his suffering is eased
by wealth and privilege.
Starts Apr 19
Petzold’s audacious adaptation
of Anna Seghers’ 1944 novel
about Nazi-occupied France
(see review, page 26) updates the
action to the present day in decidedly
enigmatic fashion, with German
refugee Georg (Franz Rogowski)
evading capture in Marseilles by
assuming the identity of a recently
deceased writer.
Why set the film in the
present day? Well, I’d just made a
period film (Phoenix), and I find it
somewhat boring to deal with all the
props and costumes, the whole aspect
of reenactment. Also, I felt that
no matter how committed you are
to recreating the past, your film is
always fundamentally located in the
time in which it was made. I always
think of my parents, who would see
a historical film and say, “That was
nicely done, it feels like the real
thing.” I think the emphasis should
be on whether we are learning the
right lessons from the past, rather
than whether we’ve recreated the
past accurately.
Transit seems consumed with
the idea that we’re repeating the
mistakes of previous generations.
When I decided to adapt the
WHAT’S ON — Film
“ It’s good for the world
when Germany is in limbo”
Christian Petzold on European identity and the
bold choices of his divisive new feature Transit.
By Paul O’Callaghan
book, I wasn’t really considering a
political message. I was thinking
more about refugees in a looser
sense – people who are fleeing from
something, whether that be political
oppression, a marriage or a job.
But as I was working on the script,
I was astounded to see this ghostlike
situation of the past rising up
again. With UKIP, the AfD and many
others, people are clamouring about
identity, race, ethnicity and culture,
and they’re doing that by trying
to exclude the other, by closing
the borders. Anna Seghers wrote
her book in order to say that these
things should never happen again,
because that way of thinking led to
the death of millions of people. And
yet all these things are happening
again. So the film had to be political.
Why the unusual third-person
voiceover? The novel is written
in the first person, and I generally
hate first-person voiceover in film. I
dislike the trick pulled in Fight Club
and The Usual Suspects, where you
have this buddy-like narrator talking
directly to you, and who ultimately
betrays your trust. I liked the idea of
a voiceover that worked more like a
musical score, underlining the story
and describing what we’re seeing in
a way that may differ from our own
perception. And so I decided to let
this minor character, this barkeeper,
offer his take on events through
voiceover. The voice we hear carries
its own desires and biases, and adds
another layer to the story unfolding
before the viewer’s eyes.
Like Phoenix, Transit is about
mistaken identity. What attracts
you to this theme? I’ve always
loved crime stories where people
forge passports or assume someone
else’s identity. I also like the idea
of a new identity infecting you,
forcing you to change. In the novel,
the protagonist is someone who
doesn’t really play a useful role in
society. But through assuming a false
identity, he learns to feel love, pain
and loyalty, and he finally becomes
human. People who need to run and
hide or try and pass themselves off
as someone else are forced to wrestle
with the idea of identity. On the
flipside, those who say they are rocksolid
about who they are are either
dangerous or stupid.
The film seems to infer just
that: all the problems stem from
Germany having a rock-solid
sense of self. Yes, and thankfully
that isn’t quite the case here at the
moment. I believe it’s very good for
the world whenever Germany is in a
state of limbo, because that means
the country is occupied with itself.
When Germany was quite sure about
how the financial crisis in Greece
should be resolved, for example,
they plunged another country into
total chaos. So a state of transit or
limbo can have its benefits. n
Ghost Stories
D: Andy Nyman,
Jeremy Dyson
(UK 2017)
HHH
This adaptation of a
popular British stage
play is a threepronged
portmanteau
horror fable that gets
turned on its head
in a surreally glorious
final act. Too bad the
theatrical thrills don’t
arrive sooner.
Starts Apr 19
28
EXBERLINER 170

Berlin in English since 2002
Festival previews
What about
Arab men?
Beauty and the Dogs
In the #MeToo era, Alfilm
audaciously delves into
Arab masculinity.
Known for thought-provoking,
challenging cinema that uproots
stereotypes about the
Middle East and North Africa, Berlin’s
Arab film festival celebrates its ninth
birthday with eight days of the best
new films from the Arab world, plus
a special programme centred on the
complexities and contradictions of the
modern Arab man. It kicks off in attention-grabbing
fashion with Beauty and
the Dogs, a technically bravura account
of a rape and its aftermath by Tunisian
female filmmaker Kaouther Ben
Hania. Other fiction highlights include
Faouzi Bensaïdi’s Volubilis, a love story
between a security guard and a housekeeper
which doubles as a ruthless
critique of Morocco’s suffocating class
divide. On the doc front, Karim Sayad’s
Of Sheep and Men follows the parallel
lives of a middle-aged sheep merchant
and a teenage aspiring vet, painting a
vivid picture of working-class Algiers
in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
And Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste of Cement is
a hard-hitting portrait of exiled Syrian
workers rebuilding neighbourhoods
in the wake of the Lebanese civil war.
It’s an empathetic and visually striking
film which stands out amidst an
impressive line-up. — DM
WHAT’S ON — Film
Polish
provocations
FilmPolska returns with its
most daring line-up to date.
This 13th edition of Berlin’s Polish
cinema showcase, a feast of
around 75 films screening everywhere
from Babylon to the Topography
of Terror, suggests a country awash
with cinematic rebels and pioneers.
Leading the charge are two highlights
from the recent Berlinale. Malgorzata
Szumowska’s Silver Bear Grand Jury
Prize winner Mug (Twarz) is both a
bitingly satirical tale of an affable metalhead
who receives Poland’s first face
transplant, and a compelling portrait of
a society careering towards a self-made
crisis. Meanwhile Jagoda Szelc’s Tower.
A Bright Day (Wieża. Jasny dzień) is an
enigmatic account of an uneasy family
reunion set deep in the verdant Polish
countryside. With shades of Michael
Haneke’s Funny Games, it slowly builds
towards a vivid, horror-tinged climax.
But this oppressive drama feels positively
breezy compared to Playground,
Bartosz M Kowalski’s harrowing account
of child-on-child cruelty, seemingly
inspired by the 1993 abduction of
British toddler James Bulger. Formally
dazzling but profoundly upsetting, it’s
sure to be the festival’s biggest talking
point. There’s also a sidebar celebrating
100 years of Polish independence,
and silent classics screening with live
musical accompaniment. — PO’C
Apr 25-May 2 Various venues, full
programme at filmpolska.de
A MAZE. / Berlin
7th International
Games and Playful
Media Festival
25.–29. April 2018
Urban Spree
www.amaze-berlin.de
The Public with Games, VR
Experiences, Music
Apr 11-18 Various venues,
full programme at alfilm.de
Mug Twarz
APRIL 2018

WHAT’S ON — Music
Editor’s Choice
We shall overcome
Whether you’re commemorating ‘68 or raising the flag
for #MeToo, get in the protest mood at these April shows.
By Michael Hoh
Oskar Omne
MUSIC NEWS
Boom chak
As the drum kit
turns 100, HKW celebrates
“100 Jahre
Beat” with screenings,
installations
and performances
by N.U. Unruh, Theo
Parrish, Goat, Karl
Bartos, Tony Allen
and more. Apr 26
We’re doomed
Berlin’s doom metal
outfit Choral Hearse
releases new album
Mire Exhumed
(Bandcamp) with
alt-rock and grunge-y
sprinkles on top.
Out Apr 16
Bye Bye Bassy
After 12 years,
rock’n’roll hotspot
Bassy Club closes
its doors for good
on May 1. Does that
mean Prenzlauer
Berg as a party hotspot
is finally dead?
Looks like it. RIP.
It’s been 50 years since the infamous
1968 revolts – you won’t
be able to open a newspaper
this month without reading about
the anniversary of Rudi Dutschke’s
shooting on April 11 of that year.
And it seems people across the
globe are finding themselves in a
similar mood to – pathos alert –
take to the streets and fight against
the wrongs in this world. (Of
course, if you live in Berlin, crafting
witty demo signs is practically an
everyday activity for you anyway.)
Whereas it was mostly students
who were the centre of attention
in the 1960s, fighting for women’s
liberation and against war – or, particular
to Germany, getting rid of
leftover Nazis comfortably watching
over said students from behind
their uni desks – 2018 sees a more
diverse crowd from all kinds of
social backgrounds attending rallies
from #MeToo to #BlackLivesMatter.
It’s not just students anymore
(if you disregard a puffed up debate
about an apparently sexist poem on
some Berlin uni wall), and naturally
that goes for the musicians who
deliver the soundtrack to these protests.
Suffice it to say, it’s no longer
just folk-y answers “blowin’ in the
wind”. With boundaries between
mainstream and subculture practically
nonexistent, protest anthems are
spread across all genres these days.
One of the best examples this
month: Emel Mathlouthi, who rose
to fame during the Arab Spring
with her 2012 song “Kelmti Horra
(My Word is Free)” and has since
been called the “voice of the Tunisian
revolution”. After her first
attempts at protest music with
a goth-metal band, she switched
to a more nuanced pop sound
influenced by trip hop and other
electronic genres, singing in
Arabic and English.
Other protest culture out there
is still sticking to tried-and-true
formulas. If you attend the Punk &
Disorderly Festival 2018 with The
Boys, Peter and the Test Tube Babies
and The Exploited this month,
for instance, things will probably
seem a little more “orderly” on the
protest front, safety pins in place
and all. Apart from excellent punk
music on two consecutive days,
does the festival’s lineup of ageing
UK rockers provide a voice for current
protest? On an abstract “fuck
society” level, for sure. Punk’s
never been a genre to address
the subtle nuances anyway.
What about Tocotronic? Seems
like just yesterday that the boys
were performing at the radical-left
Rote Flora squat in Hamburg, demanding
to be part of a new Jugendbewegung.
Twenty-odd years later,
their latest album Die Unendlichkeit
is being advertised on mega billboards
all around town, and their
core fanbase of 1990s indie kids will
have to hire a sitter and pay €32.50
to hear “Stürmt das Schloss” live.
But it doesn’t always have to be
the big capitalism critique, which
is difficult to navigate for recordselling
musicians anyway. After addressing
her battle with cancer on
her last album Demand the Impossible!,
Swede Jenny Wilson (photo)
just released Exorcism, an impressive
contribution to the #MeToo
debate. On the record, Wilson
tackles her personal experiences
with sexual harassment with
uncompromising lyrics mixed with
occasional four-to-the-floor beats
that’ll make it difficult for you to
decide whether you want to dance
all those injustices away or join the
next protest outside. n
Emel Mathlouthi Apr 15, 20:00 Lido, Kreuzberg | Tocotronic Apr 16-
17, 20:00 Columbiahalle, Tempelhof | Punk & Disorderly Festival 2018
Apr 20-22, 18:45 Astra Kulturhaus, Friedrichshain | Jenny Wilson Apr 26,
21:00 Ritter Butzke, Kreuzberg
30
EXBERLINER 170

WHAT’S ON — Music
“
Preview
Fight like hell
Julien Bracht of ambitious Berlin postpunk
duo Lea Porcelain tells us how
to make it big in the post-digital age.
From the get-go, we were anxious to find the right tastemakers
and radio DJs to feature us. It’s a little outdated to
think within borders rather than considering all the options
provided by online media. Particularly since we make music in
English, we wanted to make it available to the entire planet, not to
start small in Germany and work our way up. I just started watching
the 30 Seconds to Mars documentary, which depicts very well
why you also shouldn’t sign to a major record label. If you have
your own label, you’re your own boss, and what labels do is not
rocket science. So, even if our first album doesn’t put a Maserati
in our driveway, we won’t be dropped because we didn’t reach the
expected sales figures.
Our goal is to become one of the top bands worldwide, and we
said we wouldn’t stop until it’s happening. Plenty of bands give up
too soon not realising that it took other bands six albums to break
through globally. We didn’t give ourselves a deadline because
that’s the wrong way. If you write the music you want and you’re
self-critical about what you release, then it’s only a matter of time
if you have a good product. Right now, we’re going on a Germany
tour, but we’re already working hard on our second album. We
wouldn’t allow ourselves a break. A lot of people want to become
rockstars. It’s possible, of course, but you have to fight like hell
and be original.”
Lea Porcelain w/Anika Apr 14, 20:30, Funkhaus, Schöneweide
Tips
Clubbing
Technosphärenklänge #5
For its fifth iteration, Technosphärenklänge invites Michael Guidetti,
M.E.S.H., Lucrecia Dalt, Regina de Miguel and more to HKW to
take electronic music to new intellectual spheres. Apr 6, 20:00
La Bomba Cumbia Party
Boasting a broad spectrum of Latin music genres, Faela!, Sistema
Sonidero and a variety of DJs will lure you to the dance floor at
Kulturbrauerei. Apr 14, 21:00
Raster. Index – Tanz in den Mai
Not keen on revolting in Kreuzberg? Head over to Funkhaus, where
German electro label Raster will curate a night full of dance floor
delights featuring Robert Lippok, Dasha Rush, Frank Bretschneider
and more. Apr 30, 18:30
Classical and Contemporary
Edward W. Said Days
This three-day festival at Pierre Boulez Saal celebrates the
original postcolonial theorist with concerts and lectures. The
Michelangelo String Quartet and NY author Teju Cole spearhead
the lineup. Apr 6-8
Aggregate
Did you know that the Auenkirche in Wilmersdorf is MIDI-fied?
Experimental duo Gamut Inc. and pianist John Kameel Farah will
give you a little taste. Apr 27, 20:00
f(t) Festival
Radialsystem V hosts this clash of contemporary music and
electronica by Elektro Guzzi, Kuf, Sonar Quartett Aleksi Perälä,
Ensemble Modern and more. Apr 28-29
ON THE
ROYALE ROAD
(AM KÖNIGSWEG)
by Elfriede Jelinek
Inspired by the presidential election in the USA, Nobel Prize
laureate Elfriede Jelinek dedicates herself to the „kings“ of this
world in her current play On the Royal Road: The Burgher King
(Am Königsweg). „Elected is elected,“ but how could it happen?
Why is capitalism and power still always synonymous with
recurrent models of old-fashioned masculinity? Why is right-wing
populism always linked to the blindness of its voters?
Director: Stephan Kimmig
Premiere: April 28, 2018
upcoming shows with English surtitles: May 7, 13, June 3, 2018
For tickets and more information visit deutschestheater.de/en

WHAT’S ON — Music
Interview
“Disaster porn is too easy”
Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst on their
immersive contribution to the ISM Hexadome,
on this month at Martin-Gropius-Bau. By Michael Hoh
that don’t confront these politics is
often helping them. The dystopian
science fiction industry is one of the
tools of the dystopian future. You’re
inundated with creepy, uncanny valley
characterisations of the future of AI.
You get way more clicks on an article
where you’re like, “Whoa, look at this
new face substitution technique that
could be used to deceive the public.”
Disaster porn is too easy.
How do you know when you cross
a boundary? HH: It’s not like there’s
just one boundary. You’re constantly
crossing them and going back and
forth and having to make those
decisions in realtime. That’s what’s
interesting about it. And, of course,
we’re criticised for messing with
these topics. MD: Our interests are
on a very humble level. Why can’t we
develop AI systems to manifest these
ideals that we have, and are we losing
ground in not setting that as our
ambition? This Promethean impulse
is something, of course, to treat sensitively
and be self-critical about, but I
don’t think it invalidates the mission.
DON’T MISS
The Space Lady
If you haven’t heard
the San Franciscobased
Space Lady’s
Casio renditions of
contemporary pop
songs yet, make
sure to head to this
month’s Kiezsalon
at Musikbrauerei.
Apr 18, 20:30
Amiina plays Fantômas
The Icelandic band
will perform their
2016 album, an
imagined score to
the eponymous 1913
crime film, in full
at Radialsystem V.
Apr 23, 20:00
Berlintouch no.3
Combining influences
from Lebanon,
Turkey and Germany,
Bernadette
La Hengst on guitar,
Youmna Saba on oud
and Derya Yildirim on
saz will take the stage
at Ausland.
Apr 26, 21:00
Chick Corea
Witness one of the
driving forces behind
jazz fusion play solo
piano at Apostel-
Paulus-Kirche.
Apr 28, 20:00
In her 2015 album Platform,
Berlin-based American composer
Holly Herndon already addressed
questions of public surveillance and
privacy in our digital age. With access
to the Berliner Festspiele’s latest
immersive technological gadget, the
ISM Hexadome (see sidebar), the
experimental musician now tackles
issues of data collection and artificial
intelligence along with her husband
and longtime collaborator Mathew
Dryhurst in a double performance and
an ensuing installation.
With six screens and surround
sound, the Hexadome was designed
for “immersive” experiences
– what’s your angle on that?
Mathew Dryhurst: We’re less interested
in creating a work for people to
simply spectate, and more interested
in the dynamics of immersion as a
means to gather data from people.
In the Facebook model, the politics
of immersion – choosing your own
adventure, sharing and getting lost in
that universe – is used quite transparently
to sell an advertising service to
collect data on individuals. We’re taking
that approach, hopefully, towards
more positive ends. We’re training
our AI baby on the contributions the
participants are making in the space.
What is the AI baby?
Holly Herndon: The AI baby is a computer
that is being trained right now,
mostly on audio files of my voice. She
learns from the audio that we feed
her, and then she tries to reproduce it
in a way that’s unique to her. She’ll be
listening to the audience’s response
and then she’ll be trying to recreate it;
almost like a shadow of the performance
for the installation.
Doesn’t meddling with AI get
creepy? HH: Of course, there are ethical
grey areas. It’s already an ethical
question to be recording the audience.
And you have to deal with these
grey areas if you want to understand
the subject matter. The problem is
that if you’re just complaining or just
criticising, you’re not offering a new
avenue. To create our own fantasy or
future, we really have to deal with the
subject matter with all of its complications.
That’s our job at Martin-Gropius-Bau,
to create a compelling experience
for people to be able to envision
an alternative path. MD: The race
towards fully immersive experiences
How about the implications
of surveillance in your piece?
MD: This performance is less about
surveillance. But everything we’re collecting
is generalised and abstracted
away from an individual. There’s no
categorisation of people in there.
We’ve done a lot of different data
collection projects in the past, and
part of the initial exercise was just
being surprised by how willing people
were to give up information. You can
spend your time warning someone
about something. Then you go and
perform in front of a lot of people and
ask them to contribute data, and they
seem really happy to. HH: There’s a
cognitive dissonance there. The information
is out there, and people are
aware, but they’re willing to suspend
that knowledge.
For cultural institutions, the latest
technology is usually a big selling
point. HH: Not just institutions
– electronic musicians have a really
bad history when it comes to that. It’s
basically making demo art for tech
companies. Google gives you 100K to
do a video with their new tech; VR
is now on the market, let’s try to
make this interesting. Our role is, of
course, to engage in new technology,
but question it and figure out what’s
32 EXBERLINER 170

WHAT’S ON — Music
going on. MD: That dynamic of funding also looms over everything.
If you want to play with AI, you’ve got to play with these
people who can give you that ability, and they’re almost always
corporations. The kind of tech-art-melding is a very old thing
now. It’s kind of like the old operas that were made to entertain
the biases of the funders: you can’t go to a festival without there
being like a multi-screen immersive whatever, and there’s always
some kind of sponsor. Is this the new opera? Is this just making
artwork to complement rulers?
Do you have ways of escaping data collection?
MD: Ultimately, when you look at the most successful people on
Youtube or Instagram, their core job is to collect data on you. In
music, the trend line suggests that we need to become more like
those people to survive. You see high-profile musicians working
with large companies on their home surveillance devices and
selling them. It’s pretty high time we figure out our position in relation
to this. Rather than non-participation, what can these techniques
be used to build that people wouldn’t need to be afraid
of, that would actually be useful... HH: ...to feel empowered that
you have agency in this world? Facebook isn’t that old. Facebook
could be replaced by something else. There just has to be enough
will from the public that they need an alternative. n
Preview
Enter the Hexadome
This month, Berliner Festspiele continues its foray into
the world of immersive art with the ISM Hexadome,
a six-screen, 360-degree multi-channel audiovisual
system created by Berlin’s Institute of Sound and Music for
artists to use as a multimedia playground. With Brian Eno,
Thom Yorke, Australian producer Ben Frost and Berlin’s
own Holly Herndon spearheading the lineup, the Hexadome
seems like a music geek’s dream come true. Just be aware
that not everyone billed will be showing up in person! After
his artist talk (Mar 31, 19:00), Eno can only be experienced
through his artwork (Apr 2-5, 18:00). The same goes for
Radiohead’s frontman, who collaborated with Dutch AV
wizard Tarik Barri on his contribution (Apr 7-8, 10:00; or wait
until June 1 to see the pair live at Tempodrom). Fans of Holly
Herndon will, however, get the chance to see her live twice
(Apr 6, 20:00 and 22:00) with a subsequent installation two
weeks after that (Apr 21-22, 10:00). Participating in the latter
will be Frost and visual artist MFO, who will also show up for
a live set (Apr 18, 20:00 and 21:00). Also in the mix: Berlin
electronic scene vets Frank Bretschneider and Rene Löwe;
international experimental sound artists like CAO and Lara
Sarkissian, and many more. — MH
ISM Hexadome Mar 29-Apr 22, Martin-Gropius-Bau,
Kreuzberg, more info at berlinerfestspiele.de
ALTERNATIVE MUSIC AND ART AFTER 1968
15.3.–6. 5.2018
www.adk.de/underground-improvisation
Funded by
ISM Berlin
In cooperation with
MARCH 2018
Funded by
Media Partners

GIG
LISTINGS
April
YOUR GUIDE TO CONCERTS
AND EVENTS THIS MONTH
AND BEYOND.
Courtney Marie Andrews
13.04.18 Privatclub
Amusement Parks On Fire
16.04.18 Privatclub
Cold Years
18.04.18 Musik & Frieden
Scott Helman
25.04.18 Musik & Frieden
Fenne Lily
29.04.18 Privatclub
Dylyn
20.05.18 Kantine am Berghain
Gaz Coombes
10.04.18 Bi Nuu
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
16.04.18 Max-Schmeling-Halle
präsentiert von
THE EARLY DAYS, BRIT POP & BEYOND 1980-2010
06.04.2018 | LIDO | British.Music.Club | King Kong Kicks | Karrera Klub DJs
DESPERATE JOURNALIST GENGAHR
09.04.2018 | BADEHAUS 12.04.2018 | BADEHAUS
COSMO SHELDRAKE SUNFLOWER BEAN
13.04.2018 | LIDO 14.04.2018 | ROSI’S | Karrera Klub DJs
THE NINTH WAVE K.FLAY
20.04.2018 | BADEHAUS 21.04.2018 | GRETCHEN
HINDS ISAAC GRACIE
27.04.2018 | BI NUU
08.05.2018 | BI NUU
CITY CALM DOWN
ROLLING BLACKOUTS
COASTAL FEVER
28.05.2018 | PRIVATCLUB
29.05.2018 | LIDO
CAR SEAT HEADREST COURTNEY BARNETT
31.05.2018 | FESTSAAL KREUZBERG 11.06.2018 | ASTRA KULTURHAUS
I HEART SHARKS
15.09.2018 | LIDO
Info & Tickets: www.karreraklub.de
Heisskalt + Van Holzen
26.05.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg
Zaz
07.06.18 Philharmonie
S. Carey
21.09.18 Privatclub
Scott Matthew
13.05.18 Heimathafen Neukölln
Island
20.04.18 Musik & Frieden
Nakhane
21.05.18 Kantine am Berghain
TICKETS UND INFOS: SCHONEBERG.DE
TICKETS UND INFOS: SCHONEBERG.DE
FLORIST
04.04.18 Monarch
THE BLOW
09.04.18 Kantine am Berghain
A HAWK & A HACKSAW
17.04.18 Arkaoda
AMEN DUNES
23.04.18 Privatclub
JAMES ELKINGTON
23.04.18 Monarch
VUNDABAR
26.04.18 ACUD
NAP EYES
02.05.18 Monarch
KATIE VON SCHLEICHER
07.05.18 Monarch
JAPANESE BREAKFAST
09.05.18 Marie-Antoinette
THE WAVE PICTURES
15.05.18 Privatclub
PERE UBU
28.05.18 Frannz Club
SCREAMING FEMALES
29.05.18 Kantine am Berghain
THE SEA & CAKE
31.05.18 Frannz Club
TICKETS & INFO: PUSCHEN.NET
SUUNS
10.04.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg
JAMIE STEWART (XIU XIU)
14.04.18 Roter Salon
PORCHES
19.04.18 Musik & Frieden
THE WEATHER STATION
28.04.18 Auster Club
CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER
20.05.18 Volksbühne
SchneidersLaden presents
intro, FluxFm & Ask Helmut präsentieren:
YOUNG FATHERS
spec. guest: WWWater
Mo. 09.04. Einlass 19:00 Columbia Theater
HER
Di. 17.04. Einlass 19:00 Festsaal Kreuzberg
SELAH SUE
Di. 05.06. Einlass 19:00 Festsaal Kreuzberg
Fritz präsentiert:
KATY PERRY
WITNESS: The Tour
Mi. 06.06. Einlass 18:00 Mercedes-Benz-Arena
intro präsentiert:
DIE ANTWOORD
support: Moonbootica
Di. 14.08. Einlass 17:00 Parkbühne Wuhlheide
Infos unter www.mct-agentur.com
tickets > www.tickets.de und 030-6110 1313
SUPER
BOOTH
18
verlegt !
UMPF,
TAKA, TAKA,
BAM BAM BAM,
BRZZZ,
SCHIIEH,
RÖDDER,
MPFMPF, MPF,
PIIEP,
MÖÖP,
LABA,
PALAVA,
SCHINGE-
LINGELING!
03 - 05 MAI
FEZ BERLIN
34
EXBERLINER 155

WHAT’S ON — Stage
Ute Langkafel
Inspiration and exasperation
I
had doubts when I heard Sebastian
Nübling was directing
Heiner Müller’s Die Hamletmaschine
(photo) at the Maxim
Gorki Theater. The production
would be performed by the Exil
Ensemble, seven actors from
Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine
who had fled their lands to find
a creative home at the Gorki; it
would integrate new texts written
by Ayham Majid Agha, a Syrian
actor in the ensemble. Müller’s
fragmentary riff on Shakespeare’s
tragedy, so open to interpretation
that one of its best known
directors, Robert Wilson, flat-out
admitted he didn’t understand
it, would now be reconfigured to
focus on the Middle East, becoming
more tendentious, narrower,
smaller. And then those production
posters showing clowns: it
just seemed wrong.
But as it turns out, Agha’s textual
interpolations blend surprisingly
well with Müller’s script.
In the original, a character calls
himself “clown number two in the
spring of communism,” providing
the key to Nübling’s and Agha’s
reconception of Hamletmaschine
as a group of clowns born of
the Arab Spring. These aren’t
harmless clowns, either – think
Chucky, not Bozo. The Middle
Eastern contexts chime nicely
The Gorki breathes life into Hamletmaschine, while
the Volksbühne takes the fun out of sex. By Daniel Mufson
with the original because
Müller, too, alludes to events
such as the crushed Hungarian
uprising of 1956.
And some phrases’ meanings
multiply here. “The ruins of
Europe behind me” becomes
more, not less, suggestive when
uttered by an actor fleeing the
Middle East. The multilingual
nature of the play, spoken in German,
Arabic, and English, provides
an excuse to foreground the
text visually: The surtitles aren’t
discreetly projected into a corner
but are magnified, beamed large
as part of the stage environment.
Even without Agha’s additions,
however, Müller’s words effortlessly
take on new life when
spoken by the losers of the failed
Arab Spring: An actress delivers
Ophelia’s lines about smashing
the tools of her captivity and
setting fire to her prison and
then seems to break character,
exclaiming, “I love this text!”
With the passion of this production,
so do we.
Less passion is on display,
ironically, in Albert Serra’s new
play Liberté, which premiered
last month at the Volksbühne.
In it, a group of pre-French
Revolution libertines have left
France to arrive just outside of
Berlin, where they hope to win
the German court over to their
decadent ways, formulating plans
for the corruption of girls at a
local convent or the import of
sex slaves from Polynesia. Sadomasochism
can be played for
laughs or examined for its durably
alluring psychological complexity,
but Serra just makes it dull.
Given his, shall we say, “leisurely
paced” films, this shouldn’t be all
too surprising, but a slow procession
of quiet cinematic images can
somehow generate more interest
than a stage set lit so dimly that
one often can’t figure out which
actor is talking. The elaborate but
monotone plotting of these sexual
intrigues captivates the audience
with all the erotic force of a store
owner taking stock of pretzels.
Even when characters finally start
to get down and nasty, it’s hard to
react with anything but a yawn:
Not tonight, dear, I’m exhausted. ■
Die Hamletmaschine ★★★★ Apr 6, 26, 19:30 (with English surtitles),
Maxim Gorki | Liberté ★ 1978/2018 Apr 7, 8, 19:30 (with English
surtitles), Volksbühne
Editor’s Choice
DON’T MISS
Momentum
Cie.toula limnaios’
new dance piece
tries to locate intensity,
mystery and
poetry in the small
moments of daily life.
Apr 5-8, 12-15,
Halle Tanz Berlin
Isabelle Schad
The Berlin-based
choreographer and
dancer has works at
two different theatres
this month: Fugen,
her 2015 solo work
exploring non-representational
movement
and the fugue;
and Solo for Lea, a
portrait of choreographer
and dancer
Lea Moro that uses
aspects of the visual
arts as well as dance.
Apr 5-6, HAU3; Apr
7-8, Sophiensaele
The Einstein of Sex
Copenhagen-based
theatre company
Livingstones Kabinet
joined forces with
Danish queer vocal
group Schwanzen
Sängerknaben to
create a multimedia,
English-language
musical documentary
performance about
Weimar sexologist
Magnus Hirschfield
and his merry band
of researchers.
Apr 5-7, 20:00
APRIL 2018 35

WHAT’S ON — Stage
DON’T MISS
Walking Large
Toks Körner’s debut
play is about two
Black German brothers,
one a lawbreaker,
the other a model
citizen. Apr 12-15
(English surtitles
Apr 14-15), Ballhaus
Naunynstraße
Kasia Wolińska,
Przemek Kamiński
Dock11 presents two
performances by
Berlin-based Polish
choreographers:
Wolinska’s Dance,
pilgrim, dance, based
on three revolutionary
works Isadora
Duncan created in
the USSR in the early
1920s; and Kaminski’s
Blue (ribbon dance),
a choreographic
contemplation of the
titular colour.
Apr 13-15, 19:00
Endstation Sehnsucht
Tennessee Williams’
Streetcar Named Desire
premieres in
German at the Berliner
Ensemble. Director
Michael Thalheimer
recently said he
didn’t want to do any
more classics, but it
seems he can’t resist
Stanley Kowalski’s
siren call: “Stellaaa!”
Apr 21, 22, 30 (English
surtitles), 19:30
Interview
“ All the focus was on creating
the new and strong Jew”
Israeli director Ofira Henig premieres Kind of,
a play about the manufacturing of intolerance
in her home country’s schools. By Daniel Mufson
Gerard Alon
Ofira Henig has a reputation
for challenging Israeli audiences.
Her intense focus on
the actor’s presence has been compared
to that of Peter Brook – and
in fact Henig’s international career
received a boost when Brook saw her
work at the Israel Festival in 2007
and became a big supporter. Simply
by virtue of her decision to work
with Palestinian actors, her productions
are often viewed as political,
but her engagement with the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict goes beyond that.
When a state-funded performing
arts center opened in Ariel, an Israeli
settlement in the West Bank, she was
among the artists who announced
they would boycott its performances.
Kind of explores education as
a system of exclusion. Was that
your experience growing up in
Israel? I was born on a Kibbutz but
grew up in a small city near Tel Aviv,
where I attended a regular state
school. My school years were around
1967, after the Six-Day War, and my
experience was hard. It was not a
time or place for a slow and dreamy
child like me. All the focus was on
creating the “new and strong Jew”,
creating a new society. It echoed
testimonies I’ve heard and read from
witnesses to other dark periods in
the 20th century.
Is there a story amidst the
piece’s fragmentary texts?
The two main narratives are of the
storyteller presenting the childhood
of an Israeli girl in school, and of the
Arab attendant who works in this
school and becomes the ultimate
victim. These stories are about my
childhood. I’m exploring the educational
system in the 1960s and 1970s
in Israel. I’m trying to understand
if the risk of fascism in our bloody,
bleeding country is a risk that comes
out only now with the right-wing
government, or if it has deeper
ideological roots.
Did you come to any conclusion?
I guess it was always there,
but now, we have even lost our
sense of shame.
F.I.N.D. FESTIVAL
APR 9-22
Does the collage structure – mixing
found material with original
work – serve as a metaphor for the
fragmented nature of Israeli-Palestinian
existence? I was expecting
this question, but as you have noticed
the idea of “co-existence” does not appear
in my lexicon. I don’t like to talk
about my dialogue with Palestinian artists
as an example or will to “co-exist”.
There is no “co-existence” and by
working with my friends, I do not pretend
to show it. The project is based
on fragments because I love drama,
poetry, documentary stuff, philosophy,
I just love it all and am inspired by it.
I love to “dance” with it on stage.
And so do the actors.
Why did you decide to leave the
Israeli state theatre system? I have
good friends in the big theatres and
I don’t judge them. But to cooperate
with the celebration of the status quo –
that is a big “no” for me. So we decided
to forego government funding to avoid
being labeled as presenters of the
state of Israel...
What do you think of the BDS
movement? Some of its advocates
want European institutions
to boycott artists like
you, who actually have similar
desires, at least in terms of a
peaceful and just resolution to
the occupation... Of course I feel
sympathy for the BDS movement. I
follow its activity and I believe in its
power. But I think BDS advocates miss
two issues: They injure people like me
– which I accept – who are boycotted
inside Israel and by doing so, they
serve the right wing. And sometimes
they conflate Judaism and Zionism,
which I do not accept. By doing this,
they lapse into anti-Semitism.
Kind of Apr 6-8 (multilingual,
with English surtitles), Schaubühne
36
EXBERLINER 170

Preview
WHAT’S ON — Stage
Against the art of forgetting
The 18th F.I.N.D. Festival
wrestles with bad memories.
The Festival of International New
Drama (F.I.N.D.) has come a long
way since it started out 18 years
ago as rehearsed readings of new plays at
the Schaubühne. This year, it’s presenting
11 guest productions (all with English
surtitles), two panel discussions, a
poetry slam, a concert by new Krautrock
trio Polypore and an opening night party
introduced by drag queen Gloria Viagra.
Its theme is “The Art of Forgetting” – an
ironic motto given theatre’s role as a place
of remembrance. And in fact, many of the
productions constitute a refusal to forget.
That’s certainly the case with Kind of, the
most recent work by controversial Israeli
director Ofira Henig (see interview, left).
Kind of mines Henig’s memories of the
education she received at the time of Israel’s
Six-Day War, an education that marginalised
Arabic and fostered xenophobia
instead of discouraging it. As prospects
for peace dim and the Israeli left withers,
Henig offers a timely look at one way in
which the right-wing chokehold on Israeli
discourse evolved.
Other productions have a similar
focus on sociopolitical violence. Spanish
theatre artist Angélica Liddell, a favorite
guest in Berlin whose work has long
focused on issues surrounding pain, is
bringing ¿Qué haré yo con esta espada?
(Apr 6-7). The new work deals with two
instances of violence in modern-day Paris:
a Jeffrey Dahmer-like act of murder
and cannibalism committed in 1981 by a
Japanese exchange student, along with
the November 13, 2015 terrorist massacre
at the Bataclan theatre.
Colombian ensemble Mapa Teatro
is bringing La Despedida (Apr 19-21,
photo), the third part of its “Anatomy of
Violence” trilogy: An abandoned guerrilla
camp has become the locus for a “War of
Memory” after the disarming of the FARC
insurrection. The Colombian government
has turned the camp into an open-air museum
featuring re-enactments of crimes
perpetrated by the guerrillas. La Despedida
mixes the documentary with the fantastic
– at one point, an Amazon shaman gets
high with Karl Marx.
For tamer souls, Inflammation du verbe
vivre (Apr 11-12), a solo work by French-
Canadian-Lebanese theatre artist Wajdi
Mouawad, sounds promising. Mouawad’s
dramatic alter ego is Wahid, a writer and
director working on an adaptation of
Sophocles’ Philoctetes. When the play’s
translator dies, Wahid plunges into
depression; stopping rehearsals, he takes
a voyage through post-financial crisis
Athens and discovers a country whose
suffering – like that of Philoctetes – has
been forced into oblivion. Don’t limit your
selection to these four plays: if the past is
any guide, just about all the F.I.N.D. productions
have something to offer. — DM
EXPAT
EXPO
IMMIGRANT
INVASION
FESTIVAL
A Showcase of
Wahlberliner
etb
International Performing Arts Center
Celebrating Berlin’s international
Freie Szene with 17 different
performances over 7 days
April 22 – 28, 2018
ETBERLIN.DE
La Despedida
berlin
english
repertory
theatre
TWO FOR A GIRL
by Mary Kelly and Noni Stapleton
Camille Barnaud
APRIL 26, 27, 28
MAY 10, 11, 12
20:00 – theatreforum kreuzberg
www.bert.berlin
APRIL 2018
Photo: Alen MacWeeney, Irish Travellers–Tinkers No More Series

WHAT’S ON — Art
ART NEWS
Art Week moves
The annual Berlin
event is moving to the
end of September to
coincide with the Art
Berlin fair, announced
for Sep 27-30 at the
Tempelhof airport.
Demand is in demand
Last month, Berlin
and LA-based
sculptor and photographer
Thomas
Demand won the
Berlin Art Prize, an
annual award worth
€15,000. Five further
prizes of €5000
were presented by
the Akademie der
Künste on behalf
of the federal
state of Berlin.
Biennale takes Berlin
The 10th Berlin Biennale
(Jun 9-Sep 9)
has just announced
its four main venues:
Akademie der Künste,
KW, Volksbühne
Pavilion, and ZK/U.
Beckmann‘s back
The widow of Erhard
Göpel, Hitler’s art
dealer instrumental
in Nazi looting
during WWII, has
bequeathed 100
works by the Max
Beckmann to Berlin’s
state museums.
Alongside 46 drawings
and 52 prints
are two paintings:
a self-portrait in
a bar from 1942
and a portrait
of Göpel in 1944.
Editor’s Choice
In the age of the omnipresent
selfie, it’s no wonder there’s an
appetite for something quieter.
This month offers three chances to
contemplate the sedate beauty of
unpopulated industrial landscapes
through the lenses of talented photographers
from the 1960s to the present.
At the Museum für Fotografie,
Photographs: Architecture and Nature
is a retrospective on the 91-year-old
Sigrid Neubert, who spent 30 years as
a photograher for German architectural
firms. Among immaculate black and
white photographs of sleek modernist
homes, office complexes and stadiums
are Neubert’s shots of Hans Maurer’s
Earth Radio Station, designed in 1964.
She captures the majesty of Maurer’s
creation from behind, its solid base
firmly planted into the rural Bavarian
landscape as its dish inclines up
towards a moody sky. A white country
church in the distance contrasts the
modernity of her subject. In another
photo she sets nature against technology,
the foreground focussed on a lone
tree with the enormous antenna dish
relegated to the background. Neubert
gave up all other work in favour of
nature photography in 1990, so it’s
perhaps not surprising to see her
employ it as a narrative device in her
images of the Märker Cement Plant
in Harburg. Taken between 1964 and
1980, her compositions often place
the plant’s raw materials in front of
Tanks for the memories
Photographers find beauty in industrial architecture and
landscapes across three Berlin exhibitions. By Anna Larkin
the actual buildings. In one photo she
seems to equate industry with religion:
the vast smoking stacks and silos are
backdrop to a modest pile of stones
and dirt, laid out as if in votive offering
to the enormous plant.
Over two floors at Konrad Fischer
Galerie, German couple Bernd and
Hilla Becher’s ubiquitous black and
white photographs are out in force
in the form of Gas Tanks (photo).
The Bechers are well known for their
relentless documentation of industrial
structures, among them innumerable
water towers, cooling towers,
blast furnaces and winding towers.
Here, the titular tanks dominate every
frame, perfectly centred, cylindrical
brick and metal versions alongside futuristic
spheres with supports resembling
mid-century rocket launchers.
Staying faithful to the late Bechers’ obsessive
interest in typology, the gallery
doesn’t miss the chance to arrange the
subjects in grids such as the 15-photo
Typologie Gasbehälter, 1965–1992. These
photographs successfully elevate the
gas tanks to something beautiful and
ask the viewer to look again at what
they might otherwise dismiss.
Handily located in the same building
is Primož Bizjak’s new series of
large-format photographs of the
Apuan Alps’ marble quarries. The
Munich-based Slovenian artist spent
three years exploring the vast sites,
resulting in seven colour prints depicting
the still-active sites and the
marks left behind by thousands of
years of mining. First dug up by the
Romans, the quarries’ white marble
has inspired artists from Michaelangelo
to Louise Bourgeois, and probably
a few bathroom designers along
the way. Presented frameless and
seemingly floating on the gallery walls,
Bizjak’s photos of pools of water surrounded
by what look like abandoned
buildings play on Romantic compositions
of classical ruins, but are in fact
ghost structures, simply the negatives
left behind by the mining of marble
blocks. Bizjak’s images challenge
traditional ideals of the picturesque:
he doesn’t present scenes of pristine
untouched nature, but rather draws
out the beauty of a landscape visibly
ravaged by man, its geometrically
sliced marble terrain occasioned with
the glimpse of an industrial digger. n
Photographs: Architecture and Nature Through Jun 3 Museum für Fotographie,
Charlottenburg | Primož Bizjak: Alpi Apuane Through Apr 21
Galerija Gregor Podnar, Kreuzberg | Bernd and Hilla Becher: Gas Tanks
Through Apr 21 Konrad Fischer, Kreuzberg
Courtesy Konrad Fischer Galerie / Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher
38
EXBERLINER 170

WHAT’S ON — Art
Round-up
The big gallery hop
Gallery Weekend returns at the end of this month, with
46 galleries hosting some of the year’s biggest openings.
Here are our top seven picks.
1
British artist Becky Beasley presents
her graceful photography and sculpture
alongside a new floor work in Depressive
Alcoholic Mother at Galeria Plan B.
2
Known for his surreal performances,
Berlin-based Julius von Bismarck
converts Gallery Alexander Levy
into one enormous treadmill.
3
At Esther Schipper, don’t miss an
overview of Canadian artist AA
Bronson’s 50-year career, including
work from his time as a founding member
of the pioneering General Idea collective
plus later solo works.
4
Andreas
Greiner – the Olafur Eliasson
protégé who made a dinosaursized
skeleton of a chicken for the
Berlinische Galerie in 2016 – presents
a narrative sound installation for his first
solo show at Dittrich & Schlechtriem.
5
Abstract painter and original YBA
Fiona Rae presents a series of new
paintings with titles referring to
fairy tale characters at Buchmann Galerie.
6
At Galerie Max Hetzler, German
photographer Thomas Struth
displays portraits of dead animals
taken at Berlin’s Leibniz Institute for
Zoological and Wildlife Research.
7
American artist Kara Walker,
best known for her epic black
paper-cut silhouette scenes,
premieres a new video work at
Sprüth Magers. — AL
Gallery Weekend Apr 27, 6-9pm,
Apr 28-29, 11am-7pm Full programme
at gallery-weekend-berlin.de
ASISI PANORAMA BERLIN
Friedrichstraße 205
10117 Berlin
IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THIS MONUMENTAL
PANORAMA AND EXPERIENCE THE EVERYDAY LIFE
IN THE 1980S IN BERLIN KREUZBERG.
asisi.de | die-mauer.de/en
Mouth (for L’Oréal), New York, 1986 © The Irving Penn Foundation
IRVING PENN CENTENNIAL
DER JAHRHUNDERTFOTOGRAF
24.03.——01.07.2018
C/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus
Hardenbergstr. 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
Täglich / Daily 11:00–20:00 . www.co-berlin.org

WHAT’S ON — Art
Interview
“I like a certain softness.”
Turkish artist Nilbar Güreş on using humour
and fabric to craft her own political language.
By Anna Larkin
DON’T MISS
Tobias Zielony:
Maskirovka
Known for his
photographs of
suburban juvenile
minorities, Zielony
displays a new series
at KOW depicting
the underground
queer and techno
scene in the aftermath
of Ukraine’s
2013 revolution.
Through Apr 15
Mess with Your Values
Offering an insight
into Berlin’s artistic
diversity, 11 international
artists all
awarded the 2017
Berlin Senat stipend
in visual arts present
video, installation and
performative works,
paintings, prints and
photographs in this
group show at NBK.
Through Apr 29
Irving Penn: Centennial
The NY Met’s retrospective
of Penn’s
prolific 70-year
career opened at
C/O at the end of
last month, covering
portraits, still
life, fashion and art
photography.
Through Jul 1
Defying Gravity
The KINDL centre’s
latest exhibition is
a retrospective of
Swiss, Berlin-based
artists Taiyo Onorato
and Nico Krebs,
featuring video,
photography and
installation.
Through Jul 15
Courtesy Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
You may have caught Güreş’
subversive representations
of women at the 2010 Berlin
Biennale or in her brilliantly deadpan
video Undressing at the Jewish Museum
last year. If not, fear not: she’s
back with her first Berlin solo show
at Galeria Tanja Wagner. Her unique
brand of pan-medium humour, sociopolitical
critique and handcraft is also
currently on view in the group show
Colony at Berlin’s Schwules Museum.
Güreş, who works between Istanbul
and Vienna, sat down with us to talk
about her work and what inspires her.
Your work is often called
“political” – what does that
mean to you? I feel that racists and
fascists are in power everywhere,
some openly using religion as a
weapon, and some more covertly.
I am angry about this and I think a
lot of people feel the same. I have a
personal language for dealing with
political issues. I don’t say things
directly; I don’t present photographs
of protests as art. It’s not my language.
But my work does address the
issues faced by oppressed groups,
such as LGBTQA+ people. Most art
lovers have a comfortable life and
don’t want to be disturbed by these
politics. I think it’s important to
change this hard-hearted attitude.
What are the politics at play
behind the piece How I Met Your
Mom, for example? The work is
the silhouette of a woman at her
window and a man, hiding his penis,
trying to flirt with her from below.
It’s about the idea that we all have
bodies and how religions try to put
distances between them, with cloth
and rules. It also references animism
and all the beliefs that existed before
colonialism. The mother could be
from any of the three monotheistic
religions: Judaism, Islam or Catholicism.
I don’t like any of them.
Your work crosses multiple
mediums, and in pieces such
as Snake: Violet you combine
ready-made elements with high
handcraft. How important is
medium to what you produce?
How I Met Your Mom
Nilbar üreş
I think medium whispers to us about
the artist. I would say I am a painter
though, because I always start
every work with a drawing. Works
using fabric always hold something
personal for me. A lot of the fabrics
I use are those I collected as a child
and asked my mother to keep for
me. Cold elements don’t speak to
me, I like a certain softness in my
mediums: they can mould, integrate,
change and move.
Where did you source the
fabric for The Lovers?
That came from my dowry box
and is very old material. The figures
are a lesbian couple, made from two
parts of a long pillow usually given
to a couple on their wedding night.
The saying in Turkish is, “I hope
you get old on the same pillow”.
I wanted to show that this pillow
could be split, to give more space
to each person, but still keep them
together.
Humour is an integral element
in your work – what is
its worth to you as an artistic
device? Humour means hope.
That is all. n
Nilbar Güreş: Jumping Bed and
Female Lovers Through Apr 13
Galerie Tanja Wagner, Schöneberg
Colony Through Apr 15 Schwules
Museum, Tiergarten
40
EXBERLINER 170

WHAT’S ON— Art
Reviews
Through Apr 14
Karla Black
Capitain Petzel, Friedrichshain
★★★✩✩
Scottish sculptor Karla Black’s otherworldly installations
and sculptures earned her a 2011 Turner Prize
nomination and the Scottish Pavillion at the 54th Venice
Biennale. Created from unconventional materials
such as cosmetic powders, cellophane and petroleum
jelly, her works are abstract and often reference the
Land Art movement. In her second exhibition at Capitain
Petzel, the few coloured balls of fluff blowing about
on the floor, barely-there smears of colour on some
windows and walls and the two doors almost apologetically
hinged onto walls in corners of the gallery initially
feel a little disappointing and frail. Black’s monumental
and immersive environments are usually more substantial
than this. However, the two tombstone-shaped
works Unlike and Paths Properly Told redeem the
show. Glass panels held upright by clay-covered floor
supports suspend circles and smears in pastel green,
pink and blue, made from paint, eyeshadow and other
cosmetics. Giving a firm nod in both form and materials
to Duchamp’s famous The Bride Stripped Bare by
Her Bachelors, Even, they solidly emphasise the shyer
hints and delicate dabs of the other works, drawing out
a much-needed narrative tension that ties the exhibition
together. — AL
Through May 6
Notes from the Underground
– Art and Alternative Music in
Eastern Europe 1968-1994
Akademie der Künste, Tiergarten
★★★★✩
Karla Black
Clumsy Socialist Realism is the first thing many associate
with art from the Eastern Bloc, but this exhibition offers
something quite different. Adapted from an exhibition
by Museum Sztuki in Poland, it presents the little-known
underground art and music scenes that managed to
flourish under communism, despite state controls
and censorship. Including painting, sculpture, collage,
photography, print, video and mixtape covers, many
never publicly exhibited before, the AdK show spans
happenings in 1960s Poland, 1980s experimental art film
from the GDR, the USSR’s Red Wave rock scene and
everything in between. The aesthetics from each period
are unexpectedly similar to those from the other side
of the Iron Curtain: characters posing in Russian artist
Evgenij Kozlov’s It’s the fashion! photo collages wouldn’t
have looked out of place in London’s Blitz Club; and
Jan Ságl’s 1970 photo of a performance by (still-active)
Prague band The Plastic People of the Universe could
have easily been shot in New York or LA. Dispelling the
myth of a creative wasteland in communist Eastern
Europe, this is an important exhibition overflowing with
stories to be told. You might want to set aside a couple
of hours to take it all in. — AL
Through Jun 10
Max Beckmann:
The World As A Stage
Museum Barberini, Potsdam
★★★★★
From his peak years as one of the Weimar Republic’s
most revered painters through his labelling as “degenerate”
by the Nazis, self-imposed exile in Amsterdam and
late-career resurgence in the US, Max Beckmann was
fascinated by theatre and the circus. It’s around this
theme that Potsdam’s Museum Barberini has assembled
over 100 of Beckmann’s paintings, drawings, sculptures
and prints, some of them rarely seen in Europe
before. In his depictions of larger-than-life figures like
Germany’s first parachuting woman (Käthe Paulus in Air
Acrobats, 1928) and nightlife scenes like cabaret dancers
crowded onto a stage in Schöneberg (Tauentzienpalast,
1924), Beckmann captures not only the drama of
the performance, but also the drawn breath and glazed
anticipation of the audience. Alongside captivating portraits
of fellow artists and performers are his prints and
drawings of Berlin life, snapping what a street photographer
might today. Walking around this vast exhibition,
it’s easy to forget its very singular theme and be
thoroughly drawn in by Beckman’s masterful draughtsmanship
and astute observations on interwar Germany,
as well as his experience as a wartime refugee. It’s a triumphant
return home for this underappreciated master
and worth the trip out to Potsdam. — AL
Max Beckmann: Apachentanz
a Walk
on the
dark side
(WT)
A PROJECT BY
YAEL RONEN & ENSEMBLE
DIRECTOR
YAEL RONEN
PREMIERES
14/APRIL
ELIZAVETA
BAM
BY DANIIL CHARMS
A PRODUCTION BY
EXIL ENSEMBLE
DIRECTOR
CHRISTIAN WEISE
ALL PLAYS WITH
ENGLISH SURTITLES
MAXIM GORKI THEATER
Am Festungsgraben 2, 10117 Berlin
STUDIO IM MAXIM GORKI THEATER
Hinter dem Gießhaus 2, 10117 Berlin
APRIL 2018
Box Office: 0049 30 20 221 115
Tickets online: www.gorki.de

WHAT’S ON — Calendar
Calendar
April 2018
Picks, highlights and can’t-miss events for this month in Berlin.
Clockwise from left: Die Krupps,
Apr 26. Lana Del Rey, Apr 16. Die
Originale Festival, Apr 7. Roma
Biennale, Apr 7.
SUN
1
Easter Walkies — Fetish
Forget bunnies –
here come the Easter
puppies! Berlin’s kinkiest
weekend culminates in the
traditional canine-free “puppy
walk” and scavenger hunt,
beginning at Schöneberg’s Brezel
Company and continuing through
Tiergarten. Starts 14:00.
MON
2
Festtage: Parsifal
— Classical Back in its
rightful home at the
Staatsoper, Daniel Barenboim’s
annual opera fest ends
with an appropriate dose of
Wagnerian bombast. Also
Mar 30. Starts 16:00.
FRI
6
F.I.N.D. — Stage
The Schaubühne’s Festival
for International
New Drama is back for 10 days
of theatre from Tokyo to Berlin
to Santiago. On opening night
you can catch Ofira Henig’s Kind
Of and Angélica Liddell’s ¿Qué
haré yo con esta espada?, or head
directly to the party hosted by
Gloria Viagra. Starts 17:00. Fest
through Apr 22. (See page 38)
SAT
7
Roma Biennale —Stage/Art
The Maxim Gorki
Theater is hosting the
first biennale featuring Roma
artists from all over Europe,
highlighting feminist and queer
work in particular, with exhibitions,
performances, discussions,
a concert, and a parade. Through
Apr 10. (See page 21)
Die Originale Festival — Circus
Sick of clowns and sad animals?
The Festspiele presents a different
kind of circus, with performances
by Compagnie MPTA
and Jörg Müller punctuating two
days of free-wheeling presentations
and concerts. Also Apr 8.
WED
11
Achtung opening — Film
Berlin’s own homegrown
film fest (see
page 24) kicks off 11 days of
Berlin-made (and Berlin-related)
flicks at Babylon Mitte with
Laura Lackmann’s comedy Zwei
im falschen Film. Through Apr 18.
Starts 19:00.
Alfilm — Film Back for the ninth
year, this sharply programmed
survey of new Arab cinema opens
at Arsenal Kino with Beauty and
the Dogs, a harrowing tale of abuse
in post-revolutionary Tunisia.
Through Apr 18. (See page 29)
THU
12
Ganzfeld “Aural”
— Art opening American
neon artist James
Turrell (famous here for his
illumination of the Dorotheenstadt
Cemetery memorial
chapel) returns with a new
light installation in the
Jewish Museum’s garden.
Through Sep 30.
SAT
14
Exberliner’s English Days
— Film Head to Lichtblick
for three days of
cherry-picked highlights from
this year’s Achtung Berlin fest,
all screening with English subs
and special guests. Plus Sunday
brunch! (See page 24)
Velo Berlin — Bikes The Tempelhof
hangars and runways host a
weekend of bike races, demos,
expos and more – don’t miss
the chance to try out that twowheeler
you can’t afford in the
“Testival” area. Starts 10:00.
MON
16
Lana Del Rey — Music
Heaven is a place on
earth where you... don’t
get accused of plagiarising
Radiohead? The Barbie on ‘ludes
creeps over to Mercedes-Benz-
Arena for her only German show
this year, along with Cat Power.
Starts 19:00.
TUE
17
A Hawk and a Hacksaw
– Music The Balkan,
Hungarian and
Turkish-inflected tunes of
accordionist Jeremy Barnes
(ex-Neutral Milk Hotel) and
violinist Heather Trost are a
natural fit for Istanbul-imported
club Arkaoda. You might not
dance, but you’ll clap at uneven
intervals. Starts 21:00.
FRI
20
Ana Mendieta
— Exhibition opening
The first exhibition at
the Martin-Gropius-Bau under
new artistic director Stephanie
Rosenthal (not counting the
Hexadome, page 32) is a retrospective
of the Cuban-American
artist’s earthy, feminist
video works – 23 in all, so mark
out some time for this one.
Through Jul 22. Starts 10:00.
SAT
21
The Empty House
— Art Opening Schinkel
Pavillon’s new show is
dedicated to the late, influential
20th century artist Louise
Bourgeois, with a focus on her
sculpture and installation work
involving bags and sacks.
Through Jul 29.
SUN
22
Expat Expo — Stage
The English Theatre’s
festival for non-German
theatre artists kicks off
with an afternoon of short
performances and goes on to
include a riff on Ibsen’s Doll
House (Noraland); a look at
42
EXBERLINER 170

WHAT’S ON — Calendar
expat existence in different stages
of life (When I Was Old/When I Get
Young), and a documentary
theatre piece about switching
WGs (We Just Moved You).
Through Apr 28.
WED
25
FilmPolska— Film
The festival of provocative
new Polish cinema kicks
off at Babylon Kino with the
German premiere of award-winning
doc The Prince and the Dybbuk,
and continues with a stellar line-up
at venues across town. Through
May 2. (See page 29)
A Maze Festival — Games
Discover your next addiction at
the seventh edition of this indie
video game festival and developer
competition, featuring workshops,
discussions, concerts and
of course, loads of stuff to play.
Through Apr 29. Urban Spree.
THU
26
Writing in Migration
— Literature The first
edition of this new
African book festival features
English-language readings and
talks by over 30 authors, head-
lined by Nigerian novelist
Chris Abani. Babylon Mitte.
Through Apr 28.
Die Krupps What Neubauten
were to West Berlin, these
industrial pioneers, aptly named
after the 400-year-old steel
dynasty, were to West Germany.
Making good for their postponed
show in September, Die
Krupps will take the stage at
Kesselhaus with new material in
tow. Starts 20:00.
FRI
27
Gallery Weekend — Film
Put on your art-appreciation
fedora and hit the
town as 46 galleries fling open
their doors for some of the year’s
hottest openings. What to see
first? Check our guide (page 38).
Through Apr 29. Starts 18:00.
SAT
28
Hello World
— Exhibition Opening
The Hamburger
Bahnhof takes a critical look at
the Nationalgalerie’s Western
focus with this project, which
presents 120 works from the
collection in 10 thematic chapters
across the entire exhibition
space. Through Aug 26.
Buttcocks — Party Go ahead, say
it out loud! With the sexiness
of Schwuz’s Elektronischer
Donnerstag gone, something’s
got to fill that hole. The new
party explicitly promises sexy
encounters and music to grind
to. Now, go get “buttcocked”.
Starts 23:00.
MON
30
EXBlicks: Achtung Winner
– Film If you didn’t see our
Exberliner Film Award
winner during the Achtung festival,
catch up with a special screening
and Q&A at Lichtblick. Starts 20:00.
Tanz in den Mai – Party Load up
on special potions as Berlin’s
clubs throw open their doors for
“witches’ night”. Just save some
energy for Myfest, rioting and/or
one last dance at Bassy
Club tomorrow...
April Programme in English
5.+6.4. / HAU3
Isabelle Schad
DANCE
Fugen / Re-run
8.+9.4. / HAU1
She She Pop
THEATRE
50 Grades of Shame – A picture album
inspired by Wedekind’s “Spring
Awakening”
Repertoire / German with English translation
11.4. / HAU1 DIALOGUE
Fearless
Speech #14
Transgressing Transgressions
With Luce deLire, Lucy McKenzie, Virve Sutinen and Katharina Hausladen /
Moderation: Colin Lang
13.4. / HAU2 MUSIC
Andreas
Spechtl
Concert / Afterwards: Party at WAU
My Perfect Berlin Weekend
Brazilan-born, Berlin-based Karim Aïnouz is hot off the heels of the
Berlinale premiere of Zentralflughafen THF, a doc on refugee life in the
airport-turned-camp. The film screens at Exberliner’s English Days
(page 24) before hitting German cinemas next month.
FRIDAY
16:00 Check out the books at Walther Koenig Bookstore
(Burgstr. 27, Mitte) and magazines at Do You
Read Me (Auguststr. 28). 20:00 Dinner at Chicha
(Friedelstr. 34, Neukölln) on my street. 23:00 Have a
drink at Zum Böhmischen Dorf (Sanderstr. 11, Neukölln)
and then head out to Gegen at Kit Kat Club
(Köpenicker Str. 76, Mitte).
APRIL 2018
SATURDAY
13:00 Late brunch at Goldberg Café (Reuterstr.
40, Neukölln) 15:00 Check out the flea market
at Rathaus Schöneberg (John-F.-Kennedy-
Platz 1, Tempelhof-Schöneberg). 16:00 Take
a walk down Postdamer Str. to check out the
galleries. 17:00 Late Persian lunch at Persepolis
(Kurfürstenstr. 127-128, Tiergarten). 19:00
Check out books at Motto Berlin (Skalitzer Str.
68, Kreuzberg) and B Books (Lübbener Str. 14,
Kreuzberg). 21:00 Have dinner at Osteria Sippi
(Sanderstr. 10A, Neukölln). 23:00 Nightcap at
Raumfahrer bar (Hobrechtstr. 54, Neukölln).
SUNDAY
11:00 Brunch at Cabslam (Innstr. 47,
Neukölln), then bike to... 12:00 Lichtenberg,
for lunch and Vietnamese grocery shopping
at Dong Xuan Center (Herzbergstr. 128). 16:00
Walk on Tempelhofer Feld or take a stroll
around Krumme Lanke in Zehlendorf. 18:00
Watch a great film at Wolf Kino (Weserstr.
59, Neukölln). 21:00 End the evening with
a delicious dinner at Dr. Tos (Weichselstr.
54, Neukölln).
16.4. / HAU1
Plattenspieler
DIALOGUE MUSIC
With Thomas Meinecke and Ziúr / English
17.–19.4., 21.4. / HAU2
The Biofiction
DANCE PERFORMANCE
Trilogy
A retrospective by Simone
Aughterlony
20.4. / HAU1 MUSIC
Grouper
Concert
26.+27.4. / HAU1 DANCE
Ian Kaler
LIVFE / German premiere / English
26.–28.4. / HAU3
HAUPTAKTION
THEATRE PERFORMANCE
Zweiter Versuch über das Turnen
A TANZFONDS ERBE project / German with English surtitles
29.4. / HAU1 DIALOGUE
Fearless
Speech #15
Judith Butler: Resistance for the
Present? / English with German translation
2.5., 4.–7.5. / HAU2
Gob Squad
THEATRE
Creation (Pictures for Dorian)
English and German / Premiere
www.hebbel-am-ufer.de

ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide
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way around Berlin. To advertise, contact
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shrimp cocktails and more. Set menus
from €5. During Happy Hour drinks
are just €3.50 after 20:00. Reservations
suggested. Skalitzer Str. 35, U-Bhf
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030 6113 291,
Mon-Fri 9-1, Sat-Sun from 10,
www.morgenland-berlin.de
hain. Delicious freshly made burritos
and quesadillas served by a collection
of fun-loving international people.
Once a week, challenge the NHE team
to a game of rock-paper-scissors and
win a half-price meal! Kopernikusstr.
22, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun
from 12, www.nohabloespanol.de
CAFÉS
BARETTINO — Neukölln
Barettino means “small bar” and in
our case is a unique combination of
everything which makes you happy
between dawn and dusk. A huge breakfast
choice & fine coffee, lunch & dinner
made fresh and with love, plenty
of delicacies, toasted paninis and
homemade cakes, Italian aperitivo and
holy spirits. Join the Barettino family!
Reuterstr. 59, Tel 030 2556 3034,
Mon-Sun 9-22, www.barettino.com
KREMANSKI — Kreuzberg
Kremanski offers tasty breakfast,
high-quality coffee, lunch (Mon to Fri),
homemade cakes and ice-cream, special
beers, drinks, good music and cultural
events. The friendly and talented staff
will make you feel welcome, inspired
and relaxed. The perfect hangout right
at Kotti, all day long! Adalbertstr.
96, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Mon-Thu
8.30-23, Fri 8.30-2, Sat 12-2, Sun 12-23,
www.kremanski.de
TO PLACE YOUR
AD HERE CONTACT
ADS@EXBERLINER.COM
for its courteous staff and pleasant
atmosphere in the elegant and
much-loved Literaturhaus villa. The
perfect stop during a shopping trip
on nearby Ku’damm. Fasanenstr.
23, U-Bhf Uhlandstr., Tel 030
8825 414, Mon-Sun 9:30-24, www.
literaturhaus-berlin.de
NAPOLJONSKA — Mitte
Located just off Zionskirchplatz,
this vegetarian café offers organic
and homemade delicacies. Enjoy a
range of hearty breakfasts reaching
from spinach omelettes to pancakes
and French breakfast. Here you
can sip your organic latte in a cosy
atmosphere with the young and old,
locals and travellers. Kastanienallee
43, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Tel
030 3117 0965, Mon, Fri 08.30 -18.00,
Tue-Thu 8.30-16:00 Sat- Sun 09-
19.00, www.napoljonska.de
ATAYA CAFFE — Prenzlauer Berg
With its comfortable sofas and
colourful, gemütlich decor, this vegan/
vegetarian Italian-African fusion cafe
specialises in 100 percent homemade
cuisine, ranging from fresh pastas to
avocado salads and exotic paninis,
rounded off with cakes, smoothies and
bio fair-trade Italian coffee. Come for
business lunch on weekdays, Saturday
buffet breakfast or Afro-Italian vegan
brunch every Sunday! Bring the kids
and dogs. Zelterstr. 6, S-Bhf Prenzlauer
Allee, Tel. 030 3302 1041, Tue-
Fri 10-19, Sat-Sun 10-19, Mon closed,
www.atayacaffe.de
CARAVAGGI NATURWEIN
BISTRO — Prenzlauer Berg
Here is a place to enjoy organic,
biodynamic and natural Italian wines
of the very highest standard. Try some
of our hot dishes, cheeses, prosciutto
di Parma, salami, Tuscan crostini,
fresh vegetables and more from small
Italian producers following the Slow
Food philosophy. Lettestr. 3, S-Bhf
Prenzlauer Allee, Tel 030 2870 4411,
Tue-Sun 17-24, www.facebook.com/
ItalianNaturweinBerlin
RESTAURANTS
SCHWARZES CAFÉ
— Charlottenburg Since the 1970s,
Schwarzes Café on Savignyplatz has
been a cult favourite among artists,
anarchists, foreigners and Charlottenburgers.
They’re open 24/7, have
English menus and serve organic
meat. Kantstr. 148, S-Bhf Savignyplatz,
Tel 030 3138 038, Mon-Sun all
day, www.schwarzescafeberlin.de
3 SCHWESTERN — Kreuzberg
Housed in a former hospital turned
art centre, this spacious restaurant
with big windows overlooking a
lovely garden serves fresh, seasonal
German and continental dishes at
reasonable prices. Breakfast on
weekends and holidays. Live music
and parties start after dessert.
Mariannenplatz 2 (Bethanien), U-Bhf
Kottbusser Tor, Tel 030 6003 18600,
Mon-Fri from 12, Sat-Sun from 11,
www.3schwestern.com
CAFÉ IM LITERATURHAUS
— Charlottenburg Enjoy a coffee in
one of Berlin’s finest cafés, known
CAFÉ MORGENLAND — Kreuzberg
On weekends and holidays you’ll find a
great buffet here, complete with gourmet
cheese, fresh fruit and veg, crêpes
and other vegetarian dishes, cold cuts,
NO HABLO ESPAÑOL
— Friedrichshain The best California-style
Mexican street food joint in Friedrichs-
PUNE — Prenzlauer Berg The place
to go to, especially on Sundays for a
great Indian buffet after a stroll in the
nearby Mauerpark flea market. They
offer a large menu with various meaty,
vegetarian and vegan dishes, and daily
lunch specials. Don’t skip the cocktail
happy hour! Oderberger Str. 28,
U-Bhf Eberswalder Str., Tel 030 4404
2762, Mon-Sat 12-24, Sun 11-24,
www.pune-restaurant.de
44
EXBERLINER 170

ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030 5482 1866,
Sun-Mon 9-17, Thu-Sat 9-22, closed
Tue-Wed, www.bastard-berlin.de
part bar, the interior is beautifully
decorated with antique tiles. Wühlischstr.
22-23, S+U-Bhf Warschauer
Str., Tel 030 2616 918 Mon-Sun 17-2,
www.hopsandbarley-berlin.de
technology comes to life! Expect the
unexpected! Rosenthaler Str. 39,
S-Bhf Hackescher Markt, Wed-Thu
18.30-21.30, Fri-Sat 16.30-21.30,
www.monsterkabinett.de
LA BUVETTE — Prenzlauer Berg
For a good glass of wine, a romantic
or business dinner, a wine tasting or
a birthday party... come to La Buvette
Weinbar. A cosy French bistrot
where all wines come directly from
France and the food is like mama’s
cooking. Try the famous ‘steakfrites’
with a glass of Bordeaux, or
come on Sundays for ‘moules-frites’!
Gleim Str. 41, S+U-Bhf. Schönhauser
Allee, Tel 030 8806 2870, Mon-
Sun from 18, www.labuvette.berlin
CABSLAM WELTRESTAURANT
— Neukölln The very best California
breakfast slam in Neukölln. Fresh
location at Landwehr Kanal has fused
with Weltrestaurant Markthalle
Kreuzberg! A mix of American and
German cuisine that rocks: burgers,
burritos and more! Innstr. 47, Neukölln,
U-Bhf Rathaus Neukölln, Mon-
Tue 11-22, Wed closed, Thu-Fri 11-22,
Sat 10-22, Sun 10-17, Tel 030 6869624,
www.cabslam.com
BARS & NIGHTLIFE
MONSTER RONSON’S ICHIBAN
KARAOKE — Friedrichshain
Monster Ronson’s is the world’s craziest
karaoke club. Make out on their super-dark
dance floor, get naked in the
private karaoke boxes and sing your
favourite songs all night. Warschauer
Str. 34, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-
Sun from 19, www.karaokemonster.de
SHOPS & SERVICES
L a w y e r s
BGKW LAWYERS — Mitte
This firm specialises in labour, family,
private building and insolvency law.
The legitimacy of dismissal is the main
subject of labour disputes. In divorce
proceedings, legal representation is
mandatory. We give legal advice in
cases of construction defects and to
all parties concerned in insolvency
proceedings. Prior contract consulting
is often appropriate: Arbeits-, Ehe-, Lebenspartnerschafts-,
Bauträgervertrag.
Markgrafenstr. 57, U-Bhf Kochstr., Tel.
030 2062 4890, www.bgkw-law.de
BASTARD — Kreuzberg From Bastard
with love: whether it’s breakfast,
lunch or dinner, this restaurant is not
just for those who were born out of
wedlock. Choose from the changing
seasonal menu created with love for
fresh ingredients and fine food. Our
tip: try the homemade stone-oven
bread! Reichen berger Str. 122, U-Bhf
HOPS & BARLEY — Friedrichshain
Serving home-brewed pilsner and
dark beer, this is the place to go to
get that proper brew-pub vibe in
Friedrichshain. Cider and wheat
beers are also on tap. Part brewery,
THE GERMAN SPY MUSEUM
— Mitte Immerse yourself in the
fascinating cloak-and-dagger world
of Berlin’s high-tech museum: crack
secret codes, complete the laser
obstacle course and gasp at what the
NSA and Facebook knows about you.
The German Spy Museum charts the
history of espionage in its interactive
exhibition with a floor space of
3000sqm. Unique exhibits such as
the famous Enigma machine are waiting
to be explored. Leipziger Platz
9, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz, Tel 030
39 8200 450, Mon-Sun 10-20, www.
deutsches-spionagemuseum.de
TIB-SPORTZENTRUM — Neükolln
At Berlin’s oldest sport club you’ll find
sports for young and old. Baseball,
softball, ultimate frisbee, tennis, dance
and more. Their sport centre has a
gym, sport courses, 8 badminton and 2
indoor tennis courts, and a sauna.
Columbiadamm 111, U-Bhf Südstern,
Mon-Fri 7:30-23:30, Sat 8:30-20:30,
Sun 8:30-23:30, www.tib1848ev.de
DOLORES — Mitte & Schöneberg
Founded 10 years ago as a street food pioneer in the German
capital, Dolores serves excellent California-style burritos, tacos and
quesadillas – inspired by San Francisco’s Mission district. Recommended
by Time Out, New York Times and Lonely Planet. Voted #1
value for your money by Exberliner readers. Rosa-Luxemburg-Str.
7, S+U-Bhf Alexanderplatz, Tel 030 2809 9597, Mon-Sat 11:30-22,
Sun 13-22. Bayreuther Str. 36, U-Bhf Wittenbergplatz, Mon-Sun
11-22, www.dolores-berlin.de
MONSTERKABINETT — Mitte
Join us on a trip to Berlin’s underground
art scene! A unique theme
park inhabited by automatic, singing,
dancing monsters. Your guides: our
performance artists from Transylvania.
Visitors of all ages are invited to
enjoy an invaluable art event where
HUMBOLDT-INSTITUT — Mitte
Total beginner or advanced learner:
the Humboldt-Institut has the right
German course for everyone. Small
classes with intensive tuition ensure
swift and effective learning.
Intensive courses are also available
with accommodation on campus.
Or simply choose a part-time
course in the morning, evening or on
Saturdays. Invalidenstr. 19, S-Bhf
Nordbahnhof, Tel 030 5551 3221,
www.humboldt-institut.org
APRIL 2018 45

ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide
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ASISI PANORAMA BERLIN — Mitte
Experience the panorama DIE MAUER
(Berlin Wall) by the artist Yadegar
Asisi in an 18-metre-high rotunda.
The panorama shows everyday
life in Kreuzberg of the 1980s on a
1:1 scale. Immerse yourself in this
monumental Panorama installation
– a perfect illusion of the history of
the city. Friedrichstr. 205, U-Bhf
Kochstr., Tel 0341 3555 340, Mon-Sun
10-18, www.die-mauer.de
FRAUENCOMPUTERZENTRUM
BERLIN (FCZB) — Kreuzberg
The place for vocational social
media and computer skills training
for women. Now offering publiclyfunded
courses for working and
unemployed females: free of
charge or at affordable prices.
Relaxed and flexible learning environment
with dedicated staff and a
great view of the Spree. All training
in German language. Cuvrystr. 1,
U-Bhf Schlesisches Tor,
Tel 030 6179 7016, www.fczb.de
030 6179 7016, www.fczb.de
LPG BIOMARKT — 9x in Berlin
Your all-organic neighbourhood supermarket supplies fruit and veggies,
vegan groceries, meats, cheese and even cosmetics. They offer a huge
selection of local and regional products, preferably from within 200km
of Berlin. Fill your basket with freshly baked bread and treat yourself to
a selection of homemade sweet and savoury goodies. Found already in
8 locations in Berlin to offer you the fairest, cleanest and most delicious
products nearby, from nearby. Kreuzberg, Mehringdamm 20 & Reichenberger
Str. 37 Prenzlauer Berg, Kollwitzstr. 17 Mitte, Alt-Moabit 98
Friedenau, Hauptstraße 78 Steglitz Albrechtstr. 33 www.lpg-biomarkt.de
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EXBERLINER 170

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APRIL 2018
47

BERLIN BITES
TEST-DRIVE
Pizza with
benefits
They say pizza is
like sex – it’s good
even when it’s bad,
but rarely is it truly
memorable. You’ve
got to have a gimmick
to stand out in Berlin’s
overcrowded market
these days, and these
four pizzerias have
found theirs. By Jane Silver
THE €1 AMERICAN SLICE:
SALAMI SOCIAL CLUB
Salami Social Club delivers everything its
name promises – meat, hoppy beers, friendly
laddish vibes – but not only. With a pliable
sourdough crust sturdy enough to hold all
manner of imaginative toppings, this Friedrichshain
joint is a clear front-runner in the
admittedly limited field of US-style pizza in
Berlin. Some may say the British-American
owners’ decision to slather each slice in
garlic butter, Parmesan and pesto mayonaise
W Pizza
Salami Social Club
unless ordered otherwise is a bit much,
but you’re not here for subtlety. You’re
here for salami – Italian, Spanish or even
Hungarian, combined with burrata cheese
or chilli honey. Or sausage, made in-house
or sourced from beloved Kiwi butcher The
Sausage Man Never Sleeps (who does “oven
takeovers” from time to time). Their best
vegetarian pie is the “Kürbis” with sweet
sliced squash, goat cheese and black olives;
vegans will be into the version with mushrooms,
caramelised onions and pine nuts.
Just be advised there’s no regular vegan
by-the-slice option, and whole pizzas (€8-11,
easily serves two) can take up to 45 minutes
to arrive in the packed, pint-sized space.
Nurse a Berliner Berg (€3.50/0.3L) while you
wait, or come back for the vaunted €1 slice
night (Thu 18-1:30), a weekly free-for-all in
which pizzas are set out and immediately
devoured by a hungry mob that spills out the
door onto the pavement. Upcoming outposts
at Renate (this month) and Else (from
May) will make the “club” in the name
literal. Frankfurter Allee 43, Friedrichshain,
Sun-Wed 12-24, Thu-Sat 12-1:30
Jane Silver
tomorrow’s lunch. An all-wheat version is
still on the table, but stick to the hemp mix
for the house special with aubergine paste,
provola cheese and Italian salsiccia, invented
as a pre-opening special and rightly added
to the regular menu. The same dough is
also used to make the flatbread that’s served
with a hefty salad of kale, blood orange,
roasted vegetables and that trendy burrata
relative called stracciatella (€9). Prices
aren’t as high as you’d expect given the
quality and the décor (Sołowiej’s co-owner,
Darius Suski, is a high-end design dealer and
will talk your ear off about the blown-metal
Oskar Ziete stools): pizzas start at just €6
(for marinara) and average about €9 (for
that aubergine special), though the “weed”
crust comes with a €2 surcharge. Save room
for a tiramisu that will win over the pickiest
of Italians (€5). And if you were among the
lucky few who tried Sołowiej’s sourdough
bread at Zola, you’ll be happy to know that
his bakery ambitions have returned in full
force at W. Pick up a hemp-infused or allwheat
loaf (€3-4) and stay tuned for croissants.
Fuldastr. 31, Neukölln, Tue-Fri 18-22,
Sat 13-22, Sun 13-21
Anita Richelli
CANNABIS CRUST:
W PIZZA
Lukasz Sołowiej, the Polish former head chef
at Paul-Linke-Ufer pizzeria Zola, opened his
new venture last month in what used to be
Neukölln’s Koffer Bar. He’s left the wood
oven behind for a bright orange gas one, but
fans will still recognise his chewy Neapolitan-style
crust, fired for just 90 seconds
until bubbly and blistered. What’s different
is the option of ordering your pie with
hemp-flour dough: the W cheekily stands for
“wheat and weed”. This cannabis obviously
won’t get you high, but it does contribute a
greenish tint and a wholesome, nutty flavour
as well as being quite filling – good news for
SLOW DOUGH:
AMMAZZA CHE PIZZA
The latest business to try its luck in the
“cursed” spot on the corner of Ohlauer
Straße and Maybachufer is a Roman-owned
pizzeria that looks like a Mitte sushi bar.
Anyone who’s passed by Nihombashi on
Weinbergsweg will peg Ammazza che
Pizza’s childlike, colourful décor as the
work of the same designers (a Berlin outfit
called Newniq) – even the oven looks like
a hungry, red-and-green cartoon monster.
Heated with gas for now and wood when
the Ordnungsamt gives the okay, it spits out
hybrid Roman/Neapolitan-style pizzas with
48
EXBERLINER 150 170

BERLIN BITES
exceptionally light, fluffy crusts thanks to a
wheat dough that rests for between 48 and
72 hours before being rolled out. Toppings
cover all the Italian basics, with cheese and
cured meats imported from around Naples
(side note: you know an Italian place is authentic
when they list pugliese with anchovies
as a “vegan” option). The pies won’t
weigh you down, meaning you’re free to try
the rest of chef Maurizio Cilento’s menu
with impunity. There’s handmade pasta
(like a toothsome whole-wheat cavatelli
with prawns and pesto, €16), but we’d steer
you towards the antipasti special (€14), a
giant shared platter you’ll want to order as
soon as you see it on someone else’s table.
Comprising fried zucchini blossoms, buffalo
mozzarella, grilled aubergine, stuffed tomatoes
and various other goodies atop a bed
of coccoli (fried pizza dough bites), it’s ideal
for post-work snacking alongside an Aperol
spritz or glass of Leverano house wine
(both €4.50). Maybachufer 21, Neukölln,
Tue-Sun 11:30-22:30
Ammazza che Pizza
Jane Silver
Rosso
ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT PINSA:
ROSSO
Why go all the way to a desolate peninsula
on the Charlottenburg-Moabit border for
pizza? Because this one-room storefront is
the only place in Berlin that serves Pinza
Romana, a newly en-vogue ancestral form
of the snack with dough that incorporates
soy and rice flour, plus extra water and long
fermentation times. The resulting crust is
crisp on the bottom and chewy on top, with
plentiful air pockets. It’s easy to eat a lot of it
– and you can do just that at Rosso’s Sunday
brunch (11:30am-4:30pm, reservation recommended).
For €13, you get whatever dishes
Roman brothers Massimo and Marco feel
like making that week, brought fresh from
the oven to your table until you’re stuffed.
On our visit there was beet carpaccio with
capers, sliced oranges with black olives, veggie
couscous with rocket-fennel-Parmesan
salad... and of course pizza of all kinds: a
flatbread-like version with tomato sauce
and anchovies; puffy focaccia topped with
Gorgonzola and mushrooms; Pinsa Romana
with grilled zucchini and aubergine, then
with artichoke, Pecorino and mint. As everything
but the couscous is made al minuto,
service is, shall we say, “relaxed”. Have some
wine (€3.50/0.25L) or a Nastro Azzurro beer
(€2.50) while you’re waiting for your next
dish, and don’t make any important plans
before 5pm. More impatient types or local
office workers can come by during the week
for a plain old slice (€2.50) or whole pie
(€6.40-11). Helmholzstr. 24, Charlottenburg,
Mon-Fri 11-20, Sun 11:30-16:30
TIP
From Apr 12-18, the True Italian Pizza
Week promotion lets you try a whole
pizza and glass of wine for €10 at Rosso,
Ammazza che Pizza and 27 other
Italian restaurants across town.
Jane Silver
FEBRUARY 2018 49

REGULARS
Save
Berlin
by Dan Borden
Mute’s
Mega-Berlin
Dan watched the Netflix flop
to find out how our city’s
future stacks up.
As a film, the recent Netflix thriller Mute is a
derivative bore. But for those of us fretting
over Berlin’s future, Duncan Jones’ sci-fi vision
is a blast. As our city drifts toward neutered
mediocrity, the director promises the
Berlin of 2052 will be a souped-up version
of the seedy 1970s playground inhabited by
his dad, David Bowie.
Bowie moved to Schöneberg in 1976, seduced
by Weimar Berlin’s 1920s decadence,
and produced his signature album, Heroes.
While Mute’s hero Leo Beiler (Alexander
Skarsgård) searches the Berlin of tomorrow
for his missing girlfriend, director Jones goes
back and reconstructs the wild and crazy
Cold War Berlin he glimpsed visiting his
father as a kid.
In Mute’s alternate future, American
soldiers still patrol the streets where insults
like “commie” and “yankee” are bandied
about, and everyone still uses deutschmarks
– printed with Angela Merkel’s face. But the
Berlin Wall is gone. A car chase through West
Berlin ends at the East Berlin restaurant
Ständige Vertretung, and Leo picnics next
to the Brandenburg Gate, shown wedged between
tall buildings. The best part of Jones’
alternate future: Berlin’s tight-assed city
planners have learned to relax and love two
current no-nos, neon signs and skyscrapers.
In 30 years, Mitte will be a forest of glowing
towers, like Dubai on the Spree.
The film doesn’t offer cameos by survivors
of Bowie’s Berlin like Iggy Pop, Brian
Eno or Romy Haag, but it gives screen time
to three Cold War landmarks we’re lucky to
still have around:
Kotti apotheosis
Mute’s hero Leo crosses paths with his nemesis
Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) in a scene filmed
at Kottbusser Tor, in today’s Kremanski cafe.
It’s a ground level storefront in that sprawling
mega-project, the Neues Kreuzberger
Zentrum. Opened in 1974, the complex was
aimed at upgrading/sanitising a seedy corner
of then-West Berlin – with the unspoken goal
of scaring away the growing immigrant population.
It didn’t work. Today, 70 percent of its
300 flats are occupied by non-Germans. In
April 2017, city-owned housing company Gewobag
bought the complex, guaranteeing its
survival as affordable housing into the 22nd
century. But Mute literally takes the building
to the next level, showing it doubled in height.
Leo is seen traversing the project’s upperlevel
“street-in-the-sky”, a feature planned
but never completed in the 1970s due to
budget cuts.
Westside UFO
While scouting futuristic Berlin locations,
director Jones was psyched to stumble on
Charlottenburg’s Internationales Congress
Centrum (ICC). He described the late-1970s
megastructure to entertainment website
IGN: “It looks like a spaceship from Battlestar
Galactica that’s just landed in the city...
[and] on the inside it looks like a Kubrick
set.” In Mute, the ICC’s lobby plays a mid-
In Netflixe’s Mute, Mitte’s
Kraftwerk is transformed into
a futuristic red-light district.
21st-century shopping mall. In reality, the
asbestos-filled building has been unused
since 2014 and was threatened with demolition
until Berlin’s Senat kicked in €200
million to save it last year. Its future function
isn’t fixed, but they’ve singled out one option
not on the table: shopping centre.
Ossi AC/DC
The seedy underbelly of Mute’s Berlin is a
steamy, multi-level red light district. Signs
for a fictional Rudi-Dutschke-Straße S-Bahn
station place it blocks from Checkpoint
Charlie, but it was actually shot inside a
cavernous Cold War-era power plant. The
Kraftwerk Mitte on Köpenicker Straße
began generating East Berlin’s electricity
in 1964. Shuttered in 1997, it’s been revived
as a stunning event venue and home to the
dance club Tresor.
Director Jones should have waited. Blocks
from the real Checkpoint Charlie, a new
building’s going up that’s destined to rank
among the city’s futuristic megastructures.
The Axel Springer Neubau, by Dutch architect
Rem Koolhaas, will be a high-tech office
block with gaps in its skin revealing a cavelike
atrium. Set to open in 2020, it will be
daring, quirky and a camera-ready backdrop
for Berlin’s real-life sci-fi future. ■
The Berlin of 2052 will be a
souped-up version of the seedy
1970s playground inhabited by
David Bowie.
50
EXBERLINER 170

“
COLUMN— The Gay Berliner
What we do in
the shadows
What’s happening behind
darkroom doors
these days? Walter
Crasshole examines
the changing rules.
What’s your number? Do you have Whatsapp?”
Remy asked in accented French as we sweatily
emerged from the private cabin of Große
Freiheit’s darkroom. I gave it to him and he gave me his, fully
well knowing neither of us would follow up. We’d gotten
everything we needed from one another under the soft black
light in a sticky one-square-metre space. Pleasantry exchange
was nice, but was it needed? Had we broken protocol? Is there
protocol in these situations?
For the uninitiated, when I say “darkroom”, I’m not talking
about photography. Not limited to clubs, these traditionally
male-only spaces litter Berlin’s landscape from Prenzlauer
Berg to Schöneberg, Friedrichshain to Neukölln – every time
you see a bar with no windows and a buzzer for an entrance,
it’s probably a darkroom. For the cost of a beer at most, you
can enter a maze of intentionally unlit nooks and crannies
where testosterone sticks to the wall and something hard is
waiting in the shadows. You can get it all back there, without
a word if you want. From innocent wanks to industrial-grade
gang bangs. Stuff a muffin or suck a petrified hot dog.
Despite accusations of being cold and dehumanising, darkrooms
have been a source of gay liberation for decades. For
closet cases trapped in undesired marriages, for internalised
homophobic machos, for hormone-crazed young people
who’re still figuring things out, the darkroom is a down and
dirty place of celebration.
Yeah, there are rules, but I’m not here to list them all.
Precedent is hard to determine in a place where barely anyone
talks and history is hard to come by, even on the interwebs, so
why bother? But I will say that darkrooms, particularly in progressive
queer Berlin, are in a moment of constant flux. The
crux of the matter: should they be limited to men (or to penis
owners)? The late club night PORK threw its darkroom doors
open (really, it’s just stairs leading to a cellar) to all genders at
Ficken3000 in the mythical 2000s, but Ficken has flip-flopped
its policy ever since, proving the queer scene’s ambivalence
around the discussion. Older cis gay men feel their spaces are
being taken over. Younger women and trans men want new
areas to explore.
But how does that work out pragmatically? Lecken (German
for “lick”) is a female-centric fetish night that takes over various
spots around town, including sex club Untertage, where
all bodies are welcome. It includes a reputedly “femme-safe”
darkroom. The only report I could glean from a friend who
attended March’s instalment, though, was that there were far
too many menz for a female-centric party. Either we’re not as
ready to mix as we’d like, or there’s still one gender overwhelmingly
drawn into the dark.
As for the rules and protocols? The darkroom landscape of
Berlin is changing so fast that there’s really only one constant:
“No means no.” Stick to that, dear reader, and we just might
Whatsapp you the next day. But probably not.
MARCH 2018

COLUMN — Ask Hans-Torsten
You are not alone!
Call 030 787 5188
or 01803-AA HELP
Meetings in English
www.alcoholics-anonymous-berlin.de
Update.indd 1 06/10/16 13:01
Q
How to be
a politician
Hans-Torsten Richter gives
you advice on surviving
and thriving in Berlin.
Send your questions to
hanstorsten@exberliner.com
Dear Hans-Torsten: I want to
get more politically involved!
Which office(s) can I run for as a
non-German? – Page
A
Dear Page: Citizens of the European
Union living in Germany have, according
to the office of the Landeswahlleiter
(elections administrator), the right
to vote in and run for office in “communal
elections”. In the case of the Berlin citystate,
that means you can run for a spot on
your local district council, or Bezirksverordnetenversammlung
(BVV). Europeans can
also run for a seat in the European Parliament,
which is better paid – over €8500
per month, compared to €560 as a simple
member of the BVV!
More or less anyone who’s not been
declared criminally insane can run for
office. To get ahead in Germany’s proportional
representation system, it’s easiest
if you work within a political party. So
join a party of your choosing and rise
within its ranks by networking like mad
with higher-ups, being an eager beaver
and volunteering for tedious tasks and
taking up bureaucratic positions with
your local party branch. At party gatherings,
dazzle your comrades as a witty
public speaker! Become an expert on
a couple of hot-button topics and take
a crash course in German rhetorical
speaking while you’re at it. After a few
years, you just might be able to convince
enough members of the party to support
your candidacy.
Or start your own party! The bar is
set pretty low. Foreigners are allowed to
found political parties, but the majority
of the members must be German citizens.
Once it’s been founded and an executive
committee has been elected, the
party will have to collect at least 2000
signatures of support and jump through
a few more bureaucratic hoops in order
to be able to take part in elections. Go to
wahlen-berlin.de and www.bundeswahlleiter.de
for all the detailed election info
you could ever need.
Q
Dear Hans-Torsten: I know about
the Mietspiegel, but how can you tell
if your Hausverwaltung is verarsch-ing you
with exorbitant Nebenkosten requests?
– Barry
A
Dear Barry: Great question. First
some vocab: Nebenkosten (side costs),
officially called Betriebskosten (operating
costs), are the additional costs in your
monthly rental payment on top of the
Kaltmiete (“cold rent”). The Mietspiegel is
an annual chart published by the Berlin
government outlining “typical” average
rents in the different areas of Berlin. On
page 21 of the Mietspiegel 2017 (a PDF
which can be found at www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de)
you will find the “Berliner
Betriebskostenübersicht 2017”, listing average
costs per square metre based on a survey
of the 2015 Betriebskosten of 2500 Berlin
households. The costs themselves can be
broken down into two categories: “cold”
(things like garbage fees, snow removal,
cleaning of common areas and building
insurance) and “warm” (heating and warm
water charges, applicable only if your
building has central heating – if you have a
gas boiler in your flat, you’ll probably make
a separate payment to the provider Gasag).
According to the Betriebskostenspiegel the
“cold” costs averaged €1.59/sqm per month
in Berlin, while the “warm” costs averaged
€0.93. So get out your calculator and
see what you’re paying. If your building
management is requesting significantly
more, something’s up. Building managers
in Berlin are notorious for screwing over
renters with dodgy Betriebskosten demands:
even though it’s your right to see all of the
relevant invoices and documents, the firms
often collude with the various service providers.
Unfortunately the Betriebskostenspiegel
provided by the Berlin government
is not legally binding, but it can signal
when you should be taking further action:
by confronting the Hausverwaltung about
it, or by engaging a renter’s association or
lawyer if that doesn’t help.
52
EXBERLINER 170

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yorck.de
“Joyous and unexpectedly triumphant”
The Guardian
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THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
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The
Biofiction
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A Retrospective
by Simone
Aughterlony
Photo: Niklaus Spoerri
17.–21.4. ➞
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