ND - Deutsches Neuland. Filmvorführung und Q&A

On August 10, we’ll be screening the documentary “ND – Deutsches Neuland” at the Hofkino, taking us on a cinematic journey into the history of the FMP1. Before the screening, there will be a discussion with cinematographer Peter Badel and Dr. Matthias Schindler.

On Strasse der Pariser Kommune in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district, behind the rail tracks of Ostbahnhof, the massive prefab building that was once the GDR’s “Media Palace” lies like a stranded ship. On the roof, the long-since-extinguished neon letters still spell out “NEUES DEUTSCHLAND.” Inside, time seems to have stood still. A doorman from “the old days” presides over the foyer; the past lives on: in the smell of linoleum, the idle paternoster elevator, the endless corridors bathed in the flickering light of neon tubes. On the ground floor, Walter Grenzebach has his domain; he’s the last remaining employee of the newspaper, still in charge of “public relations.” Walter watches as his “empire” crumbles a little more each day. The once-strictly secured executive floor on the second story has been taken over by a clique of young creatives. Bass beats now boom through the hallways, and in the large newsroom, “Mr. Schneider” sells sound equipment for DJs. One of the offices is now an animation studio. But animator Katrin Rothe hesitated for a long time before moving in here. Yet now, of all places, she is developing something of a sense of home here for the vanished land of her childhood. 

The documentary is a portrait of a strange “in-between place” where the GDR still lingers as a “remnant,” casting its neon-yellow light on those who have built their own little “empires” in the vacant niches. No longer “New Germany,” but a whimsical “German New Land.” One of those places threatened by redevelopment—and thus soon to disappear for good—where history is palpable as the coexistence of past and present.