die erste Zeit

The only way I can begin, is to discuss all of the firsts that I am experiencing on a daily basis. From a personal stand point this is the first time that I have ever settled in a foreign place for an extended amount of time and the first time in my months of travel in Europe that I have stayed so long as to experience the turning of the leaves and of summer into fall. Academically this is the first time that I have ever been involved with the study of film, monuments, relation and perspective. I have also never been involved with the type of academic atmosphere that I have become a part of here in Berlin. I'm not used to consuming material, ideas, and experiences in order to then analyze them to such a degree. As a business student I am more accustomed to studying and arriving at the inteneded method of thought and common understanding. In most cases, business does not emphasis on questioning intentions or the need for analysis. I am much more accustomed to right and wrong answers not meant for interpretation.

I have found this method of leaning through exploration to be interesting and a very good creative stimulus. Even so, I do have my reservations about concentrating too much on what some of our class discussions arrive at. Instead I tend to place more emphasis on how it was that we got there and what our discussion made me think about. For example, today as a class we discussed the film "Berlin: Symphony of a Big City", and as a class we sought to connect symbolic meaning to so many images, only to discover that the academic society of the time in which the film was produced criticized it for its imagery containing a lack of meaning. As someone unfamiliar with art and film studies, arriving at an incorrect conclusion is the problem that I often associate with analyzing art and film to such a degree. The benefit of all this analysis and careful thought is that the more I scrutinize the films and readings, the more I scrutinize the city around me.

Many of the readings I have found very engaging, "Ghosts of Berlin" which I will from here on refer to as "GOB", is the essential dose of history needed for having a clue at the city we're living in, while the articles often present a new way of looking at the city. The only problem I have is that with each article I feel like I gain a new perspective that could contribute to the group film project but each of them is fleeting because the next article is sure to leave me slanted and my perspective again altogether different. I blame this on the varied perspective of each article but also on my newness to all of this. Being immersed in this new method of study, pursuing a new discipline (film), and a new city leaves me feeling completely impressionable. I hope that as our project develops so will my focus.

My film group consists of Frodo, Jessica, Jesse and of course me. The first question that we had as a group was, "so who knows something about film"? When the answer became obvious, our second question was, "so what is this black stick they just handed us"? The answer to that quesion being, sound boom.

I am confident that the fact that none of us have any idea about whats going on, won't hold us back. At least we know that we don't know anything. It would be worse to be under the confident impression that we knew how to use the equipment only to find out that we didn't. Or worse yet, we could have one person who knew a ton about it and then the rest of us would feel inferior. We just know that we have a lot to learn and fast.

It is hard to have specialization without specialists and for this reason we don't really have any defined roles as a group so far, with the exception of Jessica who will be the primary editor. She really felt passionate about that aspect of the project and we're using her computer, so it works. Our main undertaking to this point was to agree on a topic and a general course of action. After discussing endless possibilities, including our own German cooking show, Frodo's costumed march though the history of Berlin, and a video city tour, we arrived at our chosen topic.

One thing that stood out to us in reading GOB was Berlin's history of tolerance of enjoyment of sexual freedom and sexual intertainment. Combined with the uniqueness of the people living here today, which we encounter on a daily basis, we felt like exploring what it is that makes Berlin so unique and diverse. This is obviously an answer that we don't have yet, but one that we must research. Certainly it has something to do with the mentality of its inhabitants but could a society filled with such a thriving subculture and deviance away from the establishment have a common thread? Could these varied groups all be tied to being a part of a reaction away from a turbulent and at times oppressive establishment? That is what our documentary will be seeking to establish. We have planned to conduct a series of interviews from members of different groups of Berlin's subculture which will lead into our footage of understanding their lifestlye and why they choose to live the way they do.

It is clear to me that this may be a difficult topic to handle, and as we have it planned now must hinge on our success of getting interviews. One difficulty with focusing on people outside of mainstream culture, is that they usually are more difficult for outsiders to communicate with. This is a fact that definetly won't help to ease our language barrier. Understanding this, we have decided to go with it and have assigned general research topics for the group to tackle as a whole. Our first topic to research is Berlin's sexual culture in the 20s, from here we will work forward to the present exploring new factors as we come to them.