Anita: Dances of Vice (German: Anita – Tänze des Lasters) is a 1987 German avant-garde film directed by Rosa von Praunheim. The film premiered at the 1987 New York Film Festival and was also shown at, for example, the 1988 São Paulo International Film Festival.
The film follows a delusional elderly woman who believes she is Anita Berber (1899-1928), a German dancer who, along with her partner Sebastian Droste, epitomizes the decadence of 1920s Berlin. Nude dance performances, cocaine use, and an excessive sex life characterize their lifestyle. Anita Berber's story is told through the thoughts and memories of the old lady (played by Lotti Huber) who is being held in an "insane asylum". Scenes from Anita's scandalous life are replayed also in her dreams.
The story centers on a young Canadian woman who lives in a politically active flat-sharing community in Kreuzberg Berlin and works in a squat bar whilst also singing in a rock band. Due to the new capital situation, occupied buildings suddenly become sought-after investments. The living and working situation of the musicians and other scene-people deteriorates massively. The band wants to draw attention to their situation with a street concert, so the apartment community hijacks the entire broadcasting van of a television station. The film was broadcast on TV on 23 March 1993 and was released on DVD a few years later. The film culminates in an act of broadcast signal intrusion. An authentic neighborhood portrait of Berlin at the time with an excellent soundtrack. The 'Rockhaus' squat of the film is actually the Køpi squat at 137 Köpenicker Straße in Mitte, that was first occupied in 1990 and continues today.
Køpi was squatted on 23 February 1990 by Autonomen from West Berlin . Despite the terrible state of the building, the squatters were attracted by the large rooms. The police did not attempt to evict the occupation, which marked the first time people from West Berlin had squatted in East Berlin. The squatters legalized their occupation with the district council of Mitte in 1991.
From the very beginning, Køpi was a radical left space where anarchists , socialists , queers and musicians were welcome. The building itself is covered in banners and graffiti. It became known as Køpi because the squatters chose to use the Danish ø despite the name coming from the name of the street (Köpenicker Straße). Køpi is also spelled Koepi, Köpi and even occasionally Kopi in English or Spanish texts. Køpi has become an important symbol for the radical left in Berlin, linked to projects elsewhere such as the Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen and Rozbrat in Poznań.
This magical blend of documentary and fiction takes us back to a glorious summer Sunday in late-1920s Berlin where five young workers take a day off. While they enjoy freedoms undreamt of by their parents, sexual rivalry soon lends an edge to their flirtations. The backdrop to the film is the Weimar Republic, founded in 1919, and the urban cosmopolitanism of Berlin at the time, which would come to end in just a few years with the rise of the Nazis and the end of democracy.
The people portraying the characters were all amateurs belonging to a Berlin collective who, the opening credits inform us, had returned to their normal jobs by the time of the film’s release. They included a taxi driver, a record seller and a wine merchant. This revolutionary experiment in realism was the collective effort of several future Hollywood directors, including Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
The film "Menschen am Sonntag" portrays in a half-documentary style the life of young people in the metropolis of Berlin at the end of the 1920s. Four of the five leading actors stood in front of the camera for the first time. The young Christl Ehlers had played a major role in the fairy tale film Ms. Holle a year earlier. The film is worth seeing because of the authentic pictures from that time, from the station Zoo, the station Nikolassee, the Havel at the "large window" and Wannsee.The later Oscar winner Billy Wilder wrote the screenplay with Robert Siodmak after an idea of Robert's brother Curt Siodmak: The Siodmak brothers also made a career in both German and American films, with Edgar G. Ulmer mainly shooting Hollywood films, whose history makes the film one of the first independent films and a forerunner of post-war neo-realism.
Menschen am Sonntag is a film by Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Billy Wilder. It was produced by Moriz Seeler's production company "Filmstudio 1929" and was made in and around Berlin in 1929 and 1930. The premiere was on February 4, 1930. He is one of the late representatives of New Objectivity in film.
Ash Ra Tempel, Kluster, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and many more musicians met and played together in The Zodiak Free Arts Lab. The club was initiated by Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011). He was a prominent experimental musician who had before coming to Berlin studied sculpture with Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf. The Zodiak became as he intented a scene wheremusicians, artists could improvise with psychedelic rock, experimental jazz and electronics. The stage had equipment and were used freely by the performers. There were two halls, one black and the other white. In this milieu visions met and expanded into new music that would arise. The Zodiak Free Arts Lab was short lived, between 1968-69, and still made a huge influence on music and art.
