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Easily the most memorable two hours of cinema ever shot in Kreuzberg (*),
Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession" follows the disintegrating marriage of Anna
(Isabelle Adjani) and Mark (Sam Neill) "like a fast-forwarded Ingmar Bergman
film on bad acid" (rogerebert.com) through the subway stations and side streets
of SO36 in 1980, along the Antifascist Protection Wall -- which at the time,
conveniently, also kept backpackers, party tourists and real estate developers
at bay -- all the way to Sebastianstraße 87, where a bloodbath begins to unfold
that even for its survivors would remain a life-changing event: Zulawski's film
was banned for 15 years in the UK (and never released in Germany until 2009),
Isabelle Adjani won the Best Actress award in Cannes for her performance, and
the octopus she has sex with towards the end of the film made such a splash
that the guy who designed it would one year later score the job to create E.T.
Anna's and Mark's rapidly deteriorating existence -- where to draw the line
between household accidents and domestic violence? how to tell the difference
between an abbatoir and just a messy apartment? and where exactly does public
indecency end and dangerous interference with road traffic begin? -- provides
for a series of highly iconic scenes of picture-perfect West-Berlin desolation
that make for an exceptionally authentic and period-accurate Heimatfilm. Yet
seen from today's point of view, the inner and outer void that the English-
speaking, single-income, one-child and upwardly mobile (even if only in
the last scene) couple inhabits, and the way their personal disaster remains
strangely detached from the ruin of the city, seems to foreshadow the even more
depressing reality of Kreuzberg loft life in the 2010s. If we had to remake the
film today, we'd set it 100 meters further north, Dresdner Ecke Waldemar.
(*) and occasionally beyond -- for a comprehensive photo tour and map, see
www.spectacularoptical.ca/2014/02/the-psychotronic-tourist-possession-1981/
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possession
andrzej zulawski
1981 123 min 4.69 gb
sunday
july 26
9 pm
prⅳate cinema berlin
saal 2 kreuzberg
u kottbusser tor
12 seats, rsvp
first come first serve
location in separate mail
trailers:
www.piratecinema.org/trailers/#20150726-01
www.piratecinema.org/trailers/#20150726-02
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prⅳate cinema berlin
www.piratecinema.org
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