“Oh, this ghost” – the counterfeiters, 7 dumpsters & a corpse, xberg 1st of may…

“Oh this ghost
Will win my host it’s lingering
In me, and around my neck
It taps on my head
While i’m asleep” Scott Matthew

Today I’ve watched ‘Die Fälscher’ (The Counterfeiters), a movie about a counterfeiter in a KZ who’s forced to use his abilities for the nazis. Stefan Ruzowitzky tells his story along the edge of a razor blade asking: how far would you go to save your life? I like how it shows the complexity of moral decisions. Is the criminal (Karl Markovics, he’s great! It’s been a long way from Komissar Rex’s Stocki to this, haha.) who helps the nazis partly to save his own ass and partly to satisfy his ego by creating a perfect dollar counterfeit ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when he also uses the power his abilities give him to get medicine for a sick fellow prisoner? Is the antifascist fighter ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when he risks his fellow prisoners’ lives just because he thinks it’s okay with him to lose his life in his fight? Isn’t his readiness for martryrdom more about pride and ego? Good movie.

Scanning some papers and news sites for reports on the First-of-May-Riots in Hamburg, Berlin and Nuremberg left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Of course it’s satisfying to see a nazi car burn and for some people it even might be satisfying to see a nazi lying bleeding on the ground. Still big parts of the outrage seems to be less about results and more about a testosterone-powered outcry for action. The whole adrenaline-in-the-air-&secret-society-conspiracy-thing you get from some people in the days before such big demonstrations somehow makes me doubt that these guys’ prime goal is making the world a less xenophobic and racist place. It has more of a ‘let’s do them in’ football fan mentality, looking forward to a blind raging ‘us’ versus ‘them’ fight club.

I spend a very nice day at the 1st of May in Berlin though, strolling around Myfest in Kreuzberg with Frauke and René, boozing and musing and watching people and bad bands and rappers, and a swan, missing political messages and banners other than some eco porn activists and these:

It was like a really relaxing tourist day at the annual Kreuzberg revolution routine.

At nine we were a bit exhausted and as there was no burning car action to wake us up again, we went to a cinema and watched ‘7 Dumpsters and a Corpse’ by Thomas Haemmerli, a film I wholeheartedly recommend (www.messiemother.com)! It’s a documentary in which the film maker and his brother clean out their messie mother’s home and her life story unfolds with the items they find. The beginning is a bit tough with a rentokil guy helping them cleaning out the remains of the decomposed corpse but that scene puts it clear with which openness and sometimes almost brutal honesty the movie is told. It’s very black-humoured and it is awesome how many different film techniques are used in it with it still coming across as a very consistent piece of work. What a great way of dealing with death.

After that we met two more exile-Nuremberg friends at a pub: Martin and Martin.Martin Müller has a new zine out you definitely should buy! Once more it is a great mixture of comic and graphic art and sociopolitical texts.

Martin Sulza is at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen today and I wish him big big luck to win the MuVi Award with his new video which he made for a hiphop track by Food For Animals. You can watch it on his site or on dailymotion.com (though first, as he told us, the clip was banned from dailymotion for being too explicit which is ridiculous: They have no problems showing regular sexist hiphop clips with ass&tit-shaking ladies but one that shows a nude male body to contrast that is too explicit. Tsk.)

On the next day, on my train ride home after a nice breakfast at the Croissanterie, I saw a rainbow. After listening to an audio book by Fitzek for 3 hours I switched to music and listened to Scott Matthews. Problem with him is that I like his songs and voice but lots of his lyrics are such damn bad poetry that even the saddest of his songs make me laugh.

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