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People on Sunday - Screenshot from YouTube

People on Sunday – Berlin Docufiction From a Bygone Era

A mixture of documentary and loosely scripted drama, the black and white film, People on Sunday was a surprise hit when it was released in February 1930 in Berlin. Described in the titles as Film Studio 1929’s ‘first experiment…a film without actors’, the main action in People on Sunday revolves around a day trip to […]

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M-Bahn Berlin - a short-lived monorail or Maglev (magnetic levitation) train that travelled along an approximately 1.6km stretch from the lower tracks of the U-Bahn station Gleisdreieck (now the U2) to Kemperplatz via the station at Bernburger Strasse (approximately where the U2 station Medelssohn-Bartholdy-Park is today) - Screenshot from the YouTube video Die M-Bahn in Berlin | Industriefilm aus 1985

The M-Bahn – The Berlin Monorail

If you have lived in or even visited Berlin, the chances are that you’re very familiar with the S- and U-Bahn but did you know that the German capital also once had an M-Bahn? The Berlin M-Bahn (short for Magnet-Bahn) was a Maglev, or magnetic levitation) train system, which is described in detail in this […]

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Bruce Springsteen East Berlin 1988 - screenshot from YouTube

Bruce Springsteen East Berlin Concert in 1988

There are several people and events that get cited as contributing to the fall of the Berlin wall and the Bruce Springsteen East Berlin Concert in 1988 comes up often. The Boss was at the height of his fame, a rock ’n’ roll demigod, who embodied an all-American spirit due to the associations with his […]

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Bauhaus: Design in a Nutshell

The Open University’s short film Bauhaus: Design in a Nutshell sums up the Bauhaus movement in an easy to follow 2 minute video. The school, which was founded in Weimar in 1919 by Berlin-born architect Walter Gropius, revolutionised art and design in the twentieth century. As it says in the the video’s description on YouTube: […]

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Sunday Documentary: Background to Berlin

A tweet from NATO marking the 70th anniversary of the start of the Berlin Airlift led me to the recently recovered documentary Background to Berlin. The film is part of the “Atlantic Review series” developed between 1959 and 1968 by the NATO Information Service. This film tells the story of the city of Berlin from […]

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Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain: East Germany by Super Bunnyhop on YouTube

Sunday Documentary: Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain: East Germany

Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain: East Germany is a short documentary about the personal computer and arcade video game industry in the GDR during the Cold War. As the narrator, Super Bunnyhop, summarises at the end of the video: If you ever need an example of the complicated intersection between politics and entertainment, look no […]

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Screenshot from Berlin - Symphony of a Great City Screenshot on YouTube

Sunday Documentary: Berlin – Symphony of a Great City

Berlin – Symphony of a Great City, released in 1927, is a classic of the golden age of silent film and a compelling document of life in Berlin in the interwar years. The film is presented as a day in the life of Berlin but Walter Ruttmann edited together footage recorded over the course of […]

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Screenshot from Berliner Trance on YouTube

Sunday Documentary: Berliner Trance

Berliner Trance is a 1993 documentary that charts the rising popularity of trance music and the MFS record label from its origins in post-wall Berlin. Trance music is a kind of dance music which thousands of young people across Germany and throughout Europe are quite passionate about. It’s a musical movement which is gaining strength. […]

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