Different Class: an excellent evening at Neue Heimat

I love the Mobile Kino open air screenings and always keep an eye out for their upcoming events so when I saw that they were to screen ‘Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets’ with special guests Jarvis Cocker and film-maker Florian Habicht, I was determined to buy tickets as soon as they became available.

The screening was held indoors at Neue Heimat – one of my favourite Berlin venues – on Saturday 11^th July. We arrived at about 9.00 p.m. having first met met up with friends Abby and Albert at Urban Spree where we caught an hour of the acoustic festival that was taking place there. At Neue Heimat we met Mark and Luisa, friends who, having already had their tickets scanned, were able to go straight in once the queue started to form and secure front row seats for us all.  We refreshed our drinks supply and, at about 10.45, Jarvis and Florian took to the stage to introduce the film. It was Berlin-born Florian’s 40^th birthday and he arrived with two enormous boxes of cake which Jarvis proceeded to serve to the audience. Being offered birthday cake by one of my all-time musical heroes was both wonderful and surreal; it was very good cake too. 

Getting ready for the show

 

Not from Saturday, but an older shot of a rather deserted Neue Heimat

 

Jarvis and Florian (with a box of birthday cake)

The opening shots of the film, which documents the band’s last ever gig in their home city of Sheffield in 2012, show Jarvis changing a tyre, feeding ducks and cycling around streets of terraced houses.  In places the film is as much an homage to Sheffield itself as to the band – there are stunning shots of the city and some delightfully eccentric moments: a group of pensioners in a diner singing ‘Help the Aged’ and a local musician explaining how he returned home after living in London because in Sheffield even the muggers are friendly.  Despite the danger of a slight mythologising of the city and its inhabitants, what emerges is an awareness of the symbiotic relationship between it and the band. Along with concert footage there are interviews with band members and fans, the city’s real ‘common people’ and Pulp devotees from further afield (one of whom took time out from being a nurse and single mum in Atlanta to attend the gig). 

When the film finished there was a Q and A session in which members of the audience put questions to Jarvis and Florian, which resulted in some late-night philosophising about class, politics and old age.  There was a bizarre declaration from one audience member who said that her father was wealthy but that she ‘liked’ common people, and an unimaginative intervention from someone replicating Jarvis’s famous Michael Jackson protest. 

After the Q and A we crossed the yard to another part of the complex where Jarvis was to perform a DJ set.  This was another treat; an eclectic collection of favourites arranged chronologically from the 50s and 60s, through to the present, and ending with Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’. Further entertainment was planned but we’d had enough excitement and by 2.45 we were on our way back to the S-Bahn.

DJ Jarvis

It was a fantastic evening – heartfelt thanks Mobile Kino and Neue Heimat.

 

Beer, music and temperamental weather

The rash of festivals continued in June with Berlin Beer Week, a celebration of the city’s craft brewers, which kicked off on 13^th June.  We got in the mood by visiting the BRŁO pop-up beer garden at Platoon Kunsthalle, probably the prettiest beer garden I’ve ever seen.  There were so many fresh flowers and pastel-coloured lanterns that it looked more like a wedding reception or garden party than a dedicated beer-drinking site.  It was a baking hot day and an almighty thunderstorm later kept me confined to the flat for a while but I eventually made it down to Brauhaus Lemke where the Beer Week’s official opening took place.  For the €7.50 entrance fee I received a souvenir glass and coupons for two free Lemke beers.  I chose the Imperial IPA and the Weizenbock.  For the rest of the week Berlin’s craft brewers were given the opportunity of promoting their products at a variety of locations from breweries and bars to humble hofs. On the final Friday (when the weather had reverted to the customary cold and rain) we went down to a back yard in Petersburger Strasse where we found stacks of beer crates and pallets– some of which had been pressed into service as makeshift furniture. The beer was being served from what looked like a ground-floor kitchen.  We had a couple there before heading across the road to Bierlieb where, in another back yard, a barbecue was sizzling.  After a couple of IPAs I judged it prudent to bid farewell to Berlin Beer Week.

 

Berlin Beer Week began under the watchful gaze of the Fernsehturm at Brauhaus Lemke...

 

...and continued in a Petersburger Strasse back yard

 

The annual Fête de la Musique also took place in June. The weather was miserable on the Saturday but we managed to see a few punk bands in Friedrichshain on the Sunday evening when the sun finally made an appearance. 

Fête de la Musique

 

For me the musical highlight of the month was going to Bassy Club to see French Boutik, a band whose style can be described as 60s French pop.  We met our music-loving friend Franzi who, at sixty four, cycled to the venue in red high heels.  It’s such an intimate little club that we were able to chat to the band both before and after the performance, their English being way superior to our French.

French Boutik

 

Also memorable last month was the Exberliner screening of Jean-Gabriel Periot’s Une Jeunesse Allemande (A German Youth) at the lovely Lichtblick Kino.  The film, a documentary about the Red Army Fraction, focussed mainly on Ulrike Meinhof.  Attending the performance was Gerd Conradt, film-maker and one-time fellow student and friend of the RAF’s Holger Meinz.  Conradt worked as an adviser on the documentary and provided some of the footage.  Afterwards there was a fascinating Q and A session followed by the usual wine and snacks.  I’d wanted to go to the following Wednesday’s screening of Conradt’s Video Vertov, but it coincided with the Fiction Canteen, now back at its original location in Wedding’s Alte Kantine.  I finally gathered the courage to read a piece of my own work, after first fortifying myself with a glass of sparkling wine.

Alte Kantine

We ended the month with a visit back to England where we caught up with family and had our first decent curry for a while.