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.