This Side Of Paradise1991

"In 1989 I was in Berlin to record sounds for Rear Window. A couple of days before leaving, I came across a huge flea market where a large number of East Europeans, mainly poles, were selling whatever goods they had managed to bring across the border to what was then still West Berlin. The over-all character of the place was grim, pathetic, and ominous. At the same time, it had an eerie, almost festive mood to it. Though not quite. Perhaps it was the result of the East Europeans’ encounter with western realities; perhaps it was because of the dire situation at home to which they had to return; perhaps it was the multitude of curiosity seekers, shoppers, bargain hunters, and tourists like myself.

As I began to walk through the market, I was seized with a desire to film impressions of what I was witnessing, and so I started to record images without any idea of what I would do with that material later on. In order to by-pass some Poles’ uneasiness with cameras aimed at them (and there were many people with cameras when I was there), at some point I began to focus on the possibilities offered by the numerous small and large muddy puddles of rain water which were all over the place and out of which their wares and misery as well as the remnants of western goods seemed to ooze, and into which, ironically, the Poles seemed to have landed. Half an hour later I had used up my 5 rolls of film. I then recorded some sounds on a malfunctioning cassette tape recorder. A few days later I left Berlin. On my way to the airport, I heard that on that day the Berlin wall was coming down."

                               - Ernie Gehr, The Films of Ernie Gehr – S.F. Cinematheque, 1993