(Paul Kalkbrenner, above, in Hannes Stohr's Berlin Calling.)
By Terry Keefe
Martin, aka DJ Ickarus, is a star created from the very DNA of the DIY - that’s Do-It-Yourself - ethos. The character, as played by real-life electronic music composer Paul Kalkbrenner in the feature film Berlin Calling, travels the world with his laptop computer as his only musical instrument and an entourage consisting of himself and his girlfriend Mathilde (played by Rita Lengyel) . He has a record company who are about to put out what is expected to be his biggest recording yet, but he is also able to maintain a real degree of independence from them as he makes a lot of his income as a star DJ at clubs and large-scale raves. But he flies too close to the sun during one gig, via some chemically-induced wings, and finds himself locked into a psychiatric ward…where he eventually tries to keep recording.
Many films about techno music, DJs, and night clubs tend to fall flat in capturing the energy that drives those scenes, possibly because it's far more interesting to be part of a rave than it is to watch people on-screen at a rave. Berlin Calling wisely chooses to focus on the character of DJ Ickarus, showing how he puts the chaos of his life into his music. The scene at large is focused through one main character, and it captures far more about the culture than five hours of documentary-style footage of ravers ever could.
Berlin Calling is the third feature film of German director Hannes Stohr, who we spoke to during German Film Week in Los Angeles last month. Berlin Calling is currently available for watching right now, worldwide, on the Eurocinema channel.
Did your inspiration for Berlin Calling come from your own involvement in the rave and club scene?
Hannes Stohr: Well, of course. I lived in Berlin since 1992, and the 90s, that was our Woodstock. I was 22 at that time, the Wall had just come down, and you were there and it was like, “What’s going on?” [laughs] It was purely coincidental that the sound from acid house to techno was right at the time when the Wall came down. Suddenly, you were there at a strange place in East Berlin, where you had all this free space, with this strange music - which was new anyway, and then with these guys from the East. We were all dancing like mad, and it was like, “Wow!” [laughs] At that time, we also had Americans [performing there], like Underground Resistance. We were so proud that the Americans came
(Stoher directs Kalkbrenner and Lengyel, above.)
Was there any particular DJ from the 90s who inspired the character of Ickarus?
My main techno and party times were in the 90s. That said, I’d always been looking for the right angle for how to tell this scene, how to tell this world. You have to think like a filmmaker. You have Oliver Stone and Jim Morrison. You have Clint Eastwood and his film about Charlie Parker. You have Bette Midler playing a sort of Janis Joplin in The Rose. Biopics about musicians are usually about Americans, or British, and they are often dead. The musicians are famous, but they are also a product of their time…that’s why you make the movie. Musicians merge with their time. Because every artist is a product of their time, it tells something about the time they are living. So, I was thinking…why not make a portrait of a German musician who is alive today, and not so famous? The difference between the 90s and now is that this guy is not a DJ - he’s producing live on his laptop. That’s producing. He’s part of what they call the YouTube or Facebook Generation. Now, you have your laptop and your program, and you don’t need a big studio. They sell their tracks by download. Not just the stars are traveling now, but the B List of stars are also traveling. So, I wanted to make a film about an electronic musician of today, not of the 90s, and use it like the film directors did in the past to show him as a symbol of their time. If a musician with a laptop is not an image for today [laughs], you know? The laptop is really the guitar of today.
How did you select the musician for the film?
I had to find an electronic composer, and I had to find the right musician, of course. So, I had some choices, but Paul Kalkbrenner had an album in 2004 called “Self.” A really great album, which I highly recommend to you. It’s emotional, electronic, and he’s just… a classic composer. There is such energy with his music, and I was really fascinated by this album. So, I sent him the script, which was maybe 80 percent of what you see in the movie. He liked it and liked the character. He knew my movies, and I knew his music, but it wasn’t like we were friends. And the more I got to know him and the more we talked about the script, the more I realized that he was really clever. Jim Jarmusch was sort of inspiring me a lot., and helped me to convince other people [in casting]. When Jarmusch was starting and shooting Stranger Than Paradise, with John Lurie of the Lounge Lizards, and he was shooting with Joe Strummer and others…. Jarmusch said, “Good musicians are often good actors. They have a great sense of timing.” And that’s what I found out with Paul. He’s also someone who had great respect for the profession of the actor. He was never there just to play the “Cool Guy.”
(Stohr and Kalkbrenner, above.) How big a crew did you work with?
It was approximately 40 people. It was the first time I was a co-producer on a movie. With Berlin Calling, I started to realize that it’s becoming our era. I’m 39 now, and this was my third feature movie, and you realize that the other people look at you and say, “Now it's your turn.”
Was the soundtrack a hit in Germany?
Yeah, and we have to say that Paul Kalkbrenner is a bigger star than the guy he plays in the movie [laughs]. Paul is a guy who’s living in five-star hotels, and flying business. But Paul said, “This guy is like I was two years ago.” And Paul said that he had to learn his lesson [as Ickarus does] to get where he is today.
Do you know what you’re working on next?
There’s something that I’d like to take to America, which is a German western, about German immigrants to the United States. In fact, I was living in Los Angeles in 2006 in Pacific Palisades. I had researched the script about the Germans who had come to American in the 19th Century. They played a big part in the Civil War. On the Yankee side. After Hitler, all of the world was really thinking that Germans are the most racist of all, but you don’t find that…in the 19th Century, for example, do you know what they called the Germans? “Nigger Lovers.” The Yankee side! Missouri at that time was really 1/3rd German. We’re talking about, of 2 million soldiers on the Northern side, the Yankee side, there were 200,000 Germans. Abraham Lincoln was depending on the German vote. The name of the film is 48ers. The German immigrants in the second part of the 19th Century were called 48ers, because we had a revolution in Germany in 1848 that failed, and hundreds of thousands of political Germans were coming to America. They were fleeing from feudalism, and suddenly they came to America and they were meeting this slaveholder society, where the British - who called themselves Americans but in the end they were British….the Germans spoke up [against slavery], along with the Irish, and things got started. It will be a very expensive film, and that’s what I’m here for.
Some Berlin Calling-related links:
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