An interview with the director of Berlin Calling: Hannes Stoehr

An interview with the director of Berlin Calling: Hannes Stoehr

12 September, 2008 | 1.25AM

• Written by: Amanda Connon-Unda
• Filed under: Music News: berlin calling, paul kalkbrenner

Berlin Calling is a melodramatic tragic comedy set in the world’s most recognizable and bustling hub of dance music activity today.

It is brilliantly done as it depicts Berlin’s underground techno scene, with DJ Ickarus at the centre of it all.

He’s engaged in the scene with all of its glory – full of hedonism - dancing, music, sex, and drugs.

To create the film set, real clubs in Berlin were rented out for film shoots.

From Bar 25 and Maria Club, to scenes from Alexanderplatz U-bahn station, the film Berlin Calling certainly makes no disguise of the place, and Berlin is a real character.

Reality is what is aimed at and achieved by director Hannes Stoehr in his third feature length film.

In conversation with Hannes after his appearance and the screening of Berlin Calling during the Toronto International Film Festival, Hannes explained a bit more about the making of Berlin Calling.

I noticed that your female characters are very strong ones (You have the label boss, psychiatrist, girlfriend/manager, etc.). The women in your film are shown as powerful and dominant in comparison to the men (who are featured as drug dealer, addict, mental health patient, etc). Can you comment on this?

Berlin Calling tells the story of Ickarus (played by Paul Kalkbrenner) and takes his perspective.

Ickarus is surrounded by powerful women in the movie, that’s true.

Nevertheless I think the hero Ickarus, the father, the club boss and the other male characters are strong, too.

All characters in the movie have their problems, whether they are male or female.

Perfect characters are boring and do not exist in reality anyway.

In the real world, in the music industry, have you seen many powerful women?

In film and music world I see a lot of powerful women.

But, I don’t know, maybe I see them because I like strong women and I like to work with them.

How did you get into film making?

I began with screenwriting and then studied at Berlin film school.

After Berlin is in Germany (2001) and One Day in Europe (2005), Berlin Calling (2008) is my third film for cinema.

For more info. on me you can check out: www.stoehrfilm.eu.

You’ve chosen to do a film about a particular subculture - that of techno music. What is your involvement in the music scene in Germany? Were you into electronic music for a long time?

I spent all of the nineties in Berlin and yes, I was dancing from the beginning, following the evolution of electronic music.

At the end of the nineties my friends and me, we were a group of people organizing illegal techno parties in Berlin in a place called Deli.

After the police closed our location, a professional club management took over and they established a well known club there which exists even today: Maria.

A lot of scenes in the movie were shot there.

How did you meet Paul and come to ask him to act in the film?

I was fascinated by Paul Kalkbrenner’s previous album -Self (2004) and I wanted him to do the music first.

The more I knew Paul Kalkbrenner, I was convinced that he should play the main role.

Paul Kalkbrenner did a great job as a musician and as an actor.

His key for success was his respect for the actor’s profession.

Jim Jarmusch once said when he was working with Jo Lurie from the Lounge Lizards in his film Stranger than Paradise: “Good musicians are often good actors, because they have great timing.”

I found this to be true in my experience with working with Paul Kalkbrenner.

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Photo credit: Jofus (www.thefuss.ca)

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