B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin

Hoping to follow in the footsteps of legends like David Bowie and CAN, Manchester punk rocker and early electronic music acolyte Mark Reeder arrives in a divided Berlin in 1979. Luckily, he films everything he sees: black leather-clad teenagers, giant pink and red hairdos, gritty basement gigs, and a parade of the scene’s most illustrious figures, including Nick Cave, Mania D’s Gudrun Gut, and Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld. Through the movement’s system-smashing highs to its waning years in the age of Reunification, Reeder plays the outsider’s insider to the beating heart of Germany’s underground cultural life.  

Lovingly assembled from a decade of fascinating film and audio material, B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin provides a fast-paced but no less intimate look at Berlin’s punk and electronic subculture through the eyes of one of its greatest devotees. Winner of the Heiner Carow Prize at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival. 

Streaming as part of Alle gegen Alles: Punk@50. By 1976, the once underground punk movement had exploded across the world, bringing with it a bold new style, an anti-establishment ethos, and a powerful do-it-yourself means of political and personal expression. Fifty years later, this collection of films celebrates punk rebellion in Germany and its enduring role as an antidote to modern conformity. Watch for free through December 31.

Image © Interzone Pictures