B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989

The 2015 documentary by Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck and Heiko Lange describes West Berlin in the decade before the Wall came down. The city is an island closed on every side, with cheap rents, empty buildings and young men flowing in to avoid conscription. The film builds the music and art scene that came out of that setting entirely from the period's own footage, narrated by Mark Reeder, an English musician who moved there in those years. Almost all of it is archive and nobody speaks from the present, a choice that gives the sense of looking from inside the time. Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld and David Bowie appear in the material. The chronology is loose, but the film is not aiming to be a history lesson. Who it's for: viewers curious about eighties underground music and the history of Berlin. Who it's not for: anyone expecting an orderly account; the documentary moves in a scatter.