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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Januar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an ihrem
ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific theme
in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture in Aachen
and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint motion picture “Oi!
Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

I t is rare that a piece of furniture becomes famous, even makes it onto the evening quietly whispered to us, was only kept in this photogenic, permanently horizontal
news, the daily press and the forums and the thinnest ramifications of the inter-
position by a fan installed below it. We were once again standing on the cobblestone
net. But this table, creamy-white, somehow classicist, uniquely proportioned, pavement of the Red Square, frozen stiff and hungry after five hours in the hardly
squeaky clean, polished to a high shine, it did manage to do so. The object was heated Kremlin without a snack bar or a restaurant, when one of these oversized,
brightly floodlit, centrally positioned in a likewise “classicist” hall, prominent, as if overwide state saloon cars whooshed past in the direction of the government Krem-
on a stage. It was later written in the press that it was a unique piece, specifically lin gate, a SIL, latest model range. And, not because we identified him but because
designed for the room. Whether in Italy or in Spain, whether in 1996 or in 2005, on we wished for it, behind the bullet-proof glass pane we thought we saw the contours
this the press did not quite agree – the information was no doubt top secret. The of the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Capitalist Party of the Soviet
table top, decorated with delicate flower tendrils, rested on heavy columns, three Union: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbatschev. Suddenly we were smiling and waving,
large ones, surrounded by eight smaller ones on each side. A table with 27 columns. exuberant, high-spirited like children, despite the austere looks of the guards. And,
Only regarding the length of the table was there a consensus: six metres. Moscow, in as it seemed to us, the man in the SIL waved back. I read that the six-metre length
wintertime, many years ago. A vacation in Russia. With a visit to the Kremlin. The of the table had been necessary, essential even. To be safe from Corona. I was thin-
melancholy vastness of the Red king whether the 150 centimetres
Square, the endless queue silently suf- would not have been sufficient as
fering the cold and the waiting in front well which are required as the mini-
of the Lenin Mausoleum; the garden at mum distance at every bus stop or – if
the Kremlin wall with its graves – on one wants to be totally safe – maybe
the one of Juri Gagarin, a dozen roses three or four metres or a Perspex disc
lay – waxy Lenin wearing a suit in his between the host and the guest. I also
coffin of glass, the tomb of the un- pondered about how on earth one
known soldier in front of whose fla- had placed the tiny flower arrange-
ming star old women bent by sorrow ment into the centre of the table and I
were putting down flowers. And then, thought about the chip rake when
already at dusk, the entry into the part playing roulette. Yes, this table remin-
of the Kremlin accessible for common ded me of something. No, not of the
people, us tourists as well. Through a too obvious and unfair association
banal steel gate into the core thickly with the “Führer desk”, no, not of the
surrounded by red walls. The image of room furnishing of a Trump Hotel in
the matryoshka, the doll inside the Las Vegas and no, neither of the deco-
doll, often quoted for Russia, here it ration of a pizzeria in – perhaps – Gel-
fit. Why are the powerful again and senkirchen. No, the table reminded
again attracted to classicism when it me of a film! Hollywood, the 1940s.
comes to design? Because governance The set design (study of a statesman):
is to show itself modestly, in “noble brocade curtains, coarsely patterned
simplicity and quiet grandeur”? Be- parquet, oversized pilasters, oversized
cause democracy has been given a doors, oversized windows, oversized
form and a name in the Greece of Pe- Foto: Benjamin Reding furniture and an oversized globe. Of
ricles? Or yet because its travesty, the course, everything somewhat classi-
tyranny, the dictatorship in ancient cist. Design for a “ubermensch” who
Rome, is adequately reflected in the column-surrounded palaces of the Caesars? The starts to dance, narcissistically, who makes the globe jump, fly until – bang – it bursts
easterly wind blew bitterly between the historic and the historicist Kremlin façades, under the pressure of his caress. Yes, the table reminds me of Charlie Chaplin’s ma-
drove us and the snow into the maze of the small squares and the angled paths bor- sterpiece The Great Dictator. When I started this column, peace still reigned. When
dered by guards. Somewhere here, behind the fences, guard booths and listlessly this column will be published, war is already raging. In Kyiv, Kharkiv, Ukraine,
constructed brick security walls, in the separate, really secret section of the Kremlin, maybe already in Belarus, maybe already in other parts of Europe. Yesterday, I ente-
a Mr Gorbatshev was sitting at the time and was making world politics from desks red a building that will probably never be shown on television, about whose furnis-
which one rarely saw on television (office furniture of the most boring, real-sociali- hing there will not be any memes on the internet. Yet its mishmash of styles consi-
stic kind, steel and particle board, far from any “classical period”). It could be said sting of a parabolic staff vault and loud neo-Gothic style, of blueish light through
that he made peace. Where this study was precisely located was not clear. We as window glass and a golden starry sky of mosaic stones is definitely adventurous. It
tourist visitors, also the Russians, assumed it was directly below the always cheer- is a church in Berlin-Neukölln. In front of a wooden saint, whose name I did not
fully fluttering Soviet flag on the roof of the Kremlin Palace that, as a translator know, I lit a candle. I don’t know if it helps. But I hope so.

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