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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.

S ilently, the two strike the bells. There may be 100 of them, dangling above the bar. that? The camera so low, the heads cut off? I didn’t like that at all!” The audience fell
silent. Not exactly a polite question. Nervous coughs here and there. “I wanted to
They also speak silently to the guests, the “round lass” and the older, chubby,
sweaty gentleman fitted out like a sea dog with a sailor’s cap and pipe, certainly the show the dancing, the graphic of the legs, the blurring of the movements.” The old
landlord of the gnarled establishment. His harbour tavern was called The Bell or The gentleman, leaning on his cane, searched for the right words. “It was a red light di-
Old Bell or 100 Bells or the like. Everything is very “Hamburgish” (with a few seamen strict after all, ... one... one should feel that, something different for a change, some-
at the bar), everything a bit “dissolute” (many young women, flirting and smooching). thing other than always dancing couples.” He looked around the cinema hall, uncer-
The place is densely crowded, smoky, dim, but the light behind the quaintly carved tain, seeking help, then at the floor. “I didn’t like it,” the young woman repeated and
bar is surprisingly bright. The guests appear mysteriously silhouetted against the took her seat again. “The second film by our dear guest dates from 1962,” the presen-
brightly lit background. Almost like a film image. It is a film image! In high-contrast ter immediately followed up, smiling tensely. “Shepherds in the Lüneburg country-
black and white. Now music, jazzy and hot. Then: dancing couples, the seamen from side.” Again darkness. Here and there the whispering continued. On the screen: the
the bar together with young, pretty, perhaps “easy” girls. Then the camera pans down vastness of the Lüneburg heath landscape, then the rough shoes of a shepherd, then
from the boisterous, drunken faces, down to the dancing legs, to the skirts and stok- the sheep and their little lambs. The audience relaxed. In the darkness of the projec-
kings of the dancing women. The gaze lingers there, extensively. Now, dashing, mas- tion, my thoughts started drifting: an architectural icon of the new Hamburg? It never
culine and striking, a little avuncular, a commentator’s voice: “Here, where the sailors became one. Who knows of a Unilever Haus? Probably only a handful of architectural
found their beer and sin its cosy place, an office tower will soon rise, a skyscraper, historians. Yet it is still standing, long since retrofitted to improve its energy efficiency.
bright, glazed, crystalline.” Hard cut: view of an architectural model, very tall, very Office buildings have a hard time. An icon must have something great, intangible,
glassy, very angular and triangular. Then: winding old town alleys, half-timbered hou- transcendent, miraculous. Certainly nothing material. And yet that remains the centre
ses, historical office buildings, small craft workshops, pubs, taverns, dance halls and of all offices, the work with and around material things. From the third Amazon re-
a simple, hastily built brick wall with a narrow wooden gate. minder to Unilever’s mayonnaise. My gaze wanders, away
“Hamburg’s Gängeviertel with its lightless backyards, over- from the skilful camera pans over moorland to the bag
crowded flats, lack of sanitary facilities and (the commenta- lamps, wooden panelling, the fool’s gold kitsch of 1950s ci-
tor’s voice suddenly sounds amused) the last inner-city brot- nemas. I remember films, my films and my attempts to find
hel street will come down. Making way for the new head- an office space for my film production firm in Hamburg.
quarters of Unilever-Werke. 21 storeys built of glass and There were many offers, but no affordable ones. Each of
steel. 2007 windows, 2000 employees, seven lifts, 20,000 these new office buildings had its own name, as if they were
square metres of office space. A powerful sign of the econo- already popular, a landmark, a building icon: Alsterpalais,
mic miracle, a milestone of reconstruction, a bold highlight Harbour View, The Significent, The Majestic, Elb-Palast.
in the city skyline, an architectural icon of the new Ham- More out of curiosity than a sense of reality, I went to one of
burg!” The music has long since started to roar dramatically, the viewing appointments. The estate agent spoke (of
a touch of Tchaikovsky, a hefty pinch of Wagner comes in. Foto/Grafik: Benjamin Reding course) of a “real architectural icon”. The house was situa-
And the camera pans across the city, the sun breaks in the ted in the Kontorhaus district built in the 1920s near the
water of the Inner Alster Lake, the seagulls circle over the main railway station. I looked for the house number. Ah,
harbour. Then darkness, crackling on the now empty sound- there it was, and I rejoiced. After all, it was perhaps the only
track. The sudden bright light after all the “dimness” hurts the eyes. “Wonderful! office building that had ever really made it to real popular status, to become a glo-
What camera work!” The suit-wearing presenter smiles down at the audience from bally appreciated “icon”: the Chilehaus by Fritz Höger. I entered the entrance hall with
the small cinema stage. Film evening at the Metropolis Cinema at Hamburg’s Gänse- a pounding heart and waited for the estate agent, who never showed up. Only then
markt. A presentation of the work of a locally known cameraman. His career began, did I notice the wrong house number. He meant the new building opposite. High-qua-
like his first film, in the early 1960s. The cameraman rises, with difficulty, supported lity marble, expansive glazing, smooth, characterless and interchangeable, like so
by a walking stick, white as a sheet, ancient. The audience applauds. “Now you are many new office buildings. I thought of Daniel Libeskind’s comment on such archi-
welcome to ask questions,” says the presenter. Today, the audience of cineastes, al- tecture: “You know how it looks like, before you are entering it.” WEEHHH! A scream.
ways hypercritical when it comes to masterpieces and emphatically generous when I jerked my head up to the screen: the birth of a child, in close-up. Another work by
it comes to finger exercises, asks polite questions: How did you set the light, master the cinematographer had been running for quite some time. He had filmed the first
the pan, that complex tracking shot? In a brittle voice, shyly, the old man, visibly year of his son’s life, from birth to his first words: "Mummy, Daddy, film." The camera
moved by the sudden interest in his early works for the NDR and Neue Wochenschau, was always close to the faces, the smallest movements, to the eyes in whose gaze the
reveals the answers. Also about the then actually demolished Gängeviertel and the world only comes into being. An intentionally objective camera gaze and yet full of
Unilever Haus built there, as the building was called for a few decades. “We had great affection – to the extent that a camera is capable of it –, full of tenderness. Then the
difficulties with the model shoot. The thing looked so cold and lifeless. I then shot it hall lights were switched on. Resounding applause. The old man bowed. Honestly
in front of a rear projection so that it looked like it had already been built. But under touched. On my way out, I saw him again, standing at the edge of the foyer, talking
the spotlights the plastic melted, so we put the thing on a fridge, only then it worked.” to the young woman, quietly, gravely. “Yes, you are right,” he said, “today I would
The audience laughed. “More questions?” A young woman got up, with alert eyes, film the dance hall differently.” Then he shook her hand, grabbed his cane and wal-
short hair and a concentrated gaze. “Why did you film between the women’s legs like ked out, bent, towards the rain-soaked Gänsemarkt.

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