1/2 Meter of Berliner Bratwurst

… yes, you can buy that in the streets of Berlin, ready for the xmas holidays as this wonderful city is, markets all over, too many sausages for my taste but also glühwein and chocolate and marzipan and beer, economic crisis… not visible, at least not when you walk the streets around Wittenberger Platz and enter into KaDeWe, Kaufhaus des Westens. Consume and more consume. You are part of it. You enjoy and dislike at the same time.

But Berlin is also two K´s for the moment, both to be found at Neue Nationalgallerie – Paul Klee and Jeff Koons. Klee, who had his big artistic development between two wars, presented with a huge and very exciting exhibition showing his refined, colour balanced philosophical and often very humourous work, and Koons the Sunnyboy, who acts like the showman he is according to the rules of the market. The dog, the heart and so on, we know them all. No crisis for his market, it seems.

And Bertolt Brecht is not out of fashion as the Robert Wilson edition of ”Die Dreigroschen Oper” at the Berliner Ensemble runs for full houses, with an enthusiastic reception, lots of fun, relevance of today? Well, dont we have a lot of Mackie Messer’s who survive any crisis whatsoever? And Brecht as intelligent entertainment is always relevant, is it not?

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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