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The gentrified mind will be unable to see a lived experience because it’s being bombarded by false stories.
— Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind
Except for a small part of the UNESCO-protected facade, Karstadt – an unassuming department store on Hermannplatz in Berlin rebuilt from its ashes after WW2 – doesn’t remind us of its heyday as the once most modern department store in Europe. Today, a broad variety of shopping possibilities and its cafe with rooftop terrace offers a modest, yet stable anchor for a lot of Berliners of diverse backgrounds. Karstadt’s current owner, an unafraid multinational investor, intends to tear down the existing building and rebuild the original Karstadt from 1929 and bring more landmarks and investment into the surrounding (mostly migrant) neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln, against the veto of the municipal councils.
What’s going to happen the day after? Can a change come at once or does it happen step by step? Is it really our best idea to come back to the “golden” past?
Using archival images from the 1920s, mundane department store impressions and interviews of the various protagonists that I’ve met on the Karstadt terrace, my film explores questions about German identity, gentrification of the city, citizen activism and the clash of interests in public space.
Anatolian village (Anatolisches Dorf) is a short experimental documentary that explores how architecture serves as a prism for self-identification and the expression of societal values. Documentary film will be published here later.
— Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind
Except for a small part of the UNESCO-protected facade, Karstadt – an unassuming department store on Hermannplatz in Berlin rebuilt from its ashes after WW2 – doesn’t remind us of its heyday as the once most modern department store in Europe. Today, a broad variety of shopping possibilities and its cafe with rooftop terrace offers a modest, yet stable anchor for a lot of Berliners of diverse backgrounds. Karstadt’s current owner, an unafraid multinational investor, intends to tear down the existing building and rebuild the original Karstadt from 1929 and bring more landmarks and investment into the surrounding (mostly migrant) neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln, against the veto of the municipal councils.
What’s going to happen the day after? Can a change come at once or does it happen step by step? Is it really our best idea to come back to the “golden” past?
Using archival images from the 1920s, mundane department store impressions and interviews of the various protagonists that I’ve met on the Karstadt terrace, my film explores questions about German identity, gentrification of the city, citizen activism and the clash of interests in public space.
Anatolian village (Anatolisches Dorf) is a short experimental documentary that explores how architecture serves as a prism for self-identification and the expression of societal values. Documentary film will be published here later.