{"id":15609,"date":"2017-03-18T13:09:36","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T17:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=15609"},"modified":"2017-03-18T13:18:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-18T17:18:59","slug":"the-lingering-nightmare-of-the-stasi-karl-marx-city-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=15609","title":{"rendered":"The lingering nightmare of the STASI: Karl Marx City (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Lighten up, Captain Grumpypants.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Years ago my aunt sent me a DVD that was a timely recording of the Berlin Wall as it stood in roughly late 1989 \/ early 1990, still snaking through alleys, forests, streets, and beaches, but punctured at various points to enable free passage or citizens between two halves of a country that had been kept apart for almost 30 years.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers of Mauerflug \/ Flight Over the Berlin Wall<\/a><\/strong> (2005) had rented a Soviet-era helicopter and filmed the wall\u2019s entire length, documenting the insanity of walling up a self-built country that could still hear things and see images from the west but never visit.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a point where the copter flies low over a part of Berlin, and people piled onto a building\u2019s disintegrating rooftop wave at the camera crew, presumably elated the restrictions imposed during their lifetime were being dismantled, and like the wall, would disappear and enable two halves of a country to rejoin and obliterate their grim separation.<\/p>\n

Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker\u2019s Karl Marx City<\/a><\/strong> (2016) tells one of many stories in which the sudden death of a family member forces a deep search of facts to not only explain a suicide, but suspicions of father, mother, brother, or sister aiding a state\u2019s secret service department which spied on virtually every citizen.<\/p>\n

Epperlein\u2019s mother initially describes the GDR as being not as bad as people make it out to be \u2013 you had to be pragmatic to survive, hence find ways to cope and live a small, unobtrusive life that didn\u2019t draw attention and allowed one to build a family and a safe home where one could step away from the madness and just live \u2013 but little by little, darker facts emerge, many corroborated by extracts from surviving files, images, and sounds of the massive surveillance program maintained by the GDR\u2019s spy agency, the much-reviled STASI.<\/p>\n

Karl Marx City<\/strong> is screening this month at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Theatre<\/a>, and is worth catching on the big screen for the stark B&W cinematography that helps tell a chapter of history which remains painfully active for many former East Germans.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s latest film, the eerie documentary Karl Marx City (2016), screening this month at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2562,2563,5004,5003,5002,1494],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/KarlMarxCity_featured.jpeg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-43L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15609"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15617,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15609\/revisions\/15617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}