4 - Flight into Reality: The Cinema of Helke Misselwitz

Summary

The opening sequence of Heike Misselwitz's 2003 television documentary Quartier der Illusionen (District of Illusions), about the Berlin train station Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, succinctly displays many of the filmmaker's lifelong thematic interests and cinematic techniques. The film opens with distorted shots of unidentifiable locations and objects in greenish hues that appear more like an abstract painting than documentary images. While the viewer is still attempting to decode the visuals, heavy breathing from a hurrying person becomes audible as the images gradually take more shape, barely enough to make out stairs, a bridge, a river, a platform, photographed in slow exposure. Helke Misselwitz's distinct voice, immediately familiar to viewers who have seen her previous documentary films, speaks a voice-over reminiscent of her first feature-length documentary film, Winter Adé:

Every homecoming to my neighborhood at Friedrichstrasse station fills me with longing for my childhood. Every place with train tracks that allow for a quick departure appears like home to me. The coincidence of my birth before a closed train crossing, the sound of rolling train wheels, which accompanied my coming into the world, will remind me of that first innocent moment till time kisses me on the mouth.

This voice-over gives way to an excerpt from Schubert's Winterreise in an eclectic rendition by opera singer nino sandow, who also played the male lead in Misselwitz's 1992 feature film Herzsprung.