BERLIN MUSEUM FOR FILM
AND TELEVISION
Potsdamerplatz Sony Center
You
enter from the top floor, gingerly crossing a gleaming metallic walkway
that feels a thousand miles up from black space, like you might tumble
over and be lost, the lighting for your path provided by glowing screen
images of great iconic German films in a surreal fantasy of space and
time. Like all good cinema, it is an illusion. The walkway and floor
are the same level, only the black mirror-like quality of the space providing
the feeling of limitlessness. This unique museum space for film history
in Berlin was designed by Hans Dieter Schaal and is as much a work of
art as the seminal master filmography it presents.
The Film Museum of Berlin,
taking up four floors in the massive modernistic entertainment mall of
the Sony Center at Potsdamerplatz
is a wondrous
and mysterious journey into Germany’s historic place in film. A
series of passages leads the visitor through eras and themes, German
existentialism, fantasy and propaganda. From the surrealism of Robert
Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Fritz Lang’s “M” to
Marlene Dietrich. The great film-makers who left Germany before the war
for Hollywood
like
Erich von Stroheim and Ernst Lubitsch to make the great films of Hollywood's
Golden era to the ones who stayed like Leni Riefenstahl who's documentary
of the Nuremberg Rally "Triumph of the Will" was perhaps one
of the greatest propaganda films ever produced,
but unfortunately
for the National Socialist machine. The
Museum
of Film
and Television is divided into two vertical multi-floor sections,
one
side for film history
and
the other for television.
The
museum has permanent as well as temporary exhibits of artifacts, images,
personal letters and
papers of film greats,
art designs, sets and costumes, and a collection of scripts from Germany’s
most famous filmmakers. The most recognized costumes of Germany’s
most beloved and greatest star Marlene Dietrich takes up two rooms.
Fantasy is well represented from “Metropolis” to a great
collection of models and dioramas of the mythic monsters of the master
of stop-motion
Ray Harryhausen, to "Star Wars" and H. R. Giger. The items
on display represent only a sample of over a million photographs and
thousands
of posters,
drawings,
design
sketches
and film prints held in the archives of the German Film Society (Stiftung
Deutsche Kinemathek) The television side of the exhibits lead through
a history of German broadcasting from early camera technology through
the growth of private networks.
Visiting the Berlin Film Museum
The
Berlin Museum of Film and Television Library is open to visitors
for research. Archives also hold the historical retrospective
of the Berlin International Film Festival (see Berlinale Festival). Admission
is €7 for
adults, €4.50 reduction. Guided tours are held evenings the 1st Thursday of the month
and on weekends. The museum is
closed on
Mondays. Entrance to the Museum and the store where you can take home
your own bits of German film history is from the ground floor concourse
of the Sony Center (Filmhaus am Potsdammer Platz). © Bargain
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Film Museum
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