Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht

A film by Romuald Karmakar.
In ger­man and french with ger­man sub­tit­les. Some scree­ning with eng­lish subtitles.

For DJ Roman Flügel his work is ever­y­thing and some­thing that he would never com­pro­mi­se. Romuald Karmakar’s new docu­men­ta­ry takes a look at five pio­neers of elec­tro­nic music for whom work is their rai­son d’etre. The film com­men­ces with a still life of elec­tro­nic equip­ment in which we find our­sel­ves loo­king for seve­ral minu­tes at a wide shot of cables, con­so­les, ampli­fiers, key­boards and ‘con­trol­lers’ as Ricardo Villalobos – who was the sub­ject of Karmakar’s 2009 film – will later call the flas­hing switch­boards in the back­ground. In bet­ween elo­quent thoughts from the musi­ci­ans in inter­views, quiet obser­va­tions of them at work at their DJ home, and images of swea­ting mas­ses at raves, a sel­ec­ti­ve image gra­du­al­ly and very quiet­ly emer­ges of a music sce­ne in tran­si­ti­on. Ata descri­bes the cur­rent music sce­ne as a vast, den­se­ly woven car­pet, the end of which is out of sight. It is a sce­ne which, sin­ce the 1990s has dif­fe­ren­tia­ted and evol­ved into some­thing far more com­plex and hard to grasp. Karmakar does not attempt to pro­vi­de a seam­less his­to­ri­cal sur­vey, rather he allows his images and his prot­ago­nists to speak for themselves.

 

Deutschland 2017, 100 Min.
Regie: Romuald Karmakar
Kamera: Frank Griebe
Schnitt: Robert Thomann, Anne Fabini
mit: Ricardo Villalobos, Sonja Moonear, Ata, Roman Flügel, David Moufang/Move D