Turn Your Eyes To The Present

24-hour television documentary about Berlin and its inhabitants, reporting in real time on the everyday lives of more than 50 protagonists from a wide range of professions, social classes, religions and ethnicities.

Gerd Conradt films men carrying a red flag in a relay race through Berlin, to hoist it on the balcony of the current Mayor’s seat. A cinematic experiment based on Eadweard Muybridge, Andy Warhol and New American Cinema. A study in men, movements and a symbol. This is the 7th part of this series of film exercises. The other 6 parts were staged by Harun Farocki (Part 1), Carlos Bustamante (Part 2), Helke Sander (Part 3), Holger Meins (Part 4), Wolfgang Petersen (Part 5), Philip Werner Sauber (Part 6).

A look into the life of Holger Meins, the German cinematography student who became a revolutionary and a prominent voice in the Vietnam War protest movement. This film is comprised of interviews with his associates.

The Afro-Berliner DJane Sweety, the Italian karate teacher Gino and his German half-brother Ninja are in deep trouble. They fight for survival: Against a powerful mobster and two nasty real estate sharks who demand a lot of money from them. They only have one week left.

An austere treatise on the military-industrial complex that produces napalm.

After a long prison term, a free man wanders into a new reality.

A concise blast of feminist film making, Sander's first film is a tense yet playful four minute short that dissects a typical urban scene at a bus stop on a busy street in Berlin.

Short thriller about an older woman and an escaped convict.

Documents a one-week meeting of radical leftist activists known as "Knastkamp" (Prison battle), which took place in July 1969 in Ebrach, Bamberg.

Documentary showing the daily routine of Sander’s seven year old son, Silvo.

In VIDEO VERTOV, director Gerd Conradt tells his grandson stories from more than forty years of his eventful life - based on film and video documents. The film tells the life story of the video pioneer: love and revolution, red flag and meditation - expeditions to distant countries. For his grandson, Gerd Conradt spreads his film and video treasures on the big screen and leaves behind an "electronic" testament to his 50-year career as a film artist. The first love. Economic Miracle Berlin. Marriage and birth of daughter in Rome. Student at the dffb in Berlin. A life between adaptation and provocation. A life in search of knowledge, always interested in the extreme.

This film has no story - one could be born at any moment. His characters are the composition of the composition that, in the time they live in, is the composition of the time in which they live. The situations are exemplary, they come from the reality of dreams, a movement takes on several dimensions, gives the impression of simultaneity, the passage of time is not perceived.

Gerd Conradt's experimental documentary "Ein-Blick" from 1987 captures the rhythms of daily life along Elsenstraße's border in a time-lapse. Over the course of a day, a camera focuses on a house and watchtower within the border zone, snapping one image per second for twelve hours. What unfolds is a surreal ballet of reality, transforming into a slapstick grotesque, all set to the backdrop of evocative piano melodies.

The composer Frederic Rzewski ordered a film from Gerd Conradt for his piece “Selfportrait”. The film was supposed to be shown while he was playing his piece of music, he didn't want to be seen. The film shows Frederic Rzewski sitting down at the table in the Trattoria Carlone in the Trastevere district of Rome from a bird's eye view. He orders wine, salad and a portion of spaghetti. We watch as he eats, pays, gets up and walks out of the picture. All in one setting.

The capital Berlin is heavily in debt. Annually it takes 16 billion euros, but gives out 20 billion. The minus is covered by loans, which in turn attract interest.