bln.state.of.mind

Amnesty International – Interview M. Abubakarow

hikkups — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:13:19 +0000

Magamed Abubakarow, a young lawyer from the Karbado-Balkaria (Russian Federation), is defending Rasul Kudajew. Kudajew is a former prisoner of Guantanamo released with no charges in 2004. A year later the Russian authorities arrested and charged him with taking part in a rebel raid on government buildings in the small Caucasus-republic – using evidence of a interrogation that left Kudajew looking rather mangeled. Read Rasul Kudajew’s story here and watch the interview (4min) with Magamed Abubakarow here.
I shot and edited the interview for Amnesty’s campaign to help victims of torture , translation by Hartmut Schröder.

Freedom not Fear

hikkups — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:53:22 +0000

A little piece i did for ver.di‘s Streik.TV about last week’s ‘Freedom not Fear’-demo in Berlin.

Kreuzberg Cuts

hikkups — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:32:20 +0000

Knifes are better paint-brushes!

Spartacus

hikkups — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:10:57 +0000

Do inmates make good actors? No doubt. JVA Tegel, Europe’s biggest all-male prison, has been running a theatre-group for the last decade. Twice a year Peter Atanassow and other directors produce a play with about 20 of the 1,800 inmates. Last week they premiered Howard Fast’s ‘Spartacus’ – which, in its rawness & setting, was a more arresting experience than watching Kubrick’s classic version for the big screen. And meeting the actors afterwards at the buffet was equally heartwarming and impressive.
The video i produced for ZEITonline is a collabo with ZEIT-writer Markus Zinsmaier.

Qualle

hikkups — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:36:55 +0000

Recht auf Ausbildung!

hikkups — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:05:51 +0000

A couple of weeks ago i covered a demonstration of about 200 pupils, on their way through the center of Berlin. Their mission: Hand over a petition to the members of the German parliament, the Bundestag. There’s currently about 1,5 million youngsters in Germany desperately looking for in-firm training for all sorts of jobs – but these days very few companies are willing to train the workforce of tomorrow. So these kids got over 75,000 people to sign their petition for a law to guarantee training. Hope some sort of legislation will be passed soon, or many young people will end up untrained, in dead-end jobs with sh*t wages.

MC Maihem

hikkups — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:39:11 +0000

I shot this at one of our Grimetime-parties in 2005. Shame MC Maihem never took things further and vanished from the scene shortly after. No idea how such a petite & pretty girl could have such a big & bad voice!

Berlin IS the center of the art world.

hikkups — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:34:15 +0000

These days one constantly reads about Berlin being the center of the art world, the eye of the storm of global artistic creativity and originality. What a load of crap, i kept thinking. Then, one Sunday i came across this in one of the many Berlin flea-markets. In this painting of Tokio Hotel‘s Tom Kaulitz i immediately felt the suggestion of a narrative intent, an echo of socialist realism – clearly, the work of one of the many geniuses in town. The MoMA better track this one down. I think it was oil on canvas.

My Soprano Epiphany

hikkups — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:58:31 +0000

Have i mentioned that i hate opera and everything that goes with it? Well, at least so i thought. Enter: A ‘froed hottie with a killer soprano who sings early songs of Arnold ‘twelvetone’ Schoenberg and has a wicked sense of humor. And i’m sold.

(this is another ‘left-over’ of my work at yellow lounge for deutsche grammophon & pfadfinderei)

Alexanderplatz – new wildlife refuge

hikkups — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:06:45 +0000