Mareike Bernien – public viewing of Die fünfte Wand (The Fifth Wall)

The filmmaker Mareike Bernien will attend the KHM and present the work archive Die fünfte Wand ("The Fifth Wall") conceived by her and Merle Kröger. In the subsequent talk, Bernien shares the processes of her archival care practice.

Die fünfte Wand (The Fifth Wall): Walk-through of a Digital Archive of Works

"Tonight, when the two astronauts land on the moon, millions of television viewers will be watching them, and basically it's just as far away as Vietnam, on the other side of the living room: the fifth wall." (Navina Sundaram, letter to parents, 7/21/1969)

The gates of Germany's public broadcasting stations have been opened. Behind them lies an immeasurable treasure trove of educational content, historical documents, and film history. To make this heritage accessible to a diverse public, models of future archival practice are needed. Die fünfte Wand brings together films, reports, moderations, texts, letters and photos by filmmaker and editor Navina Sundaram from more than 40 years of her work for television. Sundaram takes center stage as an author who takes a journalistic stance: on internationalism and decolonization, class issues, racism, immigration, on Indian and German politics. Drawn from archives of NDR and WDR as well as from Sundaram's private archive, Die fünfte Wand is a curated view on German migration and media history.