B-MOVIE is a breathtaking collage and ode to the West-Berlin music scene of the early 80s. Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck, and Heiko Lange worked together with Mark Reeder and collected film footage that is captivatingly edited. The images they found show the zeitgeist of the years where punks, squatters, and the avant-garde stream dominated the Berlin scene. Mancunian Mark Reeder came to Berlin in 1978 as a representative of Joy Divison’s Factory label and serves as the film’s guide. Reeder became the manager of Malaria! and got to know anyone and everyone in the movement. Reeder’s enthusiasm for the anarchistic period is infectious. He convinces Nick Cave to move to Berlin and lets him stay with him. He organizes concerts with the Toten Hosen and Der Wahre Heino in East Berlin and smuggles tapes from the West to the East in order to keep the East punk scene in the loop. After the reunification he founded the techno label MFS that released the first records of Westbam and Paul van Dyck. B-MOVIE is a spectacle and not a nostalgia-riddled, ironic retrospective like most pop documentaries end up being. The film works as a passionate call to do your own thing. Viewers who lived through the 80s will be happy to see long-gone clubs like Dschungel, Café Mitropa and Risiko once again. Younger people will be able to see an extremely exciting era presented in an authentic way.

Tom Dorow