In 1991, the Yugoslavian Black Wave made its way to Berlin with director Dušan Makavejev, who shows us the post-Wall city from the perspective of one Major Lazutkin. Just released from the hospital, the officer realises that the Red Army left him behind when it withdrew and his wife has also moved on to greener pastures. Clad in his uniform and carrying a Soviet flag, the somewhat dim-witted outsider wanders around the reunified city, including a visit to the zoo. He naively gets involved in weapons and child trafficking, and becomes “bewitched” by an apparition of Vladimir Lenin, before a happy future as a family man appears to him.
Using images of heroism from the Stalinist war propaganda film ‘The Fall of Berlin’ (USSR, 1949), Makavejev portrays the vicissitudes of history as theatre of the absurd in which changed political portents lead to a reappraisal of inherited values. The documentary highlight of his anarchic satire is footage of the dismantling under protest of a larger-than-life Lenin statue in Berlin’s Friedrichshain neighbourhood, as well as a travelling shot along the East Side Gallery with its original graffiti, including the famed painting of the Fraternal Kiss.

G/YU 1993, directed by Dušan Makavejev, 83 min, German, Russian, English, German and English subtitles
Guest: Joachim von Vietinghoff