Kokain
2019
My research on Anita Berber — dancer, actress, writer, and one of punk’s ancestors before punk had a name.
I was introduced to Anita Berber through the work of Lothar Fischer, who opened up this world to me. I learned a great deal from his research and his engagement with Berber, and his work became an important point of departure for my own exploration.
Moving through the excess, provocation and radical self-invention of Weimar Berlin, the film traces Berber as a figure who turned the body into an artistic and political weapon. A collision of archival fragments, dance and attitude — against good taste, bourgeois culture and the worship of dead masters.
“When I see a bust of Goethe in the park, I have to vomit.”