Situationen / Situations (1967)

The film was made after June 2, 1967. Conventional, self-contained storytelling no longer seemed possible and needed to be broken up by loosely jammed together “blocks.”

Brief footage of different spheres of life in the city (documentary and staged): the Allies’ presence—my own situation (a burst of The Room)—teenagers in a dance hall—on-set sounds and footage of Daniel Schmid—a conversation among students in a factory loft about the future of the film school—activism… (J. Beringer)

Film by Johannes Beringer with Gerd Conradt – Camera; Resa Dabui – Sound; Kaspar Streiff – Assistance; Renate Czech, Jürgen Engelhardt, Peter Hohenstein, Jutta Kräft – Cast; Gerd Conradt, Skip Norman, Holger Meins, Günter Peter Straschek – Conversation Participants; West Berlin, Late October/Early November 1967 (DFFB, 1967, B/W, 15 Min. 30 Sec.)

Johannes Beringer belonged to the first cohort of students at Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie (dffb) Berlin in 1966. He collaborated with Skip Norman on his two student films Das Zimmer (The Room) and Situationen (Situations). Together with seventeen other students, Beringer was expelled from the film school in November 1968. Since then, he has worked as a writer (for the journal Filmkritik and many other publications), translator, and film programmer in various contexts. In the 1970s and early ’80s, he was editor and sound engineer on many of Harun Farocki’s productions.

[Suggested citation: Johannes Beringer, “Situationen / Situations (1967)” Rosa Mercedes 03/B (April 2021), www.harun-farocki-institut.org/en/2021/04/30/situationen-1967/]