Berin Film Festival Begins

Potsdamer Platz is Command Central

By: Susan Hall - Feb 15, 2025

Potsdamer Platz is command central for the Berlin Film Festival.  While Babelsberger Studios, the oldest large-scale studio in the world, is outside Berlin, Potsdamer Platz, is near the center of the city. It sits between the home of the Berlin Philharmonic and New National Gallery, the only building Mies Van der Rohe designed in Europe after he emigrated from the continent.

In the spring of 1945 after the air raids and the final Battle of Berlin, Potsdamer Platz lay in ruins. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Potsdamer Platz was abandoned by the city administration. Most of the remaining buildings were demolished, even ones that were intact, because no tenants could be found for them. The Wall divided the square, and it became a dead-zone until its fall in 1989.

Movies have played an important role in Potsdamer Platz. Wim Wenders captured the unreal atmosphere of this historic location in his 1987 film, “The Wings of Desire.”  Bruno Ganz, playing an angel wishing to be human, scuffles along in the central plaza, filled with puddles and mud.  Marlene Dietrich has a street named after her.  Her character Frenchy was the model for Lili von Stupp in the film “Blazing Saddles”. 

After the fall of the wall, Daimler Benz and Sony Corporation led the real estate investors in the Platz’s renovation. Sony’s CEO Norio Ohga was a classical music enthusiast and appreciated the location near the Berlin Philharmonic.  He conducted the orchestra, an expression of Berlin’s appreciation for his investment. 

Now a man whose deputy calls him “the new sheriff in town”  (a line from "Blazing Saddles") has just taken over the cultural center of the US capital. We are waiting to see if he will conduct the National Symphony. This is not Gary Cooper in “High Noon”.  Nor is it Cleavon Little, who posted into town, a black man ready to become sheriff in a redneck western US town in "Blazing Saddles."  The new sheriff is President of the US. 

Many movies offered at the Berlin Festival are wakeup calls to citizens who would have our democracies and our planet survive.