Yvonne Rainer: Journeys from Berlin/1971

Journeys from Berlin/1971 unfolds as a witty meditation on state authority, oppression, violence and revolution. US choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer conceived the idea during a residency in Berlin in 1976/1977. The film alternates between aerial shots of British landscapes, intertitles, fragments from Rainer’s diary from her teenage years and the discussion of an invisible couple (spoken by Amy Taubin and Vito Acconci) about the decline of the RAF. The art and film critic Annette Michelson plays a psychoanalysis patient, the filmmaker Cynthia Beatt appears in the Berlin sequences. As part of Arsenal on Location, we are showing the restored version of Journeys from Berlin/1971 in the cinema.

Film: 124 min, original English version

 

Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst is a research and education centre, archive, distribution, festival and cinema. With its relocation from Potsdamer Platz to silent green Kulturquartier, Arsenal will not have its own cinema until the new one is completed in early 2026. The collaboration with cultural institutions in Berlin such as Gropius Bau, arthouse cinemas and partners of the Arsenal on Location project will help to continue and further expand the cinematic dialogue, especially during this time.

Sabeth Buchmann (Berlin/Vienna), art historian and professor of the History of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is co-editor of PoLyPen – a series on art criticism and political theory (b_books). Recent publications: Kunst als Infrastruktur (2023), Broken Relations: Infrastructure, Aesthetic, and Critique (2022, co-ed.).