Fall of wall inspires new documentary

Written by Justin Reynolds
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 14:27

As a junior at New York University, film student Jill Sapenoff went to Berlin for a semester to study. When she came back after four months, inspired by some of her experiences there, Ms. Sapenoff, now a senior, decided to base a two-part fictional narrative and documentary project on the country’s relatively recent history.

On Monday, Germans will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Though the dismantling of the wall was a gradual process, that day — Nov. 9, 1989 — is generally considered one of the more significant days at the beginning of that process.

To partake in the festivities and document the celebrations, Ms. Sapenoff and a crew of students are scheduled to fly to Berlin today for about a week. Thus commences their project, informally titled Ostalgie, The Berlin Project. The title combines the German words Ost (east) with Nostalgie (nostalgia).

“We’re going to be working on a documentary about the fall of the wall,” Ms. Sapenoff said. “We’re going to be interviewing a bunch of people there, focusing on eastern nostalgia and how people have been doing over the past 20 years.”

Ms. Sapenoff said she had wanted to link two of her passions — the German language and film — since high school.

“I studied German in high school and had always wanted to find a way to link German, which I enjoyed learning and speaking, to the other things I enjoyed such as theater and film,” she said. “I made the decision to study abroad with the hope of developing my language skills and learning more about entertainment overseas.”

And, thus, the project was born.

The crew will work on two distinct parts of a film, she said.

“The documentary is the main research piece,” Ms. Sapenoff said, “and we are going to film a short narrative in the spring. The narrative is the equivalent to my thesis. We’ll shoot sometime in the spring, maybe March.”

Ms. Sapenoff, who lives on Ridgefield Road, said that history generally glorifies West Germany and West Berlin, speaking of the west’s greatness in comparison to the not as desirable East Germany and East Berlin.

“That’s a fine point of view,” Ms. Sapenoff said in an interview Monday, “but we’re trying to show that it wasn’t necessarily all good in West Germany, and that there were people opposed to the wall coming down, people nervous about it. There are people today that still miss the east.”

Ms. Sapenoff, a film and television production major minoring in German and sociology, said despite any political affiliations or thoughts on dismantling the wall at the time, all Germans were affected one way or another by it.

“It wasn’t an easy transition for anyone involved,” Ms. Sapenoff said. “Even 20 years later, you’d expect it to be fine. But there’s still a lot of tension between East Germany and West Germany.”

Ms. Sapenoff, a 2006 graduate of Wilton High School, said the tension in some instances is so deep that former East Germans have a hard to getting jobs.

Ms. Sapenoff said she plans to interview about eight people.

“Generally speaking, most of the people we’re interviewing are between 32 and 55 years old. Nearly everybody is of eastern background,” she said. “Two or three of them grew up exclusively in East Berlin. Generally, people will be talking about their childhoods in East Germany.”

As is the case with most artists, money is limited and limiting.

“Financially speaking, we’d always like donations,” Ms. Sapenoff said. “But we’re just trying to get more of the word out there. We’ll be talking a little more when the narrative piece comes around.”

Ms. Sapenoff said she will be working with fellow Wilton High School alum Elizabeth Kerin, an NYU graduate, on the fictional portion of the film. Ms. Kerin will act as head producer.

Aside from this project, Ms. Sapenoff said her last film, The Park, which was shot in Wilton at Merwin Meadows and The Village Market, is in post-production. She worked on the Voices in Conflict production as a stage manager for the play and as an associate producer for the televised version.

Information: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , ostalgieberlinproject.blogspot.com.