The making of Berlin Yves Degryse / BERLIN

The making of Berlin  is a portrait of a city, built around the extraordinary story of Friedrich Mohr, a Berliner who was the Berliner Philharmoniker’s orchestra stage manager during WWII. The making of Berlin – with live horn music – offers an unfiltered look at BERLIN’s work process. But above all, it tells the story of one of the ‘unbrave’ who failed to stand up when fellow Jewish musicians and friends were expelled from the orchestra. The making of Berlin is the final part of the Holocene cycle, during which BERLIN made several portraits of cities over the past twenty years.

BERLIN helps Mohr to realize an as yet unfulfilled dream. At the end of WWII, the conductor of the Philharmonic decided to perform Siegfried’s Funeral March  from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung  one last time. The performance would be broadcast live on German state radio. Rehearsing with the entire orchestra in one location soon proved too dangerous due to ongoing bombing. So the conductor divided the orchestra into seven segments and had them rehearse in separate bunkers.

Faltering [recording] technology threw a spanner in the works. Mohr’s ultimate wish is to perform the technical tour de force as initially planned seventy-five years after the date. The Götterdämmerung  will be played from seven bunkers simultaneously and can be heard in its entirety on the radio.

You gradually discover together with BERLIN that Mohr’s story is full of inaccuracies and that he seems to want to restore the irreparable. How far can you stretch the truth when you're looking for atonement?