Mark Reeder ‘B Movie’ film and Q and A tour
Manchester Transmission Bar
Live Review
In 1979, a teenage music obsessive from Manchester left his job at Virgin Records shop where he was best friends with a local teenager called Ian Curtis, who used to come and chat music with him and followed his Bowie and Iggy and the German underground music scene obsessions of and hopped on a train to Berlin.
No one from the north of England moved to Berlin on a whim in those far-off days, and he became a local legend for his adventures. The skinny youth had left the then decaying north that was about to be sparked in a revival by its music scene to live out his own cry for freedom and walk around the mythical German city in a variety of vintage army uniforms like member of Laibach on a shop lifting spree!
The callow youth known as Mark Reeder became an underground legend in the north West – the mystery kid who moved to Berlin in the middle of the cold war at the age of 19! He landed in the walled city and quickly became part of the local underground and its fascinating cast of characters and freaks. This was also a city reinventing itself with the new noise, and it had lost none of its 24-hour madness despite the strange political Interzone inertia that it was trapped in. B Movie is a perfect capture of the claustrophobia and chaos of post-punk Berlin – a city with a unique portal on the tension of the time and the soundtrack to match.
The film is a no holds barred romp through the fantastic decadence of the then West Berlin from the stunning music of early Einsturzende Neubautan and their charismatic singer Blixa Bargeld and other the key players like Beta Bartel of Malaria, Die Todlich Dori as well as the record shops, clothes stores and 24 hour bars and the live forever hedonism that defined the city.
A land bridge is built between a reinventing Manchester and a neu Berlin when Mark brings Joy Division out to the city to play their only gig in Germany, joining his two cities together in an unholy communion. The film goes on to document Mark’s own adventures in the aching vistas and emotive emptiness of a divided city that thrived in its isolation. he is the humble and charming narrator stumbling into the neon and tighroping walking the concrete. Becoming a part of the scene he forms bands and makes porn films, he is the guide for a UK TV TV special for The Tube and his charming presence holds the madness together. In later years he would even find time to sneak into East Berlin and spark a punk revolution in the lesser known oppressed other half’s shattered interior.
B Movie is a great pop culture film, and it felt perfect to be watching it in mark Redder’s hometown Manchester at a special event on Mark’s spoken word tour with film. The Q and A afterwards added some great insights and placed Mark back in the bosom of his home city – a place that has changed massively since he changed- changed by the post-punk narrative that he was very much part of despite leaving in 1979 to live in another city that has also seen seismic changes.
B Movie is a snapshot of another time and a story brilliantly told on film and in the Q and A and a perfect reminder of the power of culture and music to make a change and create hope in tumltous times.
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