The challenge of shooting live cinema about the problems of being Hispanic in Berlin

Lucas Tarancon

Berlin, April 22 (EFE). – How do you feel when you are a Hispanic or Latin American immigrant in Berlin? The problems and cultural clashes that newcomers to the German capital face is the topic of “Ich bin_Berliner!” , a live impromptu cinema project produced by the ESimprocine Group that is filmed and broadcast simultaneously.

“Ich bin_Berliner!” It is the latest film by the group of artists ESimprocine, who are dedicated to producing films and series using improvised theater techniques about the experiences of Spanish and Latin American immigrants in Berlin.

What is new in this film, compared to other previous projects of this group, is that it is a live cinematic work, filmed simultaneously with the broadcast, with all the consequent artistic and artistic challenges.

The actors improvise their scenes at various places in Berlin’s Brotfabrik Cultural Center, which are shown live by Wi-Fi transmitters in an adjoining room where the audience can watch the film live while the director and the rest of the art team coordinate the broadcast from the assembly table.

The challenge of shooting, editing, soundtrack, and broadcasting simultaneously means there’s no possibility of cutting, so everything that happens on air goes straight to the final movie.

“Once we say movement, there’s no turning back. You can’t stop, you can’t cut it. It’s a complete sequential shot, it’s a complete movie from start to finish and you can’t cut into it,” explains Pedro Deltell, filmmaker and co-director of ESimprocine.

Gonzalo Benin, an actor and another co-founder of the group adds: “Anything that can happen is well received, and we are sure the audience appreciates it too, because improvisation, spontaneity and solving something that is problematic is even more exciting.

Live cinema is new to everyone working on this project, but the directors point out that it is not far from the philosophy of improvisational cinema and what they were doing before.

“We make improvisational films. One of the nicest things about improvisation is that it arises in the moment. Since we haven’t written dialogues or said the same thing over and over, every time we do it it’s different. So, live improvisations, that means every film is totally unique. And even if we want to repeat it, it will never be shown again,” says Deltell.

Pictured in English, German and Spanish, “Ich bin_Berliner!” It recounts the adjustment problems faced by a group of Spaniards who recently arrived in the German capital and who came face to face with the bureaucracy and cultural clashes of Berlin society, a fact the promoters of the project are well aware of.

“Problems that could be the so-called Anmeldung (registration), for example, financial problems, couple problems because they do not understand each other because of language or because of customs or because of topics that are or do not exist and this is expected to exist. We try to make it real. Very much for our lives and problems as immigrants in this city,” explains Deltell.

Improvising dialogues is somewhat normal for the actors, since many of them are Spanish and Latin American immigrants who met at Gonzalo Piñán’s ESimproescuela Spanish-language improvisation school in Berlin.

“Almost all of this volatility is sometimes unintentional. It’s that we carry it in. It goes out on its own. Because the good thing about it is that everything comes out automatically. Because you don’t anticipate things, they come out automatically,” says Piñán, who sees That “Being an immigrant means that your roots are not here. And so you always have to know if you kicked them out, or made them grow up here, or if you’re going to leave at some point. You have to try to live in such a way that your thoughts are always here and there.”

The film, which will be broadcast simultaneously via live broadcast, will be shown on Saturday in the Babylon cinema in the German capital, as part of the Achtung Berlin Film Festival, waiting, as the directors explained, to find a producer or TV that they would like to find. For its funding to continue the narrative of the lives of young people who arrive in Berlin. EFE

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