print   back Former East/Former West in German & English, 62:00, 1994 Made up of hundreds of street interviews done in Berlin two years after the Reunification, Former East/Former West is a vital, surprisingly open, and at times disturbing documentary about what it means to be German at this particular moment in history. For forty-five years, residents of this divided city lived radically different lives, both in terms of ideology and everyday experience. Silver questions the very notion of a shared language, focusing on changing definitions of words for political and economic systems - democracy, freedom, capitalism, socialism - as well as words used to describe nations and identity - nationality, Germany, history, foreigners, home. Watching the interviewees grapple with their own personal definitions of these ideologically loaded terms, viewers can't help but ask these same questions to themselves. In this way, Silver's project takes on a much larger scope, raising key question facing most countries today - what makes up a nation or a national identity; where do boundaries begin and end, who belongs within these boundaries and who does not.. "Anyone who wants to better understand why it is so difficult to 'merge what belongs together' will want to see this film." Dr. Christopher Stomach, New Hampshire German Symposium shot, directed, edited by Shelly Silver assistant director/editor Annette Maechtel interviewers Annette Maechtel, Anette Rose, Petra Stuben, Arnold Dreyblatt, Shelly Silver translation Cornelia Walter, Anita Brown on-line editors Jeff Stabeneaux, Konrad Roman through the Standby Program funded by Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Berliner Kunstprogramm The National Endowment for the Arts New York Foundation for the Arts Hartmut Horst select screenings The New York Film Festival, Video Section, Lincoln Center, NYC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, Mexico; New Documentaries, The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Berlin Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany; The American Film Institute Video Festival, Los Angeles, CA; The American Center , Paris, France; Ostranenie '95, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Dessau, Germany; Muu Media Festival, Helsinki, Finland; Filmladen Dokumentarfilm & Video Festival, Kassel, Germany; Filmhaus, Stuttgart, Germany, Arsenal Cinema, Berlin, Germany, Multimediale, Prague, Czech Republic selected broadcasts Kunstkanaal/The Art Channel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Planete, Europe page top