Members of the Punk-Band “Feine Sahne Fischfilet” (Fishfilet with creamdressing) deliver a present to the “Organisation for protecting the constitution” in the Eastern Province of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Why?!

The rather unknown musicians got famous in only a couple of weeks after the release of their last Album. The Organisation for protecting the constitution in Germany had condemmned the group for their “harming influence on youngsters”. The Punk Band is part of the movement against racism in Germany and takes part in a lot of Anti-Neo-Nazi actions like preventing Neo Nazis to do propaganda against asylumn seekers homes and similar activities.

The Organisation for protecting the constitution in Germany is part of the Interior ministry and has the duty to monitor dangerous political activities. The unit was harshly critisized this year for their support of fake whistle-blowers in the dangerous Neo-Nazi-Scene. The State researchers where more or less financing some single Neo Nazi groups.

German media published lots of reports about the one sided investigations on leftist activists like the Punk Band. That was a splendid advertisement. Feine Sahne Fischfilet’s clip got more then 111.000 clicks on Youtube until now and the last CD is sold out.

Sarcastic, irreverent, The Slap (Sili) uses codes from silent film to make fun of its characters and our preconceptions. A young woman, an old woman, a young soldier and a colonel share a compartment on a train going from Tehran to Sari. The train enters a tunnel, we hear a kiss and a slap. Each of the characters, except the culprits, has a different interpretation of the event.

The director, Ehsan Amani (born in 1948), shoots mostly documentaries, short movies and advertisements. He has acted in many films, such as Crimson Gold, Abadan and A Few Days Later.

The Slap was shot in 2007 and presented at the 2008 Pangea Day, an international event promoting tolerance and unity through films.

Reposted from Mashalla News

Friedrich Karl Waechter (born 1937 in Danzig, died 2005 in Frankfurt) was a German Cartoonist, Artist, children book author and theatre play author.

Hymn to Beauty
O Beauty! do you visit from the sky
Or the abyss? infernal and divine,
Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,
So it is said you act on us like wine.

Your eye contains the evening and the dawn;
You pour out odours like an evening storm;
Your kiss is potion from an ancient jar,
That can make heroes cold and children warm.

Are you of heaven or the nether world?
Charmed Destiny, your pet, attends your walk;
You scatter joys and sorrows at your whim,
And govern all, and answer no man’s call.

Beauty, you walk on corpses, mocking them;
Horror is charming as your other gems,
And Murder is a trinket dancing there
Lovingly on your naked belly’s skin.

You are a candle where the mayfly dies
In flames, blessing this fire’s deadly bloom.
The panting lover bending to his love
Looks like a dying man who strokes his tomb.

What difference, then, from heaven or from hell,
O Beauty, monstrous in simplicity?
If eye, smile, step can open me the way
To find unknown, sublime infinity?

Angel or siren, spirit, I don’t care,
As long as velvet eyes and perfumed head
And glimmering motions, o my queen, can make
The world less dreadful, and the time less dead.

Charles Beaudelaire
Le Fleurs du mal

Helmut Newton had worked for more then a year in the Studio of German Photographer Yva between 1937 and 1938. She was a glamorous Fashion and Portrait Photographer, who got deported and murdered by the Nazis in 1942. Hotel Bogota in Berlin-Schlüterstrasse was a Residency for the Rich in Charlottenburg those days. Yva alias Else Ernestine Neuländer-Simon had her Studio there. She was like Helmut Newton alias Helmut Neustädter German Jewish. Newton was able to leave Germany in 1938. Yva had been banned from being a Photographer and closed down her Studio. She was arrested with her husband Alfred Simon, when they were preparing for leaving Germany in 1942.

Newton had been only 17, when he worked at the Studio in Schlüterstrasse. He learned how to place the models and how to use light. Yva was a very talented Portrait Photographer as well. Incredible, that Newton was blamed by German Feminists to be a Sexist and even a Fascist for some time.

The Video shows Newton’s Photographs “Coco Chanel and dog Marta, “Love in the Office” and “Andy Warhol”. At the Hotel Bogota in Berlin Schlüterstrasse the Studio of Yva is dedicated to her memory. Although most of the Photographs are lost there is a portrait of her, a shot of Yva working and three of her Fashion Photographs. A symbolic stone is implemented in the pavement in front of her house in Schlüterstrasse. Passing by you are stumbling over it and many people start reading.

Helmut Newton’s famous Photograph “Self-portrait with model and June” shows the artist working. Portraits of Judy Foster, Isabella Rossellini and David Lynch and of Linda Evangelista mark an important part of the History of Fashion and Art Photography.

Helmut Newton died in 2004 and was buried in Berlin, the Helmut Newton
Foundation is running a museum close to Bahnhof Zoo. A must to see.

Kunstwerke Berlin presented Wael Shawkies artwork in a comprehensive and thoughtful style.
Three Videoworks represent the complex work of the artist. Literature, narrations,
sculptures, theatre elements and Video are woven into impressive installations breaking all
kinds of stereotypes.