Corporate film and social media clips for five Berlin memorial sites commemorating the Nazi era

Berlin as a place of historical remembrance

Berlin is a place of remembrance. The city breathes history, something we experience time and again as we walk through its streets. In many places, this history is closely linked to the reign of terror under National Socialism. There are so many historical buildings, neighbourhoods and squares that bear witness to this. In addition, numerous memorials and museums document the crimes of National Socialism.

The Permanent Conference (StäKo) is dedicated to these places, with the aim of bringing the individual institutions into closer contact with one another, developing joint events and projects, and presenting these to the public.

We want to appeal to a young target audience with a modern video and media concept

In an image film, we want to present the five memorial sites that belong to the Permanent Conference: the Holocaust Memorial, the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, the Topography of Terror, the German Resistance Memorial and the House of the Wannsee Conference. It will be an entertaining film that informs viewers but also inspires them to engage more deeply with the subject.

But how can the most difficult topic in German history be presented to young people in a progressive and contemporary way, with the appropriate respect but also with the necessary verve? We discussed this question at length with our client and within our team. And whenever the opportunity arose, we asked young people in our circle how they would like to see a film about Nazi memorial sites. ‘Not boring. Interesting and fast-paced’ was the most common answer. But what exactly does that mean: not boring, interesting? Isn't such a description primarily subjective?

We are all familiar with the detailed documentaries on the subject: piano music, long shots, slow camera movements, solemn, dark female narrators. Our film idea has a different aim. We want to draw attention to the important work of the StäKo, which is an important point of contact for questions of remembrance culture. We want to reach young people, encourage them and show them that painful historical material will always remain painful, of course, but that it is worth engaging with it.

What resources are we using to achieve this? We have decided to have our own music composed, a kind of soundscape, electronic and varied. We have hired an illustrator who will complement our film material with his special graphic concept. We are working with drone footage to introduce each memorial site, a recurring element that is particularly impressive in the field of steles. And we plan – yes, exactly – to use quick cuts that fit the zeitgeist and the social media usage behaviour of young people. Admittedly, it's a small experiment. But we are very happy that the StäKo team decided to use a different film language than the familiar one for this topic. The short social media clips about the respective memorial sites complement the concept.

Filming at memorial sites that leave a lasting impression

Producing a promotional film that takes our film crew to five Nazi memorial sites allows us as filmmakers to immerse ourselves once again in the subject matter and research. What do the individual sites represent? How was the topic addressed and dealt with? Which elements are iconic and what can only be discovered at second glance? Since we are not producing a long documentary, but a film that should be no longer than 4 minutes, we have to concentrate and highlight the distinctive features of the sites. This is not so easy, because there is a lot to tell about each site.

Each memorial site has its own atmosphere, and we want to capture that in our images. We are particularly moved by the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which was built in 1936 in Oranienburg, north of Berlin. From Tower A, which was the headquarters of the SS camp command and whose top floor housed the ‘machine gun stand’, you have a view of the entire complex. The tower was used to monitor the roll call square, where the barracks were arranged in a fan shape. This arrangement is also known as the ‘geometry of total terror’. Filming at this location more than eighty years after the crimes committed by the Nazis, knowing what happened here, leaves a lasting impression.