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25 March1970
The Berlin Wall
Author
Mauro Matteucci
Format
8mm
Credits
Music by Guglielmo Pagnozzi

During the Easter period of 1970, 22-year-old Mauro Matteucci left the plains of Emilia and travelled to Berlin by car with four friends on 25 March. What drives these guys is the irresistible curiosity to see the city split in two by the Wall and symbol of the Iron Curtain. The five friends are travelling crammed into a FIAT 1100 R, a car in which Matteucci will still drive around Europe. He has been a filmmaker and compulsive traveller since the age of 14 when he went alone to Paris with a camera. In time he would visit almost every country in the world, building up a filmography in his own unique way. Returning to the Berlin tour, expectations are not disappointed: the group moves around the city divided between east and west, filming different places, from the Olympic stadium to Checkpoint Charlie and the wall, from the Victory Column to the television tower, from the Brandenburg Gate to the still damaged Reichstag and the monuments of socialist Germany, and the red and German flags. Passing from west to east, the message on the sign is clearly legible: 'You are leaving the American Sector', who knows what is written on the other side.

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