Beauty & Decay

Even before the fall of the Wall, the trained photographer Sven Marquardt, today also known far beyond the borders of Germany for his striking appearance as a bouncer at the legendary techno club Berghain, portrayed the subcultural East Berlin scene in expressive black-and-white photographs. After a 25-year hiatus in his artistic career, Marquardt has since reinvented himself once again, achieving worldwide fame with his exhibitions, publications and commissioned works. Night, intoxication, excess and darkness radiate from his works, although they are mostly created in daylight. The portraits of his DJs, musicians, fellow bouncers are erotic, casual, dirty and existential. After FASSBINDER, FÜNF STERNE and FAMILIE BRASCH, director Annekatrin Hendel meets in her new, again very personal film, Sven Marquardt and two of his companions from their common East Berlin punk time: Robert Paris and Dominique "Dome" Hollenstein. "SCHÖNHEIT & VERGÄNGLICHKEIT" tells the story of three friends with a common youth, whose careers are marked by their artistic view of the world, by radicalism and openness. But it is also a film about the unconditional longing for individuality and non-conformity, rebellion, growing older, love and friendship in very different value systems. And it is a Berlin film. Robert Paris' magnificent city views tell of the city's transformation, of the idiosyncratic charm of deserted streets, boarded-up doors and blind windows. An unusual film, in the 30th year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.