When there was still something to tell in the GDR: “Rubble” in the Ballhaus Ost

Pier Paolo had a bad dream: He was sitting in a concert hall, or in the middle of filming, he doesn't remember exactly. Music was playing, but everything rattled terribly. There was a rattling noise between the notes, between the words, and between the people. Nothing happened without this insane rattling. Pier Paolo awoke in despair and immediately called on his muse, Maria. Now the two of them are standing, overexcited, in the small Ballhaus Ost in front of a futuristic-looking workers' avenue of socialist realism, discussing what to do.

Not really a question for Pier Paolo, by whom, of course, we mean none other than the social revolutionary filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. And not for Maria, who plays his artistic confidante and opera diva Maria Callas . Not in these politically highly explosive times, at least, when the extreme right or the extreme left could come to power, according to Pier Paolo. He simply has to keep making films that depict the raw reality of the disadvantaged, whatever the cost. And preferably not in Rome, but in the better world: the GDR!

Clapper concept of poetic realism

So now Pier Paolo wants to make a documentary about Martha, Berlin's last "rubble woman." This film was actually made in 1978, shot by Jürgen Böttcher on the Rummelsburg rubble dump for DEFA (freely accessible online), three years after Pasolini's death. But that doesn't bother Pier Paolo or its creator, Jan Koslowski, whose multilingual farce "Rubble," wandering through all genres, realities, and eras, celebrated its summer premiere this weekend at the Ballhaus Ost.

Pier Paolo and Maria want to talk about the value of the work, the materials, and the people behind it, and they overdo it. The snotty, gelled Pier Paolo wants nothing but to lure raw reality into his paintings, while the prim Maria thinks only in metaphors, which is why the shaky term "poetic realism" soon haunts their overheated speeches. If it weren't for that horrible rattling that only gets louder with every sentence.

And so the chattering and babbling merrily continues in this contemporary history and narrative parody, which always teeters on the edge between gaiety and silliness. Koslowski and his co-writer Marlene Kolatschny spared no effort, assembling a huge ensemble of 13 actors and musicians. Since it's never clear where the entire live-film-on-stage chaos actually takes place—whether as an extended nightmare in Pasolini's head or on a real film set, nestled within other "rubble film" sets from DEFA history—the revolving stage tent, which serves as a planning center, bedroom, and kitchen all at once, plays only a provisional role.

There's a lot of sleeping and smoking, but the sparseness of the underlying demolition documentaries (along with "Martha," the film "Memory of a Landscape" also gets its due) gives way here to decidedly overblown, meta-aesthetic know-it-alls. The film was supposed to tell of the dazzling power of the broken, but it gets stuck in a lament about the supposed inability to tell the story. At least it's fun.

Rubble. Until July 11, 8 p.m., at Ballhaus Ost. Tickets available at the Berliner Zeitung ticket shop.