Tommaso Revelant
Back in the 90s, Berlin was a messy, punky pile of fallen graffitied concrete – a recently unified wasteland. Those who lived through it hold a special kind of status. They saw it all: the artists flocking to the East, their squatting of abandoned buildings, deserted roads, grassroots techno, the first Love Parade. And artist and filmmaker Uli Happe not only saw it all, he recorded every minute of it.
Filming everything and anything, Uli captured the day-to-day during this historical time. His footage is 90s nostalgia without the romanticisation – just raw, shaky reality. He documented The Mutoid Waste Company, the London-born artists who overtook the grounds of Tacheles with fire-spitting hydraulics and wild, Mad Max-style performances. He filmed Berlin’s empty streets, just to capture their transformation from one year to the next. He taped the eviction of squatters, Polizei shoving away his camera, and lesser-known protests in the middle of an unmodernised Alexanderplatz.
Uli aspires to collate his videos in a Berlin gallery. After all, his archive gives gifted insight into the city’s past – not only its big moments, but the small moments within them. However much some Berliners yearn for it, the post-Wall era will never happen again. But watching Uli’s footage, it’s easy to feel, if only for a minute or so, like you were there too.
Uli Happe
You’ve been filming footage of Berlin since you moved here from Emmerich in 1973. What pulled you to the city at that time?
In West Berlin, there was no Wehrpflicht. You couldn’t be drafted into the army. Many men moved here when they turned 18. That was the reason, really. Half of the 18-year-old men in my hometown went to West Berlin, and the advantage was that you already knew people in the city, so that made it easier in the beginning. And even then, Berlin was the most interesting city in the world, I think.
Nobody understood what I was doing. Why is he driving around Berlin at 6am with a camera on his roof?
You’ve filmed everything from empty roads to the fall of the Wall. What compelled you to create so much footage?
I started filming when I was 14 or 15. Friends of mine gave me film rolls from before the war. Of course, they weren’t great; the colours weren’t good because it was such old material. But they also gave me an old Kodak 16mm camera, where the film was cut into two halves to become an 8mm film. Late at night, I would watch American underground films, and they made a big impression on me. I began creating the same kind of footage. I filmed everything around me and started making what you might call ‘German underground films’.
Who do you find to be the most inspiring people in the world of film?
Nam June Paik, the father of video art. He did video installations in the 60s. And Ira Schneider, who was a friend of Paik’s from New York. Ten years ago, I did a documentary about Schneider. In the 60s, he would take a camera to Fillmore East and film the bands playing there. He was friends with Jimi Hendrix and all those people, you know? So he went with them to Woodstock. He wasn’t allowed to film the bands, of course, because of copyright and all that, so he filmed everything around the bands, but not the bands.
Uli Happe
A lot of your footage is of The Mutoid Waste Company. How did you meet?
We met at Görlitzer Bahnhof, which is now Görlitzer Park. They’d escaped to Europe because of the Thatcher troubles. Did you know the Mutoids did the first-ever rave in London? I met Robin first. He and Joe were the founders of The Mutoid Waste Company. I was at Görlitzer Bahnhof, filming for an underground video magazine at that time. Robin saw me running around with a big camera and came over. We talked for a bit, and after some time, we thought it would be good to make a documentary on the MWC, so I got exclusive rights to live with them and film.
You toured with them for four years through Europe in the 90s. Can you describe that experience?
I was an embedded war reporter, so to say. I was a part of the group, you know? When there was a show, I was dressed up as a Mutoid with my camera and I danced around on stage, with all the flying, burning, metal tricks happening around me. And I was never hurt, actually. I was in the middle of it all. I was very lucky.
The documentary you made about them, Declassified: The Mutoid Waste Files – The Mutoid Waste Company 1989–1994, premiered 30 years later in London at the Portobello Film Festival and was nominated for best film. Why do you think it took so long?
I tried to finish the documentary several times, but I kept giving up because it was too much. I had about 80 hours of material. I started editing in a TV studio at night, which was a cheap option back then, but it was so difficult. There was no digital anything and it was still so expensive, so I forgot about it for about 10 years. Then I started again. I worked with a friend of mine, a professional editor, but during editing, we got into a fight and he stopped talking to me. All my stuff, the video recorders, the Betacam SP – all these big things for digitising were at his flat. He stopped answering my calls, so I got stuck again.
Uli Happe
Your Berlin Trips capture you driving through Berlin with a camera on the roof of your car, which you’ve been doing since the mid-90s. What do you want to capture in these videos?
Nobody understood what I was doing. Why is he driving around Berlin at 6am with a camera on his roof? Well, it was just an idea to document the status quo, so to say. I always did it on Sunday mornings: no people, no cars, just the real, empty, dead city. The last big ones, I did with a bicycle and during COVID.
You have great videos of the techno scene that you recorded in the 90s. Why did you film people dancing in the old techno clubs back then?
That was more or less by accident. A friend of mine who was working for a TV station developed his own format called Night Flyer in 1994. The idea was to go around the Berlin techno clubs and film to let people know what’s happening next week. It was sort of a news system for the party scene. He filmed with a bigger, better TV camera than mine, but he needed a second camera. Good thing, because the originals, the tapes he shot, seem to be lost, but I found my tapes. Of all the things I’ve ever filmed, I thought that was the most uninteresting, but the thing is, who else has footage from that time?
Uli Happe
They’re very popular on Instagram. To see such clear footage and to compare it to the techno scene today – people find that really interesting.
Well, so much of the techno scene follows me. Not only in Germany, but even Chicago, Detroit or wherever. I get so many followers a day that I can’t even check who’s following me. But when I do, many are DJs. The whole graffiti scene follows me too. I don’t know why. It wasn’t a speciality of mine. But sometimes when I filmed the Mutoids in front of the Berlin Wall, there’s graffiti in the background, and people are interested in the old graffiti, before development.
You have a huge following on Instagram. Why did you begin sharing your footage on social media?
Nowadays, it’s history, but at the time, it was just normal life.
For almost twenty years now, I’ve said to myself, “When I die (which could happen accidentally tomorrow), what happens to my videos?” I never called it an archive or announced that I had one. That came because of social media. I started on YouTube first, but even though I uploaded really good footage, I didn’t get many clicks. Then a year ago, I tried Instagram, just for a test. In a month, I got a thousand followers. It was very unique. Even famous people follow me. I noticed one day that I had as many clicks on one Instagram post as I did on YouTube with all of my films put together over the course of 20 years.
Uli Happe
Your footage captures significant political moments like the clearing of the Lenné Triangle in Potsdamer Platz and the Berlin Wall falling in 1989. Did you know it would become so historically significant or did you just intend to record day-to-day life?
The truth is, it was half-half. You must remember, when I filmed in Berlin in the 80s and 90s, all the changes, the Wall coming down, etc., etc., were everyday to us. Nowadays, it’s history, but at the time, it was just normal life. On the one hand, I knew it would be historic, but I didn’t know it would be so historic. If I’d known that, I would have filmed more. That’s always the problem – you feel you’re too late, you know? For instance, I wanted to make a documentary about my parents. I asked them about it and I think they appreciated that I wanted to do it. But I don’t know. I said, “Yeah, let’s do it next year,” but soon enough, they died. It’s always the same with filming. You say, “I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow”. Then tomorrow doesn’t exist anymore.
Follow Uli on Instagram @ulihappe and donate to his archive through the link in his bio