And now for something completely different:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/11/rabbit-a-la-berlin
"Bartek Konopka's Oscar-nominated documentary Rabbit à la Berlin tells the largely ignored story of the thousands of wild rabbits who thrived in the so-called death zone of the Berlin Wall – the strip of no man's land on the eastern side of the wall.
The dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989/90 may have been a source of great joy for some, but Konopka's film shows its catastrophic effect on the bunny population. "For the rabbits, it was like an exodus. It was very dramatic and terrifying for those animals," the 37-year-old Polish director says. "In the fate of those rabbits, there was some kind of prediction: a bad weather forecast for people."
The rabbits, Konopka says, were "fragile and sensitive" creatures. When they found Berliners trampling all over no man's land, they tried to run away – but weren't always up to it. "For them, it was such a stress. They'd go through one street, look for the nearest bush and stay there. But they were so frightened that they stayed there for many days and died from hunger. It was such a stress that they wouldn't think about what to eat. They'd just stand in one position and die."
Rabbit à la Berlin isn't exactly a natural history documentary. It is intended more as an allegorical study of a totalitarian system. The rabbits are used as a device to burrow into recent east European social history. Just as the rabbits were expelled from their makeshift Eden when the Berlin wall came down, many in the Soviet bloc had to adjust to the strange new post-communist world."
http://www.kinoteka.org.uk/rabbit.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/11/rabbit-a-la-berlin
"Bartek Konopka's Oscar-nominated documentary Rabbit à la Berlin tells the largely ignored story of the thousands of wild rabbits who thrived in the so-called death zone of the Berlin Wall – the strip of no man's land on the eastern side of the wall.
The dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989/90 may have been a source of great joy for some, but Konopka's film shows its catastrophic effect on the bunny population. "For the rabbits, it was like an exodus. It was very dramatic and terrifying for those animals," the 37-year-old Polish director says. "In the fate of those rabbits, there was some kind of prediction: a bad weather forecast for people."
The rabbits, Konopka says, were "fragile and sensitive" creatures. When they found Berliners trampling all over no man's land, they tried to run away – but weren't always up to it. "For them, it was such a stress. They'd go through one street, look for the nearest bush and stay there. But they were so frightened that they stayed there for many days and died from hunger. It was such a stress that they wouldn't think about what to eat. They'd just stand in one position and die."
Rabbit à la Berlin isn't exactly a natural history documentary. It is intended more as an allegorical study of a totalitarian system. The rabbits are used as a device to burrow into recent east European social history. Just as the rabbits were expelled from their makeshift Eden when the Berlin wall came down, many in the Soviet bloc had to adjust to the strange new post-communist world."
http://www.kinoteka.org.uk/rabbit.html
