Bundesministerium des Innern - 30 Jahre Mauerfall - Mitwitz
On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Federal Ministry of the Interior commissioned fischerAppelt to produce video content to be shown at the official ceremony on November 9, 2019, and to be hosted on a special website, named “Unsere Geschichte schreibt Zukunft”. Two directors and I met with people in 30 unique places along the 1,539 kilometers of the former interior German border, where we collected and portrayed their stories. I was responsible for creating the concept for the series, finding the protagonists and directing nine of the videos (you can view them on my Vimeo channel).
This is how I met Kai Frobel. The conservationist grew up in the West German town Mitwitz within eyeshot of the interior German border. Even as a teenager, he knew the importance of the border strip as a refuge for endangered animal and plant species. This experience led him to initiate the all-German nature protection project „Grünes Band“ right after the fall of the wall. The name „Grünes Band“ refers to the green belt that now extends along the former border strip of almost 1,400 kilometers throughout the whole of Germany.