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The City through a Filmmaker's
Eyes
Robert Rapoport is an
expatriate filmmaker living and working in Berlin.
Through a filmmaker’s eye,
Berlin is a complex and interesting place. Rapoport finds Berlin
a younger, more alive and welcoming city for artists than Paris
and New York. “It’s just mainly this improvised tone of the
city,” he said. “It’s just nice; it’s got an energy.”
With a degree in development
studies from Brown University, Rapoport began writing fiction,
then delved into playwriting and screenwriting. He eventually
realized he wanted the camera in his own hand. He has entered
work in the Hamburg International Short Film Festival and plans
to do the same with his current project, Working Title: Night’s
Daughter.
Rapoport found a niche in the
thriving community of artists in Berlin and supports himself
financially by doing camera work and plans to give tours of the
city in the summer. Rapoport hopes his films stir interest and
attract financial backing for larger projects coming down the
pipeline.
The physical environment
heavily influences the plot of Working Title: Night’s Daughter.
It was shot in an abandoned architecture office in
Kurfürstendamm across from the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche.
The actors collaborated with Rapoport, translating the script
from English to German, giving it what Rapoport calls “another
layer.”
Hesitant to
discuss the themes in his own work, Rapoport shrugs and says the
film “is about a man with his feet in two different realities.
The scenes that you’ll see are kind of a controlled chaos,” he
said. “I don’t want to have a film where everything’s always in
focus.” |
