A Walk Through Berlin with an Erich Honecker Look-a-like

2006 / Video, 50 mins / Erich Honecker doppleganger (Kurt Schmidt), glasses-mounted spy camera

A 50 minute film of a walk through contemporary, unified East Berlin from the viewpoint of a look-a-like of the renowned ex-leader of the GDR (East Germany); Erich Honecker. Filmed from a secret camera on the look-a-likes glasses, we see what he sees; children who imagine he is some type of celebrity clamouring for his autograph, a bus load of older women eyeing him suspiciously, workmen in blue overalls laughing and greeting him with a raised fist, street sellers hawking communist nick-nacks to tourists, and a woman raised in the GDR shouting furiously at him.

Look-a-like: Kurt Schmidt camera: Kurt Schmidt with additional footage: Suzie Lavelle. Part of the exhibition Walk! at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2006 curated by Christine Heidemann.