Mike Christie – Hansa Studios: By the Wall 1976-90 #FIPA2018

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Mike Christie, director of the documentary Hansa Studios: By the Wall 1976-90.

Director Mike Christie presented his documentary, Hansa Studios: By the Wall 1976-90, at the 31st International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes in Biarritz, France, where it had its French premiere. The documentary tells the previously untold story of the legendary recording studio of Berlin that stood by the Berlin wall and where dozens of pop band recorded many great albums from the late 70’s to the early 1990’s, beginning with David Bowie’s Low, recorded in 1976 and released in 1977. “Berlin before the wall came down was a fascinating city to tourists,” explains Christie in this interview. “It felt like a dangerous place and yet it was incredibly liberal and to some extent relatively lawless … I think that really appealed to artists.” It is no accident that many of the albums discussed in the film were made by artists who were also, essentially tourists, including Iggy Pop, Depeche Mode, and U2 – the later was, in fact, the last big band to record the last album of the “golden era” of Hansa Studios: Achtung Baby, released in 1991. Christie recalls reading about the studio in the mid-80’s in an article about a new Depeche Mode article; he never thought he would go on to make a documentary about it. He was also surprised to find that not only were many big-name artists he approached interested in collaborating on the project, but they were also eager to visit Hansa Studios again; Christie says “it was kind of like an old love affair that they were all revisiting.” Despite the title, the documentary looks at the studio’s taciturn gap period that followed the fall of the Berlin wall and its rebirth, when bands like R.E.M. and Supergrass recorded albums there in later years. Christie also talks about how the architecture of Hansa Studios influences the film; along with his interest in architecture, also having made a number of films about architecture in the past, he says “I wanted the viewer to feel like being in a time machine … and I wanted to really communicate the spaces as well.”

Hansa Studios: By the Wall 1976-90: Few recording studios in the world can claim to rival the incredible list of musicians hosted by Berlin’s Hansa Studios. Between 1976 and 1991, this studio complex was nestled against the Berlin Wall. Here, David Bowie immortalized the Wall in Heroes and his flatmate Iggy Pop sang the rock’n’roll anthem Lust For Life. Prominent international artists followed, including Depeche Mode, Nick Cave and U2, making Hansa Studios one of the most important music factories of the 20th Century.