Kobe

Rainer Komers charts an urban journey with echoes of a valuable German film tradition, which can be traced since Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) to Wim Wenders` Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989). Kobe proposes an exploration of the city's particular habits, rhythms and gestures until it transforms immediate register into unfamiliar everyday life, in a constant zigzag between sociological observation and sudden poetry. The auction-scene at the fish market is proof of the unusual pace of a city which, as telling evidence of its vitality regenerated itself following the unfortunate earthquake of January 17th, 1995.