(DVD, 25 min) 2005
In the documentary section of her film, Judith Sigmund takes as her subject the socio-political context of the unbelievable history of the CargoLifter project. Using the CargoLifter as an example, she makes an attempt to get to the heart of the issue surrounding failed large-scale projects in the region of Brandenburg. Diverse points of view, from positions that are rooted in economic-political, future technologies, euphemistic and analytical issues, document and comment upon the course of the CargoLifter story from its early enthusiasm through its insolvency in 2002. Carl von Gablenz (the head of the enterprise), the minister of trade and commerce, an innkeeper from Briesen, shareholders, and members of the Initiative Zukunft in Brand e.V. (an association whose goal is the furthering of lighter-than-air technology) are interviewed or are quoted.
The second half of the film is fictional, focusing on Annelie Kubicek, the mother of airships, who represents the future of lighter-than-air technology. Annelie Kubicek is a fictive insider from the East, who, in an interview, reports about her experiences as a mechanical engineer and as an employee in the marketing department of the CargoLifter AG. In undercover missions, she copies plans, learns complicated 3-D computer programs, hold conversations with the research department and acquires a profound knowledge about lighter-than-air technology. She analyzes technical problems, comments upon and judges the insolvency of the CargoLifter AG, discusses her own life story from the time when she was a student in the GDR and in the Soviet Union, and about the historical fascination with zeppelins that still continues its tradition. In this fictive spectrum of circumstances, Socialist socialization processes and research conditions also confront and are compared with those that exist under capitalism.
Convinced by the energy-saving, technological and cultural uses of airships as a means of transportation, Annelie Kubicek wishes to continue the CargoLifter project. Plan B for Brandenburg: She is in a position to put together and to utilize all of the collected research results and data. It is supposed to be financed entirely by a lighter-than-air-cent, which makes reference to the “Kulturpfenning” or the so-called “cultural penny” in the GDR. “It stands for our nation’s abilities to be innovative and for the technologies of the future, which are to be developed here in this country. ” Further, potential enthusiasm that has not yet been exhausted is also supposed to be encouraged, as can be witnessed, for example, in the 70,000 small shareholders, many of whom have held onto their shares even after the insolvency.
The splitting of the film into a documentary and a fictive section reflects upon a real, a visionary, and a subjective level of the CargoLifter story. Set before the backdrop of an East German history, it narrates from the actual failure and from visionary enthusiasm – from the belief in a collective project model, in its technical feasibility and in capitalist economic systems as well. Judith Siegmund restages and dismantles the socio-political, historical and technological constructions of myths, including the airship myth, for which its boundless enthusiasm was built upon a fire in a warehouse.
Sabine Winkler
