“Eldorado KaDeWe – Now is our time”
That is why the 20-year series shows modern elements
The “Eldorado KaDeWe” series transports the 1920s into the present.
© ARD Degeto / RBB / Constantin Film / UFA Fiction / Oliver Wolff
The series “Eldorado KaDeWe” takes place in the 1920s – and modern cars can still be seen. The director provides an explanation.
“Eldorado KaDeWe – Now is our time” tells of four young people in search of their personal happiness, love, freedom and self-fulfillment. The famous luxury department store “Kaufhaus des Westens”, or “KaDeWe” for short, in Berlin in the 1920s serves as the backdrop. Thanks to the unusual image design, the director in the miniseries, which celebrated its TV premiere on Monday evening on the first at 8:15 p.m., achieved a topicality that many viewers should at first seem like a glitch.
This is how spectators showed themselves on twitter accordingly irritated by the modern cars that can be seen in the background in the episodes and that actually didn’t exist at the time. In an interview with ARD explained to director and screenwriter Julia von Heinz (45) why the series also has modern elements.
Berlin then as now
“Through research it became increasingly clear to me: This city was noisy, a roaring city full of machines and traffic. I knew no matter what resources I got, I would not be able to represent this size. I will always be able to block a single street and that Send the same ten cars through there over and over again, “says Heinz about the portrayal of Berlin in the series.
She therefore considered “that today’s Berlin is visually much closer to the former than anything that I historically furnish and manufacture – in its filth, in its dystopia, in its loudness and liveliness”. The screenwriter also found it makes sense to focus on the present. “Many issues that led to conflicts back then are actually still a big topic today.” Heinz names women’s rights, queer rights, a fragile democracy, homelessness and anti-Semitism as examples. For them, the concept of the present is the visual expression for the fact that “it is not something that lies behind us, but protrudes into the present”.