Film screening and discussion: Bowling­treff

Shortly before the end of the GDR, in 1987 in Leipzig the Bowlingtreff (bowling club) was unexpectedly opened. By no means one of the usual sad bowling alleys, it was an extraordinary symbol of postmodern architecture, luxuriously fitted with marble and oak parquet. Unprecedented in the GDR until then.

The film reconstructs the way that the City of Leipzig had the building constructed as a so-called Feierabendtätigkeit(after-work activity) to circumvent their comrades in Berlin. A building is completed with great skill that has nothing whatsoever to do with the usual formal vocabulary of the GDR, as international experts comment in the film. Among the latter is also Denise Scott Brown, who describes the uniqueness and independence of the Bowlingtreff as the embodiment of the Zeitgeist, the growing desire for change in the GDR, and compares the light-flooded, self-supporting hall with the casinos of Las Vegas.

The film is being screened downtown, in the midst of the exhibition ‘Downtown Denise Scott Brown’. Afterwards, the filmmakers discuss the role played by architecture and film and, of course, by Denise Scott Brown.

D 2015, 60:00 mins, original version with English subtitles, directed by Adrian Dorschner and Thomas Beyer