Arte - Mysteries in the Archives Series 2 (2010) Part 5 1963 John F. Kennedy in Berlin

Mysteries in the archives, ten investigations into ten events of the twentieth century that have marked our memory and our imagination. In the French series, we learn about the historical events of the 20th century by closely investigating archive films. Who is in the picture, who is missing? Why was the camera pointed right here? Who is sitting next to whom? The “Mysteries in the Archives” series takes us to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the Khmer Rouge camps, the occupation of Saigon and a Tour de France. We follow John F. Kennedy's visit to Berlin as well as the funeral a few months later, and we learn about the Shah's celebrations at ancient Persepolis and de Gaulle's scandalous speech in Quebec. By looking at the pictures again and more closely, the series reveals how history has been processed, told and manipulated in the pictures. Each image is carefully studied and analyzed until its secrets are revealed. The series explores the power of pictures to tell otherwise. It raises the question do we see what we know or can we know more with the help of the image? “Mysteries in the Archives” is a collection aiming to uncover and rediscover known or unpublished images that bear witness to our history. The audiovisual document becomes a piece of evidence that it is up to us to question, to make people talk. The image is scrutinized, dissected, and often, Mysteries in the Archives takes our gaze away from what the camera operator had seen or expected. Each episode is constructed as an investigation. Some are about cheerful and amusing topics, others are about more solemn, momentous events. Serge Viallet, a true detective of the image, reveals a multitude of new elements and significant anecdotes hidden behind the story as it was shown to us in cinemas and then on television. Meticulous investigations are undertaken - film is rummaged, sifted through and sorted, examined frame by frame and analyzed until it finally reveals its secrets. This collection includes all 10 episodes of season 2.

Part 5 1963 John F. Kennedy in Berlin

In June 1963, John F. Kennedy was the first president of the United States to set foot in Berlin since the end of the Second World War. The fifth and final day of his trip was to be one of the most important days of the American President's political career. At the end of this visit to West Germany, he gave a speech on Rudolph Wilde Square, the former seat of the West Berlin Parliament and the city's governing mayor, in front of 400,000 people and perfectly placed cameras, with this little phrase that would become famous “ich bin ein Berliner”… After Kennedy's assassination on November 22 of the same year, the square was renamed John F. Kennedy Square. The cameras, perfectly set up on scaffolding, caught his short sentence for posterity, which became legend “I am a Berliner”. Why this sentence? Who had come up with the line? Why in German? And why this presidential trip to Berlin during the Cold War, almost two years after the Berlin Wall was built?

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