Documentary at the movies

Element Of Crime: A career with heart and brain

The master and his tools: Sven Regener goes on the musical attack at Berlin's Lido.

(Bild: Noel Richter)

Element Of Crime are celebrating their 40th birthday in 2025 - with "Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin", a new documentary about Sven Regener and co. is currently showing in cinemas. The band mastermind looks back on the filming with director Charly Hübner, remembers the Berlin of his childhood and analyzes the social significance of the band.

"Krone": Sven, what I particularly liked about the Element Of Crime documentary "Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin" is the fact that a lot of songs from your concerts are played in silence. That's something that no longer happens with music documentaries in these hectic times ...
Sven Regener: Director Charly Hübner solved that very cleverly in part by repeatedly leaving the concert situation and interspersing old archive footage and interviews. I've never seen it in this form before. In some scenes, you get the feeling that it continues seamlessly despite the time changes. I'm not a filmmaker and I thought that was insanely great.

Hübner concentrates on the core elements - on you, the music, the live element and the special form of friendship within the band. How did it all develop for you?
A big thank you not only to Charly, but also to master editor Christoph Brunner. I often asked myself where they wanted to go with the movie? A lot of people discussed it for a long time until we found a direction. We didn't want to have a pure concert film or a blunt band biography, but a hybrid that covers a bit of everything. I don't find it that exciting when you constantly see the faces of band types talking about the good old days. It's like looking in the rear-view mirror because life is already over. But the tour that was put together especially for the movie makes the film very contemporary. So the film serves many documentary purposes. Everything blended together so well that I couldn't have dreamed of it.

In principle, the film follows a certain chronology. However, the present is squeezed in again and again so as not to tell too rigid a story.
What's interesting is the interlocking. It doesn't start in 1985 in a small club and end in 2023 in front of 9,000 people in the Spandau Citadel. The tour for the movie took place in five increasingly large locations in Berlin, which reflects our career. That was a brilliant idea. It was also nice that I never felt like I was being watched while filming. There are so many people walking around in a concert situation anyway. Stagehands, light and sound technicians, stage builders, band mates. Everyone does their thing. Whether there are a few more or fewer cameramen doesn't matter. We have other things to do than worry about it. I'm focused because I always have a kind of stage fright. The concentration has to be there because a lot of people have a lot of expectations.

Even if you can block out the cameramen around you - Charly Hübner was always in charge as director and of course has to interfere with routines.
 We didn't really want the whole project as a band, the idea came from our manager Charlotte Goltermann (also Regener's wife - editor's note), who wanted our musical world to be embodied in this way. Element Of Crime has no big video screens, no pyro shows and no big amusement park around it - our only effect apart from the music is the light. It was important for us to show this part because it's an important part of the show. Then it was important for us to put the support acts of the gigs in the center, because you can see quite well how the story of Element Of Crime is being written. I didn't want to be watched like that for a long time, but we knew Charly and we trusted him. It was clear to us that we wouldn't end up with any nasty surprises. Any project can go down the drain, but the chances were slim from the outset. We have now brought the past and present together well.

Sven Regener in an interview with director and fan Charly Hübner.

(Bild: Felix Zimmermann)

Very early on in the film, Charly Hübner declares himself to be a big fan and mentions that the lyric "life is a pain in the ass" from the song "The Ballad Of Jimmy & Johnny" had a lasting effect on him as a teenager.
We also gave a few interviews together and he always emphasized that he lacks a critical journalistic distance to the band. The band means too much to him for that. But he's not a journalist either, he's an artist and filmmaker. It was clear that it would be a rather personal film from his perspective. What does he associate with us? What does the band mean to him? What does he want to show about us? He determined the movie, not us.

But you certainly had the right of veto if things had gone in the wrong direction?
Of course there were moments when we switched off the cameras and sat down to discuss a few points, but that's also normal. We didn't have any conflicts. These concerts that we play in the movie took place in our natural habitat. So we didn't have to worry that it would be weird. You know from a lot of movies that filmmakers can easily want to portray someone as evil. Things can be quickly recorded in just a few steps, and with Charly it was clear from his proximity to us that there would be no such danger.

You mentioned the supporting bands before: Von Wegen Lisbeth, Isolation Berlin, the Austrian Florian Horwath and co. really get a lot of space for a 90-minute showcase of their work, which is actually all about you.
This idea is borrowed a bit from Bob Dylan. On his "Rolling Thunder" tour in the 70s, he played more of a revue with lots of other musicians. Dylan played less himself back then than we do here at these concerts. Steiner & Madlaina would still have been there, I would also have liked to have had Ansa Sauermann on stage. Von Wegen Lisbeth now fill bigger halls than we do, they are also much poppier. For us, support act doesn't mean that we throw something at people's feet to get them warmed up for us. We already have a very precise idea of what fits and can enrich everyone.

Guitarist Jakob Ilja once says in the documentary that he simply went with the flow in the 80s and that intoxicating drugs and partying were important. You, on the other hand, always pushed everything forward. Would Element Of Crime no longer exist without your early ambition?
Everyone in the band has their role, but it's also a bit about the singer thing. It's always about the guy with the big mouth. Everyone always wants to talk to me. On the second record "Try To Be Mensch" we did a German promo tour in 1987, where the bassist and drummer did the interviews, but that just didn't go down too well. Everyone always wants to talk to the singer and then you add another one - that's just the way it is. A lot of questions are about vocals and lyrics and then nobody can say anything. At some point, I didn't feel like doing these tours alone anymore. Otherwise people would think the band was a solo project, which was never the case. On the contrary: three of the four of us have been together for 38 years.

The film is also a beautiful contemporary document about friendship and collegiality. You are like a gang, even though your characters change over the years and family situations develop. Is it sometimes hard work to keep such a collective alive for so long?
People always talk about friendship, and there's certainly something to that, but I think the term kinship is much more appropriate for a band. When we're not playing live or recording albums, we often don't see each other for a year. We might give each other a quick call or send each other an e-mail, but that's it. Maybe it's the same with brothers or cousins. You can lose friends, but you can't really lose relatives. Not even if you argue. You can't possibly work together for almost 40 years if you don't like each other. Otherwise something would inevitably fall apart.

You mentioned at the beginning that looking back is actually rather bad. How did you feel when you saw the band's old archive material? The many contemporary documents from the 80s from Berlin clubs before the fall of the Wall, many of which no longer exist today?
There were a lot of private recordings. Nobody had a cell phone back then. You just had people with you who took video footage, which only changed in the 2000s. I can still remember a concert in Hamburg where my sister's friend was filming because she wanted to try out her new camera. This resulted in creepy footage that has now resurfaced. Some broadcasters have also illuminated cities and regions and then often added bands to show what's going on here or there. It's not easy to find people who still have such material after more than 30 years.

You formed in 1985 in an interesting area of tension. Neue Deutsche Welle was dead, punk rock was living underground and the Hamburg School was still in its infancy. Wasn't that the worst time to form a new band?
Life still had to go on. I wanted to do something different and the time was ideal for that. Nothing was happening back then and the spotlights had been switched off in the German pop segment. The Neue Deutsche Welle was over from one day to the next. Suddenly, however, doors opened for avant-garde freaks. Artists who had previously existed in obscurity were recognized. Nobody cared anymore that you were from Berlin and made music. Everyone was suddenly singing in English, including us. I couldn't imagine that our music would work with German lyrics. It later turned out that this was a total mistake. We all had no desire for a new Neue Deutsche Welle, so we went for English. At the time, "Musikexpress" featured a big argument between Begemann and Philipp Boa about whether you should sing in German or English. That was a nonsense debate, because of course both are possible. But it did take a certain incubation period to finally sing in German again.

But the advantage of singing in the dark is that it's easier to experiment and try things out ...
 We could do whatever we wanted. It didn't matter at all, nobody was looking anyway. Then everything happened very quickly. We had a record deal with Polydor. There was no format radio back then and you could be on the radio without hits. "Dudelfunk" didn't exist yet. The people who liked this kind of music were gathered in a grassroots way. If you were noticed as a band in the entire German-speaking world, that was very special. It took a long time and several jumps and we were also very lucky.

The film is also a nice documentary about the transformation of Berlin over the last 40 years. Especially people who don't come from or live there get a nice impression of how much history has changed with you.
I had tears in my eyes at times when I saw the old pictures. You relive things that seemed to have been forgotten. Berlin has changed a lot, for better or for worse. Nobody would wish for the Wall back, there was so much depression and cruelty in West Berlin too, but on the other hand there was also this furious urge for art and expression. My "Lehmann" novels all try to explain how people were able to exist in this strange exceptional situation. There were often bands in Germany that were clearly connoted with their homeland. But not us. We were never the classic Berlin band. Element Of Crime is very much interwoven with Berlin's history and we certainly had an influence on the city's music - perhaps unconsciously - but it's hard to imagine how everything developed back then. A whole half of the city was unknown. It's like living in Vienna-Mariahilf and having no chance of getting to Vienna-Neubau because a wall and barbed wire prevent it.

Light as the main source of effects: Element Of Crime performing at the Admiralspalast in Berlin.

(Bild: Noel Richter)

Did the opening up of Berlin also change your music?
The fall of the Wall is very much romanticized, but that doesn't apply to everyone. Imagine you lost a family member that day or were diagnosed with cancer? Would you then experience the fall of the Wall as grandiose as it is portrayed? It is often forgotten that despite all the changes, normal life simply went on. All people have suffered or experienced individual fates. The same applies to songwriting, which is also always very individual. It's impossible to sing about cities without sometimes falling into total clichés. But you can set stories in cities and create an atmosphere that way.

If you have experienced first-hand how your homeland was divided, do you understand various election results or current political trends even less?
Human stupidity is invincible. I also find what's happening at the moment unbelievable, but it's also made far too easy for everyone. A lot of things happen through total thoughtlessness. It's like playing with nitroglycerine. Later you wonder why your hands are torn off, but before that you can't escape the attraction. But well, that's a topic in itself. As artists, we don't make the world a better place. That's a political task. We are responsible for making people happier or reconciling them with their lives for a certain period of time. It has to be said that this is a task that should not be underestimated.

At best, this artistic intervention in other areas of life also has positive effects on people beyond that.
Just like politics, we artists also reflect social conditions, only for different reasons and with different means. It is not good for either politics or art to confuse the two worlds. Just as I am in favor of the strict separation of state and religion, I am also in favor of the separation of politics and culture.

Let's get back to the band. You're not a fan of predicting a long-lasting future for Element Of Crime. Do you live by the premise that every album could be the last?
Yes, because we don't have five albums up our sleeves either. I basically go from song to song. As long as you think that there are new songs lurking behind all the songs you've already written, you keep going. It's particularly important for the band that you don't become a playback station for your past hits, but that new material is always being added. It's important to constantly deal with it.

At the movies in Vienna
"Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin", the documentary by Charly Hübner about Element Of Crime, can be seen several times over the next few days at Vienna's Filmcasino and also at Filmhaus Spittelberg.