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Latest update: 09/11/2009
- Berlin Wall - Germany - Internet
The Web celebrates the fall of the Berlin wall 20th anniversary
THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL
Deutsche Welle has recreated a three-D version of the barrier which separated the two Germanies. Barbed wire, alarm system and watch towers, a realistic animation allowing young people to grasp the horror which surrounded this frightening separation device.
An ex-prisoner of the Stasi, the East German political police, will relive his ordeal for one week. Filmed 24 hours a day and broadcast online, the aim is to raise awareness amongst net users as to what opponents experienced during the communist dictatorship.
In France, the National Archives Institute has launched a video competition. It will make videos about Berlin’s history available to the public and invites net users to add their own images to create a montage on the wall which sliced the city in half.
This short-lived site allows net users to virtually destroy the wall, brick by brick by sending a fee-based text message. Proceeds will be donated to the organisation ‘Reporters without borders’.
Finally on Twitter, net users can share their feelings about the fall of the Berlin wall. Mini-messages compiled on this site which, has surprisingly been stormed by Chinese net users, who denounce the electronic wall built by Beijing to censor the Web.
WALLS AROUND THE WORLD
While the world has its eyes riveted on Berlin on the occasion of this anniversary, many net users have decided to discuss the other walls that exist around the world and to denounce their construction.
Amongst these, the wall built by the US along the border with Mexico to combat immigration. This female American student has posted this evocative video online, comparing the US-Mexico border to a new Berlin wall. On the two sides of the border, she meets with Mexicans, ready to risk their lives to live the American dream, and US border guards.
The creator of this photo montage makes the same parallel. Here he denounces the attitude of the US government, swift to divide the north and south of the continent, while it had been the first to rise up against the construction of the Berlin wall.
This video draws attention to the separation wall built by the Israelis officially to prevent Palestinians entering Israel. These images show the slow progression of this new physical barrier, also compared to the cold war symbol.
Finally on this blog, a net user lists the other world’s other walls. Apart from those built by the US and Israel, he denounces in particular the wall erected by Spain to prevent Moroccan and West African immigrants entering Europe via the Melilla enclave.
CHRONICLE OF THE WALL
This impressive multimedia source on the Berlin wall entitled "chronicle of the wall", is a collection of videos, reports from the era, created in the east and west and a detailed chronology. We also find testimonies by famous people such as George Bush Senior, who spoke just after the collapse of the wall. A wall he describes as an obscene symbol.
MAUER MOB
A flash-mob to recreate the Berlin wall with… Berlin residents. This is the project of an artist who used the net to organise a flash mob to form a human chain measuring 47 km, at the exact place where the wall once stood. At 20:27, that is exactly 20 years after the fall, thousands of people will stand silently in line to commemorate this historic moment.
VIDEO OF THE DAY
A young graphic art student wished to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Germany in an original way. He created this video in which he plays the famous Tetris game with blocks from East Berlin buildings. A rather strange architectural tribute to the former-GDR.
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