About the film

«196 BPM is Romuald Karmakar's documentary of the 2002 Berlin Love Parade, from the perspective of three sites on the sidelines of this techno jamboree. Using one uninterrupted shot apiece and without dialogue or commentary, he uses the original sounds of the sites, consisting mainly of music and a few scraps of overheard conversations. Unlike the usual documentaries about the Love Parade, which focus on the number of participants and the chaos and litter they leave behind, drug abuse, noise pollution, etc., Karmakar's film collects impressions of the various musical styles that fall under the loosely-defined term «Techno.» The music, the dancers, the locations and a DJ, take the foreground here.

The first Love Parade took place in 1989 with just 150 participants. Since then, the event, described officially as a «House Music Demonstration for Tolerance, Respect and Understanding among Nations,» has drawn more and more people. It was estimated that in 2002, well over half a million participants 'demonstrated." The event's organizers consider it to be an open forum for the international electronic music scene. Techno, the umbrella term encompassing various genres of electronic music, is first and foremost dance music. The first part of the film («Intro»: 3 min.) shows the area in front of the entrance to the Linientreu nightclub. Loudspeakers pump music out of the club's bowels onto the street outside. A young man dances like a rubber ball, passers-by dance along.

The second part («Gabba», 7 min.) takes the viewer to Breitscheidplatz, where a DJ's mixing desk has been set up in a requisitioned kebab stand. Outside, the revellers are dancing wildly under the pressure of l96 bpm.

The third part («Hell at work»: 50 min.) is another single-setting shot, though this time interrupted once by a 360-degree pan, focussing on techno and house DJ Hell doing what he does best. It's Gigolo Night in the former WMF, a legendary Berlin nightclub, and most of the dancers have been partying for days. Bathed in a red glow and flashing strobe tights, the Munich-based DJ (christened Helmut Josef Geier in 1962) plays cover versions of Depeche Mode's 'Behind the Wheel' and Soft Cell's Tainted Love; tracks he listened to in their original version in the 1980s, but which most of his current audience only knows in their new, remixed forms.»

[Tanja Horstmann, Catalogue Berlin Film Festival 2003 (Forum)]