Reality is comingPosted by Bynum Barlow on February 2nd, 2021 Harald, a well-groomed glasses wearer in his late twenties or early thirties, is a trailer dweller who is distributing his leaflets on a summer day in Berlin. In them he warns of gigantic ray cannons with which humanity is being shot - just like himself, as he thinks. Harald has a lot of trouble to convince the passers-by. The camera of the documentary film “Reality is Coming” knows why: the charms of the big city are distracting. The lens rests on an attractive blonde in a short skirt. Does Watch Series see her or the man of about the same age with whom he is debating? Is that why they talk so excitedly? By leaving this open, Niels Bolbrinker's work at the camera and editing table is far more meaningful than as an author and director who proclaims Harald and others to be the prophets of complete surveillance and manipulation. Rays penetrate him, trying to direct his body. Maybe there is even a microchip in his head. The actual or imagined sufferings of Harald Brems awaken memories for filmmaker Bolbrinker. In the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called 'Senderermann' wandered around in West Berlin. He used banners and graffiti to draw attention to secret “transmitters” whose radio waves were not only used for eavesdropping, but also allegedly purposefully killed people. In addition to Harald Brems, Bolbrinker also listens to Frau Bade, the Volga German Waldemar Lotz and the East German engineer Helmut Michael, who report similar things. What to think of it and what it means for all of our lives, Bolbrinker tries to find out with a view to the latest developments in security technology and the fight against terrorism. The comment, spoken by Patryciy Ziolkowska, leaves no doubt about the essayistic approach. On the path of association, Bolbrinker gets from stick to stick, reaches from emails from Harald Brems and the so-called “Mind Control Victims” to NATO security advisors with Vietnam War experience, and comes across pioneers of microwave production who are suddenly trying out counterinsurgency technology. The subjective tint is wanted as well as inevitable. Those who do such cinematic detective work have to rely on their intuition, both when following up important clues and when dealing with difficult biographies that the interviewed people undoubtedly have.
"Reality is coming" teaches you to be scared and brooding. The possibilities of audiovisual surveillance now seem limitless. Spider-shaped or as rolling dumbbells, robots slip under tables and through cellar windows, eavesdrop and film. Far more frightening are studies on the function and potential influenceability of the brain. The cell phone, on the other hand, appears almost harmless as a "tracking bug", as Constanze Kurz called it. The IT expert and blogger from the Chaos Computer Club is treated by Bolbrinker like a key witness on the path to becoming a surveillance state. Although she speaks less of orchestrated action in the sense of a conspiracy than of isolated initiatives that develop their own momentum and carry a deceptive promise of "absolute security" before them.
Filmmaker Bolbrinker especially wants to hear apocalyptic tones. Above all, these provide him with the “Mind Control Victims”. At the latest when American attempts to electronically control the behavior of animals come up, their statements appear to be true, they seem like foreshadowing threats to human freedom. The assessment of psychiatrists that it could simply be paranoia then does not count, the popularization of ideas of totalitarian control through television and cinema - see "The X Files" or the "Dr. Mabuse “- film series - is faded out. Because that is not what Bolbrinker is about in his “Manifesto”.
Bottom line: warnings about totalitarian control are important, but not all testimony about it is credible. In the latter respect, “Reality Comes” overstimulates its subjectivist approach.
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