This footage is a mystery within a mystery. The last time I saw my old friend Barbara Hammer, a few days before she died, she returned this reel of Super-8 to me. For some reason, I assumed that it was footage we both shot during one of the times we were both in Berlin for the Berlin Film Festival. Because of those incorrect assumptions, I never asked Barbara the right questions that would have cleared up the mystery. It definitely was not shot during the Berlinale because it’s clearly shot during warm weather and the Berlinale takes place in February. The film seems to have been shot in East Berlin before the Wall came down. For instance, there’s a sign for the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend, the youth organization of the Communist Party). I only made a few trips to Berlin before the Wall came down. Also, I largely stopped shooting Super-8 in 1985. That would seem to point to my first trip to Berlin in July 1984, but I don’t remember bringing a camera on that trip. It could also have been a subsequent trip in 1986. It’s less likely that I shot the footage during either of my trips in Summer 1988 or October 1989. I don’t remember how Barbara came to have the film. My deduction is that I gave the footage to her so that she could use it in a film about Berlin or Germany that was never made. It’s called “Jim Hubbard’s Berlin” because that’s what Barbara wrote on the reel.