East Berlin icon Nina Hagen sings the theme song of flat-sharing comedy from the German capital

Berlin-based web series Das Apartment (The Apartment) is now available to watch on Vimeo On Demand.

The short form web series from writer/director Reinaldo P. Almeida and producer Urs Kind centres around the daily escapades of three international thirty-something flatmates – one from Finland, one Canadian and one Frenchman – as they navigate life in the German capital city. With each episode a new guest, sub-letter, neighbour or friend arrives to challenge the harmony within Das Apartment, as the three main occupants face the daily absurdities of sharing a home, chores and personal space.

Berlin, a character of the series itself, is obviously close to the heart of Tracks & Fields, so we were thrilled about our work on this series, supervising the theme song played during each episode’s opening titles. The 1974 song “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen”(You Forgot the Colour Film) by the band Automobil features a pre-punk Nina Hagen on vocals; the popular song’s lyrics depict a young girl scolding her boyfriend for forgetting to bring colour film for their camera while on vacation, but they have a double meaning, and are considered to be a criticism of the grey sterility of East German communism.

The song led Hagen to become one of the country’s best-known young stars, but within two years she had left the East Germany with her mother, following the expulsion of her stepfather, anti-establishment singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann. While Hagen went on to become an anti-establishment punk and new wave figure in her own right, the song remains so popular that German newspaper Die Zeit stated in 2003 that 40 percent of East Germans could still sing the song’s lyrics by heart!

Watch the season 1 & 2 trailers for Das Apartment below, and the full episodes on Vimeo.