Helga Reidemeister takes a perspective on Berlin that is rare for a West German filmmaker: she considers life on each side of the Wall in DrehOrt Berlin, treating Berlin as a complete city. Her central motif is not the Wall but the S-Bahn that roves between the two sectors, connecting them today as it always has. "Reidemeister is primarily interested in developing a forgotten and neglected topography of the city as it once was and still is to be found today by those who take the trouble to travel and to compare lifestyles in the 'two cities of the same metropolis'" (German Film 1987). Reidemeister interviews residents of West and East Berlin-among them the filmmaker's mother, laborers on both sides of the Wall, and a songwriter from East Berlin's bohemian quarter-but she describes the film as "my subjective look at people in East and West Berlin. My observations are marked by my personal experience of the violent clash between the different social conditions and political views of the people I have met."