Bread & Butter's Eisenstein Homage
Streetwear and urban trade show Bread Butter is returning to its hometown—Berlin—in July after four years in Barcelona. And to celebrate, the trade show appears to be channeling iconic Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein with a film innocuously titled “Coming Home.”
Streaming on the trade show’s Web site (www.breadandbutter.com), the film features wintery street scenes from Berlin, including shots of snowy streetscapes, elevated trains, street performers, skateboarders, tattoo artists and lunch-time diners.
When a baby carriage rolls across a crowd scene, you know you’ve entered Eisenstein territory. The scene is not quite as harrowing as the runaway baby carriage rolling down the Odessa Steps in the filmmaker’s famous 1925 film “Battleship Potemkin.” (In our office, the carriage drew howls of recognition from those of us who had taken “Film 101” in college.)
The film gets more bizarre (and strangely compelling) from there. A masked tagger stencils the word “Berlin” on the back of an unwitting pedestrian. The tattoo artist, in mid-tattoo, is distracted by a crowing crowd outside and slips, drawing blood—and anger—from his client. A wine glass falls and shatters on the floor of the café. In the end, a crowd of hipsters gathers at the entrance to Airport Berlin Tempelhof—the convention center where the July 1–3 show will be held—chanting “Berlin! Berlin! Bread and Butter, Berlin!”
Here at the office, we imagined how this scene would translate for the apparel trade shows in Las Vegas. Would crowds of department-store buyers in navy business suits and sensible walking shoes storm the Las Vegas Convention Center demanding to know what time Starbucks opens?
