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02:11
by MM
Berlin is buzzing these days. The 55th edition of the Berlinale festival
celebrated the opening night yesterday. We were there, and we will be there
until Tuesday the 15th of February. To keep you all informed, we decided to
write a daily update of our stay every day. First of all we would like to
introduce ourselves. Our names are Fleur Winters and Marike Muselaers, and
we will report the Berlinale to you.
The three main sections of the festival are the Competition, the Panorama
and the Forum. Panorama traditionally has a broad variety of world cinema,
this year including documentaries, musicals, films about sex and gender, and
of course features. The International Forum of New Cinema tries to challenge
the mainstream with experimental works and new concepts. 39 documentaries
and feature films participate in the Forum this year. We made a selection of
feature films to see from the Panorama and the Forum. Fleur will be writing
an article about the Panorama, so she will keep you informed about all the
Panorama films she sees during these days. I, Marike, will give an overview
of the Forum and its feature films. Furthermore we try to see as many films
in competition possible, so you can expect some reviews about the
competition as well.
In the Forum section I already saw two films, first of all “Crash Test
Dummies”, a comedy about four characters in Vienna whose lives come together
in a strange but funny way. The second film I saw, made in South Korea, is
called “Shin Sung-il is lost”. It contains a very interesting story, and
deals with brave metaphors to criticize religion and the consumption
industry. I will write more about these films in my article about the Forum.
But Berlin is more than just the film selection. The European Film Market,
held at the same time at the Berlinale, is getting more and more important
for the international film industry. The American Film Market’s decision to
move to November has left Berlin as the only major market in the beginning
of the year. This decision made EFM an attractive proposition for
international buyers. Sales agents go where their buyers are, so they all
went to Berlin. But selling films to distributors will not be the only goal
of EFM. A new co-production platform is organized this year, and in my
article about the business side of Berlin I will tell you all about the EFM
and its market facilities.
Another event organized during the Berlinale is the Talent Campus. This
campus is welcoming 530 young filmmakers from 90 countries, and focuses on
production design. Discussions and presentations about this subject will be
held by experts. Fleur will join some of these discussions, and she will
report everything she finds out about the Talent Campus.
Berlin is still buzzing and we are going to participate in this great
atmosphere now. Tomorrow you can all read our second daily news, written by
Fleur. To be continued….
02:12
by FW
Everybody is set, they know their way
around and the cinemas are beginning to get more and more crowded.
Marieke already wrote that I will mainly cover the Panorama Selection and I
saw some interesting films.
The Panorama Selection is one that mingles public and professionals as it is
based between the Forum and the Official Competition. The interest for this
program is still growing and it is a good representative for the new
art-house scene. There is a “Panorama Audience Award”, where the audience
decides and the “Queer Teddy Award” has developed into a big public
attraction and is worldwide the only event of its kind.
The Panoroma Selection is formed for the 20th time and it is showing 34
features, 18 documentaries and 26 short films in the Main Programme,
Panorama Dokumente, Panorama Special and Panorama Short Film.
The selection is getting bigger and bigger and in the selection there have
been films from many up-and-coming directors such as Pedro Almodovar, Ang
Lee, Gus Van Sant, Monika Treut, Oskar Roehler and many others. This
selection really served and serves as a springboard in their international
careers.
So who is jumping? I found the selection a bit different from what I
expected when I went to see the first feature film on Thursday evening
called REDENTOR, from Claudio Torres, a Brazilian film. A film that could
have easily been made in Hollywood with a big budget and slick look and when
halfway through the film the main character was struck by lightening and
able to give life back to a dead man, I had no idea where the film was going.
In the end everything falls in place and honestly it isn’t that bad. The
director plays with absurd situations and gives the characters supernatural
powers, but the metaphor to the absurd situation in Brazil concerning the
Real Estate world, the corruption and the poverty was actually quite right.
The cinematographic images where overdone, but just as overdone as the
religion is in Brazil, while there is so little hope and the camera was
often as lost as the main character. Is he God or just human?
The level of the selection went straight up, the next morning, when I saw
VA, VIS ET DEVIENS (Live and Become), by director Radu Mihaileannu, a French/Israeli
an co-production. A young boy is put on a truck from a refugee camp in Sudan
without his mother. ‘Live and Become’ are the last words his mother says to
him before he is driven away. Finally he reaches Israel and a family adopts
him, but it is hard to forget his past and his mother who is still behind.
The struggle for him begins, to become someone who is not yet, he doesn’t
even share the same religion, although he is to act like he is Jewish. There
are archived materials of the Ethiopians in Israel who pretend to be Jewish
and the whole situation gets more and more out of hand. The film is 153
minutes, but not too long. The actuality, the cultures mixing and religion,
where good combining elements for this film. The structure was classic and
there were not many surprises on the cinematographic area.
The selection has progressed and my head is filled with images, trying to
see around 4 to 5 films a day. The film WAITING FOR THE CLOUDS, by Uesim
Ustaoglu was a strong film and also UN ANO SIN AMOR, by Anah Berneri was
interesting.
For more updates see our next review and the final article will give a main
impression on the Panorama selection, which also includes the new film
BEYOND THE SEA directed and acted by Kevin Spacey, but also the film Tao Se
(Colour Blossoms) by Yonfan.
One of the themes that keep returning is the roots, where do we come from
and where are we going, which is quite logic in this society where
geographically fixed places are rare to find.
I have to run to my next film...
02:13
by MM
The Berlinale is a very well-organized festival,
but after three days I am still trying to find my way through the labyrinth
of locations… The locations near Potzdamer Platz are all quite clear and
centered, but then there are loads of other cinemas in other parts of Berlin.
Some locations give access to press, some don't, so it’s all quite confusing.
Most of the time I just stay near Potzdamer Platz, where all the official
press screenings of the Forum and the Competition are.
The Forum screenings are very interesting to follow. There is a great
diversity in all aspects of film, which is a positive thing because of the
great amount of different films you’re able to see, but sometimes this
diversity seems to be one of the Forum’s difficulties as well. With fiction
features, documentaries, tributes and retrospectives in one selection,
viewers might have some difficulties finding the main themes. The theme
“Parallel Worlds” should be the main focus of the Forum, but the meaning of
these words is quite vague. In my article about the Forum I will try to
analyze the meaning of these parallel worlds, and how the Forum films try to
deal with this theme. The amount of films selected for the Forum is another
problem. It has been reviewed and reduced since last year, but there still
exist a great challenge to find a red line. I will tell you more about this
problem in my article about the Forum films.
One film I would like to mention right now is the Forum film
Lu cao di, or
Mongolian Ping Pong. The film
takes place at the edge of Inner Mongolia where an ordinary white ping pong
ball is found by three little boys. They can’t identify the object, but it
inspires their imaginations. The whole film is about strange objects from
other societies in the Mongolian steppes. The strong visual work of the
films shows beautiful images of Mongolians trying to make a TV work with a
self-made antenna, or sipping coffee, “a kind of American tea”. It is an
amusing film, full of interesting ideas. Bavaria Films picked up
Lu cao di a few days before
the festival, so there was quite a buzz and everybody wanted to see it. The
first screening was crowded with press and industry.
Unfortunately I missed the screening of the only Italian participant in the
competition, La Provincia Meccanica,
directed by Stefano Mordini, a family drama about the pressure of social
norms. I will try to see it another time, but I’m afraid it will be
difficult to see it in Berlin. But it got distribution in the Netherlands,
so in the end I will be able to see it. The competition films I saw so far (for
example Asylum and Sophie Scholl -
Die letzten Tage) didn’t impress me at all. I hope I will see some
more interesting competition films later on, because my expectations of the
Berlinale competition were quite high. So for better competition film
reviews you have to wait a little longer, but I keep you all informed about
all the interesting films I see!
OFFICIAL SITE |
by Marike MUSELAERS
and Fleur Winters