Berlinale Ticket Burn

Months later, here's a topic that still irks: Berlinale ticket prices this year.  It's my ninth and I can´t say if I think there will be a tenth.  The value just isn't there -- as much as 13 euros for competition films which nearly always are picked up and distributed later anyway.  Maybe here I´m missing the point a bit, by not getting on the ¨I-Saw-It-At-The-Berlinale-Premiere¨ bandwagon. But I am perfectly willing to wait a few months to not stand in line for an hour or more to pay 13 euros to stand in line again to try to get a seat less than a quarter of a kilometer from the screen in a packed film Palast. 

Na gut, my strategy this year was to emphasize the Generation films with which I have had pretty good luck in the past and the Forum films screened at the Arsenal, as I explained in my previous post.  This worked out well because the Arsenal, which often sells out during the festival, screens Forum highlights the following week.  This meant I was able to get tickets for a Mongolian (!) version of Kafka´s The Castle, appropriately titled simply K.  The German subtitles were a bit too difficult and flashed by too fast for me to grasp it all.  This only augmented the Kafka-esque experience of it all, the and I was quite happy with myself for having chosen the film.

I took the Pirate, J. and A. to see Madare Ghalbe Atoom, a morality tale, which, given the negative press that Tehran´s rich kids have been getting over the last year, is particularly timely.  The Pirate was the only one who seems to have completely perceived the ending, which was nearly too quick for the human eye.  Spoilers here on A.'s das Blog.

Berlinale Kinotag, for which I had three tickets, two Panorama films and the Peter Greenaway competition film, yielded nothing of interest.  Indeed, the Greenaway film was pretty much as unwatchable (although admittedly stylistically beautiful) as most of his previous work -- what on earth was I thinking, scheduling this as my 3rd film of the last day of the festival??  Being packed into a Friedrichstadt Palast seat unsuitable for anyone over 170 cm tall didn´t help.

The stand-out film for me in the Generation category was Mina Walking from Afghanistan, about a young, lower-class girl whose only protection against a junkie father and a grandfather suffering from dementia was her own quick-wittedness. Min lilla syster deserves a mention for the beautiful detail of its close-up nature cinematography as a counterpoint to its difficult but compellingly-addressed topic of eating disorders. But in contrast, I found Prins, the Generation section premiere, yet another dull attempt at a U.S.-style gangster movie by a Northern European society that is clueless about real neighborhood-level violence.  Very bad choice on the part of the Generation jury.

Having spent only 70 euros for 13 films, this was my cheapest Berlinale ever. This year´s budget ticket-buying strategy brought the Berlinale´s value back to me, although it did limit my viewing to primarily documentaries and youth films.  But these are often areas where the Berlinale excels.  The Arsenal option also effectively extended the festival for me, over 14 instead of 10 days, which helps with movie-going fatigue.  And films like K, Koza and Mina Walking, to me, remain the reason why I keep going back to the Berlinale.  Where else does one have the opportunity to see such obscure film from across the world?

Berlinale 2015

Halfway through another Berlinale (my ninth!), I want to quickly note that really objectionable ticket prices have significantly reduced my ability to see the film that most interests me, meaning Eastern European film presented in the Panorama and Forum sections.  The Berlinale is now charging 10 euros for these tickets, aside from the final day for the public, which it has maintained at a reasonable 6 euros.  I have 3 films scheduled for then, but in the meantime I joined the Arsenal Kino, which is Berlin's cinematheque, and which offers a six month membership for 12 euros and a discount card of 6 films for 24 euros.

The Arsenal is a Forum venue, and the three films I´ve seen to this point from this division serve as rather interesting examples of the boundary between documentary and feature films that is just the sort of thing that the Forum does well.  I especially want to recommend Koza (Goat) from Slovakia.  This is my first Slovakian film, and just as with film from the Balkan region, I am impressed.  It´s not an easy film, somewhat in the vein of An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker from Bosnia that won the 2013 Silver Bear.  The acting is spare, the story minimalist, but the emotional undercurrents in the background are so strongly present, that they could almost represent a separate character in their own right.  I very much liked the scarcely seen but omnipresent female main character of the film.  The last chance to see this film is Friday the 13th at the CineStar.

The other two films were, for me, more like filmed philosophical examinations of culture than what moviegoers are used to seeing.   Spain´s Sueñan los Androides (Androids Dream), is a loose adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel, and in that sense is probably more accessible than Mexico´s La Maldad. But both would be much more meaningful to people already familiar with the current realities within their respective countries.  So for those of you Spaniards and Mexicans out there, I suggest these films are worth trying to track them down, though I can't imagine it will be that easy! 

Berlinale 2014

Coming soon, a more fleshed-out review of this year's Berlinale....  These few months have been a busy time for me, so I was not as active as usual, but I did quite like a few of the eight films for which I managed to get tickets:


Na kathese ke na kitas from Greece
Obietnica from just across the way in Szcezin, Poland
Difret from Ethiopia, which was my favorite.

In the end, I realized they are all, in different ways, about female rage against men, a topic the Berlinale does actually very well.

Run, Don't Walk to See Krugovi

The amazing Serbian filmmaking team of Srdan Golubovic, Melina Pota Koljevic and Srdjan Koljevic, which brought us Klopka (The Trap, which I reviewed here) is back with their 3rd film, Krugovi (Circles).   But I barely managed to see it, as yesterday I somehow lost 3 Berlinale tix; I'm still not sure where or how.  It's the first time it's happened in 7 years now.  Yesterday I'd just arrived at Zoo train station and reached for them in my special Berlinale coat pocket which was inexplicably unzipped and the three tickets I'd put there gone.  ARRRGGGGHHHH.  What to do, what to do?

I had the presence of mind, at least, to remember that this was a Serbian film, but I hadn't researched this particular offering.  Klopka is the film that first turned me into an avid follower of Serbian cinema, such that I now buy any Serbian film presented by the Berlinale, on the basis of its nationality alone.  So I swallowed hard and bought a second nine-euro ticket (prices have risen by one euro this year) from someone selling an extra one.

The Berlinale master of ceremonies first introduced the director, from whose mouth came that magic title, Klopka, and the memory from 6 years before of its premier in that very same theater, the Delphi Filmpalast.  Lo and behold, I found myself at the Berlinale premier of his third film (which has, by the way, recently also premiered at Sundance).  I'm still not happy about those lost tickets, of course (it's not the 25 euros or so, but more the several hours standing in line to get them that hurts the most). But I was pretty damn pleased that despite it all, I had managed to be sitting in that theater at that very moment.

Golubovic and company have presented only 3 films, each spaced six years apart, starting with Absolute Hundred in 2001. They are all taut and smart, with similar themes of men struggling to do the right thing under tremendously difficult odds.  But each film's situation is unique, with complex interwoven relationships between numerous characters that are masterfully acted.  This is exactly why I go to the Berlinale -- to see film from Eastern Europe that is unlikely to be commercially released.  Serbia in particular is special; there seems to be a cabal of talent that has found a way to work collaboratively, unhurriedly, for as many years as it takes to construct high-quality film from the bottom up.

I compare their work to the Croatian film I saw on Saturday, Obrana I Zastita (A Stranger), which I found muted and lifeless (which admittedly may have been the point).  My response to the Georgian film, Chemi Sanis Naketsi (A Fold in My Blanket), that opened the Panorama section was little better.  It has an interesting Picnic-at-Hanging-Rock vibe but I found it too obscure and introspective to speak to this film freak from an admittedly very different culture.  I can't argue with the young director's response to my question as to whether something can be too minimalist: he sees his work primarily as a work of art, and I am one to give artists tremendous leeway.

It's an interesting debate: what makes a brilliant cinema?   And if cinema is brilliant, will it definitionally appeal to a broad international audience?  We can examine such questions endlessly, but what I am looking for in a film is thoughtfulness coupled with a certain energy.  I find it in both feature films and documentaries.  It exposes the universality of the struggle of and for humanity in its infinitely varied forms.  Turtles Can Fly.  Breaking the Waves.  Sophie's Choice.  The Last Wave. Claire Denis' Chocolat.  Grizzly Man.  The Times of Harvey Milk.

It's not much of a contest, as this is definitely not one of the better Berlinale years. But I will predict that Krugovi is the best film of 2013, just as Klopka was in 2007.  My lost tickets be damned: now I can close my program only 5 days into the festival and go home happy.

Berlinale 2012 Wrap-Up

All in all, folks, this sadly wasn't a great Berlinale year. I felt fairly ambivalent about most of what I saw; two were really pretty bad, and only two were really good. So how nice is it to be able to say that my favorite film, Unter Männer: Schwul in der DDR, was the documentary to which The Director himself invited me, along with the Pirate?! Documentaries are tricky, aren't they, because they don't have the benefit that feature films do of providing (often strictly gratuitous) entertainment. But a good documentary will take us places we can never go on our own, giving us glimpses of people we can never be. And that is, after all, one of the main reasons I'm a film addict (see here).

The material for Unter Männer came from writer and co-director Ringo Rösener. But I'm guessing it was The Director's masterful editing that gives the film its energy. It must be quite a challenge to build various disconnected interviews into a well-paced and cohesive product. This film fully captured, for me, the wistfulness of lost opportunities. It'll be opening in Berlin on April 26th and not only do I highly recommend it, but I'm really looking forward to a second viewing.

Orchim Le-rega (Off White Lies) in Generation 14+, one of my favorite Berlinale sections, was a really tough look at a vulnerable young Israeli-American girl's coming of age. Even for such a well-worked-over theme, the plot felt fresh, the pacing energetic and the acting was really top-notch. It seems to be making the festival rounds but I'm guessing that, sadly, it won't be picked up and distributed internationally.

I also quite liked Sekret, from the same Polish director who impressed me last year (see here). This is the film that couples his revolutionary ideas on shooting with good solid subject matter -- the Art Spiegelmann portrayal of Polish complicity with, even furthering, of Nazi Anti-Semetism. It's subtle and spare, ambivalent and thought-provoking (just the way I like my film). The Director, however, went to see it on my recommendation and walked out.

The top film not to see is unfortunately Kuma, the Panorama opener. Despite its promising set-up, a bigamous marriage hidden within a large Turkish family in Vienna, the plot somehow fizzled into yet another flat, unidimensional portrayal of the issue of family honor. Sigh. E. and I had managed to score tickets for the opening and it was edifying to watch the audience struggle with the question of exactly how this film went wrong. To this I'd add the muddled and unedifying Hemel [note to self for future: avoid any subject of a full-page ad in the Berlinale program].

Weirdly, this was the first year I chose two films that went on to win awards; both politically important. First was Diaz: Don't Clean Up this Blood, which, in its punishingly unceasing portrayal of violence, was just really hard to watch. I also saw Tony Gatlif's Indignados which I'm guessing will prove to be too obscure for most film goers but that resonated with me given my four years off-and-on in Spain. I'll end with reviews from fellow Berlin blogger Denise, who, writing here, also reviewed Indignados and names Call Me Kuchu her best Berlinale documentary to-date.

In addition to what I've mentioned here, several Egyptian documentaries were continually sold out, plus I ran out of time for The Summit, a documentary addressing the 2000 Genoa protests. But no matter, DocumentaMadrid will be here in less than two months!

Berlinale 2012: Hot Tip

Talented Berlin director Markus Stein, of Balkan Traffic fame (my review is here) brings us Unter Männern: Schwul in der DDR (Among Men: Gay in East Germany). This film is already getting a fair bit of attention in Germany (for example, see this review).

Run, don't walk, to your local Berlinale ticket office (at the Postdamer Platz Arkaden, Kino International or Haus der Berlinerfestspiel), to buy a ticket (offered up to three days in advance of each screening). The options are Monday the 13th @ 5 PM, Tuesday the 14th @ 12 noon and Friday the 17th @ 5 PM.

I am absolutely thrilled to report that at this, my sixth Berlinale, I will be the invited guest of said director, in his Tuesday screening. This is roughly as thrilling to me as when noted New York Times best-selling author Christopher Ryan commented on my blog back in August!

Hysterical

It's always nice to be able to blog my two favorite topics in tandem (film and sex), so I'm happy to report I recently saw one of the top films of 2011: Hysteria. It's an account of the London doctor who, tiring of servicing so many Victorian matrons by hand (and I do mean hand), invented the first electrical vibrator. I saw the film at the Kino Central in Berlin, in a packed house of about three-quarters women. Of my five years on and off in Berlin, I can solemnly swear this is the very first time I've sat in the middle of German women literally screaming with laughter. I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed a movie-going experience as much!

Well, then, psychoanalysis in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a ball with women, didn't it? If they weren't being accused of frigidity, it would seem, they were being diagnosed with hysteria. Even now, in the 21st century, how often have you heard someone use the term "frigid" to describe a woman? Now how about "nymphomaniac"? For heaven's sake, ours is one of the few species where females are designed to desire as much or more sex than males. In stark contrast, let's review the image of the man snoring in a heap where he's fallen after finishing his business as meanwhile the woman fantasizes about crooking her finger to summon the next one...

Let me recount a second story as a counterpoint. A week or so ago I met up with a new prospect and went through the usual routine of dispensing with the preliminaries (tell me about yourself, where you're from, what you're doing in Berlin, etc.) in order to get down to the important topic at hand. I'm watching for a certain spark in a man's eyes, an indication that he "gets" that a smart-as-hell, experienced, no-nonsense woman can be sexy. My faithful readers (some of whom have experienced this first-hand) can certainly imagine that a woman like me doesn't exactly mince words on the first date. It's guaranteed that I will bring up my favorite topic if I like the man at all. This one seemed to be flying wingtip-to-wingtip with me and so I consented to continue the conversation over a second drink with him at a cool little French café in a Kreuzberg Keller. I asked him about that moment I'd observed in his eyes a short time before, the one I've come to think of as the Pornographic Images Moment, which my frankness almost invariably tends to invoke. From what I've previously deduced (see here), such images are a rather constant part of life for men [mental note to self: more detailed questioning about this is needed]. So I told him, "I could see at one point that you felt like reaching across the table, grabbing me and ripping my clothes off right there in the middle of the restaurant. What stopped you?" He smiled ruefully and said, "Training, constant training."

Later I was chatting with the man I think of as Chocolate Guy, responsible for by far the most creative Craigslist M4W personals action this previous year in Berlin. He'd describe it more as some sort of reverse Pavlovian conditioning: in his words, "the bell rings and everyone pretends it never happened." Finally, here's what a new acquaintance had to say: "Islam has something going for it with those burkas, you know, to cover up those curves."

It's depressing, isn't it? We can't blame our societal ills on another species that mercilessly whittles away at our natural habitat or shuts us up in metal cages in the interests of science. No, the concrete jungles which we inhabit, with their endless rules designed to beat us down into sedate, asexual, obedient little creatures, are entirely of our own making.

Well this wild animal, for one, doesn't take kindly to captivity. And so she's launching a new campaign, to find out what this pathetic species of ours is doing to escape from the zoo. How we post-modern humans are rediscovering our true natures. And where the unapologetically sexual are hanging out in Berlin. So, readers in the know, come on now, help me out, post a comment on how/what/where/when you get out of the zoo -- and remember, it's completely anonymous.

The Moviegoer (Reprise)

Here in Berlin I'm house-sitting for the Pirate during part of his extended visit back "home". In browsing his bookshelf in detail, I found Querelle, which set off an entire cascade of nostalgia. I remember seeing that film as I first went off on my own (to live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) at the tender age of 17. It was a hot-bed of resistance to the racist conservatism of the state that, election-after-election, returned the racist rabid anti-communist Jesse Holmes to the U.S. Senate. Chapel Hill was filled with punks, communists, queers and activists of all colors. Never much of a joiner, but rather an enthusiastic and energetic participant, I bounced eclectically between campaigns and crusades, whose breadth and diversity helped me define the kind-and-gentle anarchy that came to characterize my socio-political outlook. I spent as much of the rest of my time in the U.S. that I could in such enclaves: Ithaca, New York, West Los Angeles, Berkeley/Oakland, avoiding the vast American mid-section like a plague.

But let me get back to waxing nostalgic about film. Chapel Hill had an art film theater, called the Carolina Theater, that I haunted that first summer when I knew next to no one there. Coming from a shit town in northern Pennsylvania with a single-screen theater whose most memorable fare was the Bad News Bears, I was, quite simply, enchanted. The Carolina seems, sadly, to have closed in 2005; this report indicates it's been replaced by that bastion of mediocre homogeneity, The Gap store. It's been nearly 30 years now, and the movies I remember from then, according to IMDB, are scattered through the period of a year, such that I couldn't have seen them in just one summer. But memory is like that, it distills and intensifies, such that in my mind, in the summer of 1983, I saw Fassbinder's Querelle, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo and Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay in The Dresser.

Walking into The Carolina for an afternoon matinee anytime I damn well pleased was the purest expression of my new-found adult-hood, hundreds of miles away from my overbearing mother. It was freedom personified. To this day, leaving a theater and walking into the light of day with a foreign film still playing in my head, gives me a feeling nearly as delicious as that beautiful Carolina summer when I was so fresh and young and there was everything to discover.

Top Ten for '10

There is a definite silver lining to going through one of my periods of chastity. And that is film, Film, FILM. I noticed that up till now, four months into the year, I've already seen half as many films as last year. Swearing off "dating" gives me so much more luscious time to not only visit the alternate realities that film gives me, but it also saves me oh so much frustration!

I thought for most of the year that 2010 was really bad for film, but I'm seeing that it was just a year in which good films were slow to arrive to where I needed to see them. So it's time, finally, to do a top-10 list, while noting that many of the films in my 2011 list were actually released in 2010.

Here they are, representing 8 countries and 3 continents (none from Latinamerica this year). There's no particular order, except that Submarino is hands down my number one. Dane Thomas Vinterberg is truly a master of the dark side of the human psyche. There were two more (!) from Denmark, a country that produces relatively little film of tremendously high quality. And there are three very tough, very dynamic films from Africa, including the first feature-length film from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Submarino
Winter's Bone
Hævnen (In a Better World)
Ehky ya Scheherazade (Tell Me a Story)
State of Violence
Viva Riva!
Banksy: Exit Through the Gift Shop
We Were Here
Des Hommes et Dieux (Of Gods and Men)

Best Berlinale So Far

It was a very good Berlinale year; about mid-way through, I realized I was virtually incapable of picking a bad film, so I rode the wave all the way to the end. Five-years' experience helps a great deal with translating into reality the universally glowing Berlinale film synopses (written, after all, by the very selection committees that choose the films). For example, I know that "contemplative" or "reflective" means the subtitles will put you to sleep within half an hour as you sit in a packed theater in your long underwear and thick boots (requisite for Berlin in February). "Experimental" is another tricky one; good-experimental means vanguard, edgy, just how I like film to be. But bad-experimental means an assault on the audience, of which I always give certain of Peter Greenaway's over-the-top oeuvre as my primary example.

I could have reached my goal of seeing 20 films this year, as I had a significant gap on the last Saturday afternoon. But there was nothing that inspired me, and I was looking at three films back-to-back the following day (Kinotag). So I didn't force it. Out of the 19 total I saw, there was only one film for which my screening techniques broke down; Traumfabrik Kabul just didn't live up to its subject matter -- a Kabul policewoman who made and starred in feminist action movies. Great premise but my head was nodding by the first half-hour in the stuffy back row of a packed Delphi Filmpalast.

So, what was the best of so many good films? Made in Poland got a lot of hype but I found the director's Q&A to be more interesting than the film, which he had pared from a color feature film of over two hours to a spare 90-minute black-and-white where the most interesting part was the numerous chapter titles, a la von Trier. He used a sort of talk-radio approach to the sound as the titles flashed briefly on the screen, with rabid (anti-gay, anti-immigrant, neo-Nazi, etc.) sound-bites reminiscent the worst of American talk radio. The director's comments on YouTube, Canon 5D or 7C cameras and how necessary it is to keep up with what the young people are doing with them were fascinating. Think of how the work of the Dogme movement (which of course has been one of the most important influences on post-modern film) would have looked if shot today...

I hesitate to let the secret out of the bag but the Generation 14+ section often has interesting selections, plus the tickets are also much cheaper than the usual films. If there is any sex involved, however (and few films these days leave out sex), one has to endure sniggering teenagers vibrating with sexual frustration. So go prepared to filter out the background noise. Denmark impressed me this year (but then, Danish film nearly always does), with two very good entries in Gen 14+. Skyskraber was one of the best films I saw in the entire festival -- a simply charming coming-of-age story of two misfits trapped in a rural Danish town in thrall to its sadistic mayor. In contrast, Frit Fald provided a poignant treatment of the city girl obliged to grow up far too quickly.

We Were Here was the best documentary; the only thing I didn't like about it was its uninspired title. I went into it with purposefully lowered expectations because I know one of the main participants. It's not usual that a documentary focus this well on such a complex and dynamic subject. But I was captivated by the in-depth treatment of the five individuals which the filmmaker chose to construct his careful history of this difficult time. It won a 3rd prize from the Panorama audience and I have to say on a personal note: Daniel, dahling, you are a star.

Berlinale V - Midpoint Debriefing

Yes, folks, it's my fifth straight year, which makes me a real Berlinale pro. I'm at the middle-point already, have seen 9 films and think I'll finally meet my goal of a total of 20. The fact that this year practically everything is subtitled in English is helping somewhat, as my German still isn't good enough to follow German subtitles, which used to represent half of the screenings. However, this change also means the films are accessible to many more festival goers and the ticket lines reflect this; they are absolutely fierce this year.

2011 so far has been a great Berlinale year. The Devil's Double is a film that is both technically fascinating and wonderfully gripping. Viva Riva is the first Congolese feature film ever and has great energy. For those who love to look at beautiful French women, the captivating Ludivine Sagnier and Manie Malone, respectively, star in these two films, although both are sadly far too made-up. I'm predicting the first will hit commercial theaters big and the second might just make it as well, but we'll have to see.

For something a bit less flashy, I was very impressed with the Albanian film Amnistia, which is tightly, subtly plotted and carries the audience along to a powerful and surprising conclusion. Tomboy offered an interesting treatment of gender identity; director Céline Sciamma got some amazing performances out of child actors 10 years or younger. Nearly everything I've seen has been good and there are still 5 days left. Delicious!

Bunnies Berlin

I'll post some notes here about this year's DocumentaMadrid (the biggest documentary film festival in Europe) because it relates to both Berlin and my wrap-up post on this year's Berlinale (here). First, the cutest and cleverest film at DocumentaMadrid was without a doubt Mauerhase, a history of cold-war Berlin from the perspective of the bunnies that inhabited the Mauer no-man's-land. You see a lot of bunnies in this film, doing lots of bunny- type things while thinking all sorts of not-at-all bunny-like thoughts -- man, those Berlin bunnies are really DEEP. Here's a clip of Manfred Butzmann's original Mauer art which appears in the film. Ganz toll!

Then there was Budrus, the film that Rosa saw at the Berlinale and I missed, although I tried several times to get a ticket. The word was out from the first screening; then it won the Panorama Silver Audience Award. I was so pleased to get a second chance in Madrid and I liked the film very much. Its coherent and personalized portrayal of the first case of Palestinians using strategic non-violence to protest the separation wall was a wonderful counterpoint to what has seemed like so much video masturbation on the documentary scene this year. El Gaucho from Argentina was the only other Documenta offering that I saw that merits mention -- a quiet film that gradually but very effectively opened up the solitary life of a top rodeo performer in Patagonia.

Other than that I saw quite a lot of aimless documentaries, even more than in the Berlinale, and my conclusion from the far side of Europe is even stronger that 2010 is a bad year for film. I will say this: hey documentary filmmakers, please try to structure your work around some sort of narrative, a fable, a tale, something that will teach us something, at the minimum. The goal here is to open up new worlds to viewers. There's more than enough intellectual masturbation out there -- just look at blogs (ahem). And making a film is a HELL of a lot more work than the 15 minutes it takes to throw something up on a blog.

At any rate, check out Mauerhase; the Pirate says, for those who understand German, no need to pirate: it's on YouTube.

Berlinale Redux

Sunday evening, the last day of the Berlinale, Rosa, The Director, The Pirate and I debriefed at the home of Berlin's best green curry. The Director and I had already decided this year's Berlinale was hands-down the worst for years (it's my fourth). The others couldn't weigh in as I've never seen the Pirate set foot in a movie theater and this was Rosa's first. I didn't see anything that would come even close to being that little gem that every film addict hopes for, at best, once a year. I saw, sadly, quite a lot of aimless, self-involved documentaries and pointless, uninteresting feature films; this in a year when I strategically avoided the competition section, focusing on the Forum, Panorama and Generation14Plus. I saw what could possibly qualify as the worst mockumentary of my film-going career (Putty Hill): need I say more than “karaoke at a white-trash funeral”? Was this a group of alt film-makers sitting around, sniggering, thinking to themselves, what is the WORST film we could possibly make? Good God, Berlinale Forum reviewers, what were you thinking??

Then there was I Shot My Love, hmmmm, the cutesy title should have warned me off. The most interesting thing about the whole film was the admission by the film-maker that he met his lover at Berghain the night after screening his first Berlinale film four years ago. But the film suffered from a terrible lack of direction and an unsteady hand, both literally and figuratively [directors, jolting hand-held cam is so NINETIES]. We're heading toward the teens of a new century... and wobbly home movies frankly just give us headaches. Next on my list of memorably bad film was Asheen (Still Alive in Gaza), which defined aimless. Yes, it was timely that the film-makers got in right after Israel bombed Gaza to smithereens this last time (a year ago), but timeliness is simply not sufficient to make a film worth seeing, as this meandering film was definitely not.

What else happened this year? With four years of experience under my belt, I'm starting to see the phenomenon of Berlinale favorites (as in directors), though this year without paying enough attention, I ended up in three.; I now know to control for this. Ines de Oliveira presented La Extranjera (an Euripedean tragedy) two years ago, which I found nearly perfectly unwatchable, but I liked some things about her current effort, El Recuento de los Danos (an Oedipal tragedy). From Tayfun Pirselimoglu's film Riza a few years ago showing the dark side of Istanbul, I knew to watch out for the genre, but I confused another Turkish film with Pus (Haze), ending up in this, Pirselimoglu's latest, and sure enough, it was a seen-one, seen-them-all situation. Having gotten this straightened out, I bought tix to Kosmos, from Hayat Var's director Reha Erdem, and although I liked the fantastical style of this film, it didn't have the substance of his previous film and I left feeling it was simply not as masterful.

Well, you might ask, Katchita, was there anything at all that you liked? I'd have to say my favorite was Winter's Bone, an American film that I saw primarily because I couldn't get tickets to anything else that day. I found the complex character portrayals combined with what seemed to me a painstaking ethnograpic examination of a very closed society (an Ozark Mountain clan) to be fresh and new. I also quite liked Bibliotheque Pascal, another fantastical film with exquisite imagery. Neither was a perfect gem, although Winter's Bone came quite close. Following my usual practice of managing to see nothing that would win an award, the only time Rosa and I split off from each other, she seeing Budrus and me Plein Sud (a feature film that was masturbatory crap if I ever saw it), and me never managing to get a Budrus ticket after she recommended it, I found out it won the Panorama 2nd place. I'll conclude with Black Bus, which I quite liked for its perspectives on women attempting to leave orthodox Jewish communities. As usual, I am displeased when the most interesting part of a film is the Q&A that follows. In this case the clear statement that since ultra-orthodox families are reproducing at a hugely accelerated rate, in the space of one generation or less, they will be the majority in Israel, is something that simply cannot be left out. So I'd suggest that this point should be emphasized, which could even be done with a simple written statement as the film ends, before the credits roll.

Oh well, there's always next year...

Berlinale Grey

Just a quick post to report that The Director and I have decided: this is simply not an inspired year for the Berlinale. I say that 2009 was such a fabulous year in film that it's simply too much to hope for a repeat.
He doesn't agree that this is impossible, which I suppose makes him more of an optimist (who on earth would have thought)! The only film I can actually say that I thought was good so far, a full week into the Berlinale, is Bibliotheque Pascal. There are others, which I'll quickly write up later, that had some issues but were still worth seeing but I am simply not inspired. Berlin is grey, as it must be at this time of year, and the Berlinale even more so. But even so, it's good to be home.

2009 in Film

Before we leave the first month of the new year, I thought I'd get my act together and post something on film last year. This is my first formal top-ten list, inspired by the excellence of 2009 with regard to film. You'll have to allow me a bit of artistic license as some of the films were released at the end of 2008 but I didn't see them until their arrival in Spain in the spring or summer. Here they are, in no particular order:

Human Zoo (Rasmussen)
Anti-Christ (von Trier)
Séraphine (Provost)
Moon (Jones)
Hashmatsa/Defamation (Shamir)
Solo Quiero Caminar (Díaz)
Amreeka (Dabis)
The Messenger (Moverman)
Okuribito/Departures (Takita)
District 9 (Blomkamp)
Guest of Cindy Sherman (Donahue/Hasegawa-Overacker)

Finally, he's my friend, it's true (by American if not by German standards), but I just have to slip in The Director's first feature-length film, Übermorgen nirgendwo (Balkan Traffic), which was released at the end of 2008 while I was in Berlin. At that time I couldn't see it in the theater as my German wasn't up to the task. But I watched it twice on DVD, after which I felt competent to brave a theater showing in Brandenburg, the best part of which was The Director's Q and A. Probably the movie poster tells it the best, but I just have to say that this movie has what has to be in my top-five list of most absurdist scenes, depicting two morticians (one Serbian, one Croatian) robbing a grave in the pitch dark somewhere deep in eastern Europe, while arguing in German about the relative merits of nihilism. Ganz toll!

Berlinale IV

There are only four weeks to go to the Berlinale, my plane ticket's been long booked and this time I'm thrilled that Rosa will be joining me. I couldn't resist an advance peek at the festival website, although I know the program is never available more than 10 or so days before the start. What should I find to my great surprise but a video clip of Rie Rasmussen, apparently now the Berlinale's darling. Did I call it or what? I can't say how long that video will be on the homepage, so check it out ASAP. It would seem that she has a film in post-production dated 2010; those in the know will be looking for her to screen it at this year's Berlinale.

It's the festival's 60th year and I'm proud to say it's my fourth. I'm entering it with the goal of scoring tickets to 20 films this year. After all, with Rosa we'll be TWO people working full-time to scan that program, research those directors, endlessly queue and purchase tix. Berlin, I'll be back soon. I know you're cold and snowy; here's hoping you save some real snow for me! Someone's waiting for me with the Ofenheizung turned on high.

I Resolve

Just back from three weeks in the U.S., I'm enjoying a delicious case of jet-lag, chomping on the last pretzel I picked up during my layover in Deutschland, neither doing what I should be (sleeping) nor what I'm tempted to (going out to hear music), but instead Skyping with The Pirate back in Berlin. Flying on New Year's Eve is the very best way I know to avoid all the hype and The Director posed an interesting question. Leaving SFO at 2:30 PM on a polar flight to Frankfurt, exactly where and when would I hit 2010? I calculated it must have happened somewhere in the North Atlantic, probably between Canada and Greenland, roughly four and a half hours out from SFO. By then I had drugged myself for the flight, thus skirting the whole issue entirely.

Well then, the Skype exchange was interesting enough to convert into a blog post... It relates to my New Year's resolution for 2010, something I've sworn to do for years now: to list every film I see for a year. I'm still clean for 2010, as Lufthansa's transatlantic offerings were so bad as to not bear contemplating. Musing on great film that was foundational in my life, I somehow ended up listing my top 5 erotic films (not in any particular order). Hanif Kureishi´s earlier work scores an amazing two in my top five: Samey and Rosie Get Laid (1987) and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). Then there´s A Crying Game (1992), Body Heat (1981) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, which I had to have seen sometime later). What, dear reader, you were expecting Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones? That's not exactly what I'm on about. It's no coincidence that the movies I've listed were ones that I saw decades ago. Some of them I revisited later, in my 30s, and was disconcerted to find I'd preserved a completely different memory of what happened. There was, however, some special image or idea I'd taken from each of them that resonated in my young impressionable mind, deeply affecting my notions of masculine and feminine sexuality. It´s interesting to speculate where our peculiar individual behaviors and turn-ons come from. Not surprisingly, I suppose, in the case of this addict, they come from film. That and the Catholic Church, naturally.

But yes, the titles I just listed are two favorites of mine from the golden age of porn and yes, some women do enjoy a certain type of porn, don't think it's dirty or misogynist, and even (gasp) enjoy the idea of men watching porn. However, I will always maintain that Deep Throat really sucks. Now, aren't we glad we got that out in the open?!? Happy New Year, all!

The Moviegoer

Roughly 25 years ago, someone rarely mentioned in this blog, my ex-husband, got it right for a change (gasp!), when he gave me Walker Percy’s book. In my restless shifting through the Berlin vacation sublet scene during this visit, I ended up for a week at T.’s, who had it in a yellowing original paperback version. Re-reading it, I realized I’d forgotten that it has very little to do with film, but everything to do with detachment from life. Moviegoers need not be detached, of course, and my own moviegoing is governed by the drive to learn from worlds I cannot possibly experience for myself. How could I be a gay man in an Alice Springs beauty pageant (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), for example, or a small Kurdish girl escaping war the only way she knows how (Turtles Can Fly)? But of course I understand detachment; it’s what I necessarily must do every time I truly enter someone else’s film.

Recently I've realized that finding a truly good film (which happens perhaps once a year), is a bit like finding a truly good man. But the numbers are, frankly against me. I’ve been a discriminating moviegoer for some 25 or 30 years and have learned to bring sophisticated screens to bear when choosing films. I probably see nearly 3 films weekly on average, between theaters, rentals and downloads. In contrast, I’ve only been dealing with dating in Europe for three years. And I have to admit I dedicate substantially more time to moviegoing than the whole dating routine, which I treat only in fits and starts, often tossing in the towel for weeks or even months at a time. The way I date would be rather like walking up to my crappy neighborhood, sure-dubbing-is-great-because-reading-subtitles-is-so-tiresome theater and expecting the best of von Trier or Claire Denys or Mike Davis to magically appear.

So the real question, it would seem, is whether I am willing to give dating even a fraction of the attention I dedicate to film. Could I give up even one third of my movie-going experiences? Two hours is more than enough for a first date, but could I actually manage this once a week? I feel a palpable reluctance to even contemplate it. Could it be that men are so much less important to me than film? That hardly seems possible, so it must be that my screening process is still completely inadequate, or I wouldn’t be having so many horrifying dating experiences. So hmmm, it's quite clear that I simply must apply myself more diligently to the dating problem. Sigh. Moviegoing is just, frankly, so much more fun.

Spellbound

Seeing Lars von Trier's Anti-Christ twice in Madrid this fall wasn't enough, and I was particularly wanting to revisit Breaking the Waves, as I was sure there are artistic parallels. So when I was offered a special back-to-back viewing of the two, I naturally jumped at it, requesting first BtW, followed by Anti-Christ. Other than re-emphasizing what I already knew, that von Trier should be forbidden to create epilogues, this experience heightened my fascination with how he views women, the most interesting aspect of his work.
The production values of Anti-Christ were miles ahead of 1996's BtW, not surprisingly, and even the third time around I was transfixed. I find, in both films, potent juxtapositions of women's true power with their own misconceptions about that power. He manages to simultaneously convey how threatening this is to men, in a way that I simply cannot manage to find misogynistic, despite what virtually all the critics say. This is a man who is quite simply spellbound by women. And frankly, there is no better kind of man. If only they were more common...

In that vein, I'm further refining my screening mechanism to better weed out Men's Club types (see The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). Last year after it became clear that blogging was not just a passing fancy for me, I remember discussing my dilemma with my dear friend D. She didn't think it advisable for me to share my blog with every potential conquest. But my instinct has been to use it as the perfect screening tool. And so, I'm vowing from now on to begin any dialogue this way: "Hi, I'm katchita, and if my blog rings your bell, we can talk." Hey, it seems to have worked with my newest, who apparently has a certain reputation as one of Berlin's top video pirates. Is there any feeling more delicious than sensing potential new worlds opening up? I live to learn; without learning I cannot live.

Give Me Fever

Just as I re-surfaced from a wicked heat wave (nine days of 97°F/36°C plus or minus 1°C) in Madrid, after three days of practically arctic temperatures (no higher than 90°/32°), I was hit with another birthday and rising temperatures yet again, up to 35° yesterday. Slogging my way through the birthday aftermath, I'm contemplating the feverish dreams my brain has seen fit to devise for me over the last couple of weeks. Now I'm no Jungian, and it's undoubtedly for the best that I hardly ever remember my dreams. But this fitful sleeping in hot and stuffy little rooms is a perfect dream factory, and it's very difficult to avoid the conclusion that my subconscious, at least, is simply not signed onto the fact that I live in Madrid now.

All three dreams have centered around Berlin, and two of the three, unsurprisingly, involved lusciously cold weather. In one, I seemed to have misplaced a lover somewhere in another country, and turned up another, ill from alcoholism; all the while the Lidl/Kaiser's/Robben und Wientjes area north of the Prenzlauerberg S-Bahn had turned into an ice-skating pond (doesn't that sound great?)! In the second, that previously misplaced lover inexplicably turned up with another woman on a bus in the German countryside, while I had apparently become invisible to him and his friends. Before I had time to become too distressed about this, the bus stopped and dumped us all out somewhere well outside of Berlin, with lots of snow and no clear way to get back to town. To put the icing on the cake, I was completely on my own while everyone else, somehow, miraculously had cars. OK, so, angst and displacement, perfectly explainable, particularly as I'd seen the very very eccentric Anti-Christ (Lars von Trier's latest) the night before the second dream.

But it's the one from last night that has me freaked out, as Mr. Not-a-Gentleman, about whom I hadn't thought for months, somehow replaced Sergi López (picture me wailing in distress) in a faintly-related and definitely sexual reprise of Isabel Coixet's movie, Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, that I just saw last night. López, one of my favorite actors since the oh-so-sexy Une Liaison Pornographique, was also fabulous in Dirty Pretty Things and Harry, Un Ami qui Vous Veut du Bien. In Tokyo, he meets a Japanese lover weekly at a "love hotel" with thematic rooms, Sergi Lopez's character's choice being one done up as a train car (I do admit to that being one of my own particular, ahem, preferences, as well). I can't recommend the movie (for me the plot's too weak), but there is one particular scene where López comes up for air, after pleasuring his co-star's character, and, with the coyest look possible, acts out removing a pubic hair from his tongue. Fascinating concept, that: a French woman directing a Spanish star in a scene that pointedly features (gasp) oral sex au naturel. I do believe it should be required viewing for all Spanish adult males in 2009. Oh my poor, poor brain, please try again tonight, to get it right.