Nefi No More

The Nefertiti bust is, I think, one of the most spectacular representations of feminine beauty I have ever seen. When living in Berlin I'd generally go see her every six weeks or so, always on the free Thursday nights. I kept that up after I became just a visitor, albeit a frequent one, going to see her most times I was here, even if it was just to drop in for 10 minutes. Last fall she was moved from the Altes Museum to the newly opened Neues Museum which I wrote about here.

I always knew my no-cost love affair would end some day. In this case, I returned to Berlin this December to find the free entry (last four hours each Thursday) terminated by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, which means no more popping in just to blow her kisses. But I think I always secretly hoped my love affair would end by her being returned to the Cairo Egyptian Museum, where she belongs. Aufweidersehen, schöne Königin. It was a beautiful four years. Now I hope you make it back home some time this century.

Krucifix

Being the good fallen Catholic that I am, and being in Berlin for [can it be?] my fourth Easter running, I decided to mark Good Friday in my best decadent style with another trip to the Kit Kat Club. No matter that I had not brought any particularly fancy party clothes along. [Berlin is my chance to feel that my increasingly impoverished drop-out lifestyle is way cool.] Being possessed of dangerous curves still gets me most places I want to go and spaghetti straps and tight black jeans are enough to do the trick. My voyeuristic cravings were, sadly, not completely satisfied as the usual crappy Berlin electronica drove me out by 2 AM or so, before people were really getting warmed up. But the man in the cardinal's costume wielding a fluorescent cross provided just the right touch. And it was nice to be in a club where sexy matters and people make an effort in that respect. At 12 euros it's a splurge, but my previous favorite spot for an hour or two of electronica (Tresor late on Wednesday night for only 5 euros) was a real disappointment the last time I went. They no longer open the neat-o downstairs machine room and being crowded into the upstairs bar with all the energetic young Germans on "E" is more than I can stand.

Ode to Ofenheitzung

As far as I can recall, I've lived eleven different places in Berlin; although a pair of these were as little as a week or two, I averaged a couple of months at a typical place, which was a great way to get to know various neighborhoods. In all that time, I've never had Ofenheitzung: I heeded everyone's warnings to avoid it. But I do have friends in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain who swear by it, even though they always have freezing cold kitchens and bathrooms, the latter of which is always the first thing I heat.
At any rate, in the interests of broadening my life experiences even further (which is the main reason I do the things I do), I'm trying it during my current stay in Berlin, learning the routine of having the coal delivered, lugging it up the stairs from the basement, mastering a starter burn, getting the blocks of coal fired up, waiting five or six hours till the place warms to something reminiscent of the tropics and finally cleaning out the ashes. I now have a firm grasp on the importance of the precaution stamped on each Berlin dumpster: Keine Heiße Asche... And I have to say, I certainly feel like a real woman going down the stairs and out across the snowy and/or icy courtyard, into the cold dark basement to lug coal when it's minus 5 or less outside (20°F).

Mauerfall--The Dominoes

In the cloud of chaos that surrounded my arrival in Berlin, my camera went missing, so these three Mauerfall posts won't have photos until those I talked into taking photos to E-mail to me actually do so. Ah well, it's already been photographed from all ends; Radio Free Mike makes it pretty clear how miserable the rain was. I'll just add that the temperature that day managed to rise from 5°C to, well, 6° (41 to 43°F for the Celcius-challenged among you). I gambled wrong and left my umbrella at home. Despite that, I was in a cheery mood, hanging out with one group of friends, then taking a sushi break at Potsdamer Platz (I do like the little place in the Pasarelle) for an hour to dry out a bit and finally hooking up with E. for the Mauer Mob. Seven hours all told, some of which were dry or only lightly drizzling. My secret is Glühwein and more Glühwein (the hot mulled wine that's ubiquitous in German outdoor winter markets).

At the start of my perambulations, I caught the dominoes before sundown, walked as much of the length as possible (things got complicated around the Brandenberger Tor stage area) and got myself pretty wet. When I braved the elements again, Mauer Mob had about 10K of the 33K needed and I had called it right -- we shored up the very end of Zimmerstraße where they ran out of people. It was neat to look all the way down the length of the street to Stresemanstraße and see the line of people. Then we walked to Postdamer Platz to check out how easy it would be to steal a domino. But we got there shortly before 9 PM and they hadn't even toppled that section. Unbelievably it was possible to get close enough to watch that happen (thanks to the rain, I'm sure). So I was pretty pleased with our timing.

The guards at the dominoes didn't seem to go for my request for a domino as a gift. [E. interpreted as I didn't know the German word for auction, meaning the dominoes will be sold off; for this the wall toppled??] But despite the rain, the guards smiled at my attempts. I remember this feeling, of knowing that I finally have Deutschland figured out. It is possible to crack that stony tough-man exterior. A super-extroverted gringa just in from Spain: that's the secret.

Mauerfall -- The Mob

There's still time to sign up for what will likely be the coolest thing to do on Mauerfall. That's as I'm assuming no one will be able to get within a half-kilometer of anywhere the dominoes are located, and a full kilometer within the stage where the celebration will be based. I'm in Group 137, at the corner of Zimmerstraße and Axel-Springer-Straße, which I chose as they need people to fill that section where the wall heads east, a bit north of the Jewish Museum and east of Checkpoint Charlie. So readers, hurry and register at MauerMob. There are 9000-plus registered at this time, but they need 33,000!

Mauerfall -- The Basics

More on this later as I landed in Berlin late last Thursday to find my sublet wasn't going to work out and have spent much of the weekend couch-surfing and apartment-searching. Still, on Saturday I managed quite the appropriate tourist promenade from Schlesisches Tor across Oberbaumbrücke to the East-Side Gallery (which I'd never walked before in its entirety). The famous portrait of the Brezhnev-Honecker kiss is bright and shiny again. I popped over to Unter den Linden (renamed Brandenburger Tor S-/U-Bahn) and checked out the wall "dominoes" -- very cool. From the Bundestag to Postdamer Platz the wall has been effectively reconstituted (the dominoes will fall tonight around 7 PM if I'm not mistaken, so there are only short hours left to check them out). I followed them down to P-Platz and shouted across to the West, "Hallo West". This being Berlin, of course, no one blinked, much less shouted back. And this being German, of course, I can never be certain if my errors in declination render me completely unintelligible. No matter. I smiled to myself, the shine of Spain still upon me.

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.

Chorin Chorale

The visit to Chorin in March, Lively German-style, meant tagging onto someone else's Deutsche Bahn group ticket, in this case the Brandenburg ticket, and only paying a couple of euros for each of us each way. Of course this takes a fair degree of hutzpah and luck, both of which the Lively German has in spades. This is easier to do as a single person traveling to and from larger population centers, but it's a great way to beat the system when it works. On the way back, the conductor wasn't far behind us as we searched for and found a group of three on its way back to Berlin.

Our visit to the monastery coincided with that of a Hamburg choir, which, as soon as they found an acoustically perfect room, burst into song. I was, quite simply, spellbound. There is nothing more captivating than stumbling into completely unexpected beauty. It didn't take much mangled but enthusiastic German to talk them into an encore. The complete truce that the L.G. and I had declared, combined with the immediate rush of endorphins that choral music dumps into my bloodstream, must have meant we were both emitting unusually strong peace-and-tranquility vibes. After a walk around the nearby pond into which the L.G. immediately plunged (that German suffering thing, don't you know), we were both chilled through. This nearly perfect day was topped off as we returned to the monastery for our bikes, struck up a conversation with a retired pastor who guides monastery tours, and were invited to his house for tea in front of his spectacular Ofenheizing.

Biosmokes

When I first moved to Berlin two and a half years ago and discovered my favorite pool, the Europa Sportspark at Landsberger Allee, there was a cigarette vending machine right out front, all the better to get budding athletes hooked on nicotine as early as possible. I can't say exactly when it disappeared; perhaps it was a result of Berlin's smoking ban, phased in during the second half of 2008. But I'm happy to report I've found another one in the most unlikely of places -- Lehde, in the middle of the Spreewald bioreserve. Lehde is the cute little town about 2 kilometers east of Lübbenau via the footpath that winds through the various canals and wetlands. This was another pleasant day trip just before Easter and I highly recommend the canoe/kayak rentals. We only did the basic one-hour route but I definitely want to go back some other time for the longer two- or four-hour loop. It's simply too too precious!

Day Tripping

It seems I'm finally moving away from Berlin -- after two years and seven months I will abmelden (un-register) with the German authorities, as my Spanish residency will require me to register there. I'm feeling quite wistful about this, and as seems to have become quite a pattern with me, I don't seem to be able to make a completely clean break. I'm storing some winter things in the Lively German's cellar as I doubt I'll be able to resist coming back for the 20th anniversary of the Wall-Fall in November. That's how I justify it to myself, anyway, as to why I'm only planning on being in Spain for the next six months.

Another sign I may actually really be leaving, though, is I've gotten serious about doing tourist things I never bothered with as a Berlin resident. Over the last couple of weeks I organized two Toytown outings: Poland (I'd never gone, even though it's all of one hour away) and Spreewald southeast of Berlin (I'd been once years ago but hadn't allowed enough time to hang out). I've always kept my distance as Toytowners can be a snide, nasty bunch, but the Berlin-Brandenburg special train tix are really cheap when one travels in a group of five, and Toytown's the quickest way to round up the necessary bodies. Both times I was lucky to find some nice people; one very cool couple went along on both trips.

Poland was Szczecin (included, incredibly, in the Brandenburg ticket and accessible via several DeutscheBahn non-stops daily). This wonderful weather found us sitting at a café on the Oder river drinking Starka vodka and eating pierogis (a delicious food that for some reason I'd never sampled before in my life). The next time I'm in Berlin I'll either have to hop over to the Polish side of Frankfurt-an-Oder or find a good Polish ex-pat restaurant here in the city. These pierogies are not to be missed! Although Szczecin is said to not measure up to other cities a bit further into Poland, in addition to the river, it had a quaint, if small, old town and I was quite taken with the green ceramics decorating the red brick buildings. I found Szczecin to be a cheap and easy introduction to the country. The direct train back to Berlin was a peaceful two-hour ride, which I made with a bottle of Starka vodka nestled in the seat beside me. I'm leaving it here, untouched, to celebrate the Mauerfall anniversary.

Mr. Germany

There is some possibility I was not in my right (or full) mind while composing the Mr. Europe post, as I was feverish with a flu at the time. And I most certainly cannot be held responsible for performing it in person, with various flourishes and embellishments, several hours later, at the Lively German's birthday dinner. Really, how could I possibly resist, as the sole woman there with five men, four of them German? Reports of it are apparently making their way throughout Berlin, as last night The Director was able to repeat some of it word-for-word (or at least the most important word: WANK). I do always encourage active audience participation, which in that case led me to a critically important discovery. One of my victims (I mean, audience) described his approach to seduction as "posing". Well, my friends, I was beside myself with joy at this hugely revealing remark, which has increased my understanding of the German male roughly infinitely (from zero to 0.001).

Last night The Director and his brother provided me the opportunity for a short reprise of the Mr. Europe performance and I was able to gather that The Director believes wanking happens not before but after the outing in which the typical German male interacts with, well, no one at all. [Posing, don't you know.] The Director's sample scenario, as far as I was able to make out, is this: German man spots desirable barista; does nothing (oops, I mean, poses). German man returns following night and poses to beat the band in a corner of the bar. German man returns a third night and observes object of desire depart with another man. German man returns home to punish her (I am very clear on this exact phrase, delivered with a giggled insistence that this "punishment" will involve hands places chastely ABOVE the covers). Honestly, I'm shaking my head: will I ever understand These German Men?!?

No matter, at this point we were extremely well lubricated, having been at an Arsenal screening of a particularly incomprehensible film from Thai artist/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Every time I've been there this year, they've had wine flowing freely after the screenings (they are really doing something right when it comes to grantsmanship). We decided to shut that party down, and were in the process of finishing off various partially poured bottles of wine when it occurred to the brothers to ride the glass elevators up and down the Filmhaus' seven floors. I went along to test whether drunkenness trumps vertigo (it does) but decided I'd be more comfortable riding on a bar stool on which I proceeded to plant myself within the elevator as I continued sipping wine. In my mind this was great performance art, but, sadly, at that point, we were rather indulgently shown the way out. Bicycling back very late to Prenzlauerberg via Unter den Linden, the Berliner Dom back-lit in blue from the Radisson's agressive neon lights, I had another Berlin moment. I told The Director's brother, "Sometimes I just love this place". Na ja, it must have been the alcohol doing the talking.

Berlinale Recycled

NEWS FLASH -- Berlinale must-see films currently playing in Berlin: Deutschland '09 and Hayat Var (more below).

Immediately after the Berlinale, the original-version theaters in Berlin screen the pre-determined "hits", such as Milk (definitely worth seeing for Penn's performance but 1984's documentary, Times of Harvey Milk, was better) and The International (total crap). A month or two later a few of the more alternative films from the festival might cycle through, per the incomprehensible hit-or-miss system that seems to govern film distribution. I was hoping Human Zoo would be one of these, but I don't see any evidence of it in the two cities I watch film: Berlin and Madrid.

Another film I'm pulling for is Hashmatsa (Defamation), the best documentary I saw at the Berlinale, but it will, I'm betting, be a bit difficult to track down. My U.S. readers can see it soon at the Tribeca film fest's international documentary competition
and I'm guessing it will show up on the Jewish film festival circuit this summer. Israeli director Yoav Shamir asks two very important questions: does the extremely powerful Jewish American anti-defamation lobby actually do Israel more harm than good? And, is it of any benefit to Israel to play the role, as some of his ADL interviewees expressed it, of "last resort" for American Jews? You'll have to see the film to find out exactly what he makes of these issues, but I will describe one thread that I found most touching: his portrayal of Jewish children as inculcated with fear of the outside world. I have no way of knowing how extensive this is, but watching teenagers explain in such a matter-of-fact way how the whole world hates them simply because they are Jewish, was, I found, somewhere between heart-wrenching and maddening.

Back to my main point: the charming but equally heart-wrenching Hayat Var (My Only Sunshine), about a young girl growing up in poverty in Istanbul, is playing tomorrow and Friday at Berlin's Turkish Film Festival this week in Berlin. So if you can read German subtitles or understand Turkish, SEE THIS FILM! And, my second favorite documentary, Deutschland 09, is, as expected, all over Berlin. Of the 13 shorts, 10 ranged from quite good to amazing, and for a compilation, one could hardly ask for a better hit ratio.

Both Ends of the Candle

I was in Brussels this week and came back by train to the Hauptbahnhof which is just across the street from the Hamburger Bahnhof (confusing, I know, but the latter is a museum and not a train station). It was during Berlin State Museum free hours (the final four hours every Thursday), so I popped over to see what was happening. They always seem to have more or less Beuys, but this time I paid more attention since I'd seen an exhibit on Beuys there earlier this year with the Lively German, who is a fan. Beuys as an artist became convinced of the pivotal role of creativity in life, and in education as well. This is a theme close to my heart, as I think much education is at best drudgery and at worst soul-killing. He became an important figure in green/socialist politics and advocated a radically open approach to education that led to his dismissal as a professor. But he was also a Nazi, having volunteered in his late teens for the Luftwaffe. I always say people become more of what they really are with age. So for me there's something very attractive about people who become leftists as they get older. Am I able to think this way about a Nazi? I'm not sure am I, but it's something to consider.

This visit I came away with a killer quote, really right on the mark for me:
Jeder Mensch muß sich verschleißen. Das wäre ja schrecklich wenn er nicht verschlissen wäre und dann schon sterben würde -- wäre ja schrecklich. [...] Das heist, man muß sich vollkommen bis zur Asche verbrennen, sonst hat es gar keinen Zweck. Wenn man am Ende noch zu gut in Schuß ist... ///
Every human being should use him/herself up. It would be really horrible if s/he were not worn out and then just died -- it would be really horrible. That means, one must completely burn oneself to ashes, there is no other goal. If one is still in good shape at the end...

--Joseph Beuys in conversation with Knut Fischer and Walter Smerling, 1985 [Note: he died in January 1986]

Oh yes indeed. My ex and I always agreed, there will be plenty of time to sleep when we're dead. And never mind that I hardly slept a wink during this trip; the sun is shining here in Berlin and there's probably some adventure out there waiting for me. In the meantime, here's a magnificent Rubens from Brussels' Musée d'Art ancien. Cherubs and virgins are not really my thing but who can ignore how after all so many centuries this piece still glows? And when's the last time you saw art mounted on a red museum wall?? Simply a fabulous choice, I have to say.

Historical Reconstructionism

The Neue Museum on Museuminsel is on the verge of re-opening for the first time since its pounding during WWII. I went by there on Friday to check out this weekend's open-door preview, but the long line of people waiting an estimated hour in cold drizzle was enough to send me on my way. Its website lists the opening date as October 16, 2009, but clearly another artwork shuffle will take place in the next few weeks. Nefertiti, with whom I just checked in a couple of weeks ago, will be moving to the Neue Museum's Egypt rooms and that part of the museum will open in April, if my reading of the very difficult German on Berlin's Staatliche Museen website is correct. After all, they can hardly afford to keep Nefi out of circulation for very long. She gets around, though, that babe. She was in Charlottenburg in the summer of 2003, the one and only time I visited Berlin before moving here three years later, by which time she'd moved again, to the Alte Museum.

Working the long line of waiting people was a group called the Gesellschaft Historisches Berlin, handing out slick pamphlets with color photos and asking passers-by to complete a small survey as to whether the museum should have been rebuilt instead of "conserved as a ruin". I have railed before at historical revisionism in the context of the destruction of the Palast der Republik and I'll say again: Berlin was leveled in the war and virtually anything you see in the center of town that looks over 70 years old is NOT. The Director kindly gave me this photo he took just days ago of the empty lot where the Palast once stood. The graffiti reads DIE DDR HAT'S NIE GEGEBEN (THE DDR HAS NEVER EXISTED).

An old-time American Berliner who's since moved on used to say that the only thing people care about here is either Nazis/Jews or East/West. There's a great deal of truth to that, in my experience. But standing in the middle of downtown Berlin, one would think that the only thing worth memorializing is the former, and even such examples are precious few. I'm particularly fond of the Anhalter Bahnhof and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (preserved unapologetically as ruins). The Bundestag is a brillant compromise between preserved remains and modern reinvention. Although scarce, such examples do at least exist. But the destruction of the Palast makes me fear for Alexanderplatz, with its wacky space-age clocks and workers-of-the-world murals and Plattenbau and the Marx-Engels statue that kids love to clamber over. The true heart of the city, Alex is, rightly so, constantly morphing. But they'll never take its crazy brave-new-world touches away from us, will they? They couldn't, could they?

Bewurstsein

It being Mardi Gras night and 1.50-euro cocktail night at the Bei Schlawinchen, I invited a couple of new friends to help me celebrate the wildest Catholic night of the year. The (German film) Director had loaned me a Kafka compilation as I couldn't think of any better motivation to learn German than to read Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) in its original German. For some reason I'm having no luck finding it here in Berlin, so on a wild impulse, I bought Der Prozess (The Trial) the other day. For now, it will be enough to simply fondle it as I try to read a few sentences now and then. It reminds me of the book that was my inspiration and entré into Spanish, something that I'd also previously read in English and impulsively decided to try in Spanish. Omar Cabezas became, undoubtedly, the sexiest Sandinista after publishing the memoir of his guerrilla days in the jungles of central Nicaragua --La Montaña es Algo Más que una Imensa Estepa Verde (the English title is Fire from the Mountain).

It wasn't my first year living there, as my Spanish wasn't good enough to read literature. It was when I started going back in the second half of the 90s that I bought that book. And it was around the same time that I met another Cabezas brother (there were six of them, but three had died in the fight against Somoza). C., with whom I ended up working, was sharp as a tack and an unpredictable and fascinating conversationalist. He's the one who first clued me into the importance of double meanings in Spanish; he kept me constantly on my toes. So meeting Omar was doubly disillusioning. I remember him as a mass of neuroses, who at one point asked, effectively, didn't everyone worry about what other people thought of him? Those were the days when I was, with the unerringly instinct of the young, too cruel. "Well no, actually not", I remember responding, as I turned back to C. and a more interesting topic. The third brother, the one who ran the plaintain plantation, was there as well, taciturn to the point of withdrawal. What a strange mix they were: professor, neurotic revolutionary-cum-writer-cum-politician, and farmer.

But to circle back around to my original point, multi-national mixes of intellectuals typically make for interesting reflections on the vagaries of language, and this was no exception. The Director and I were well on our way to silliness when the Polish (theater) director arrived. Discussing Kafka had made me realize I don't know the word for awareness in German. Instinct told me it would be one of those long German words offering not even the slightest Latin-based or English-like hint. I focused mightily but the bar was noisy and I misunderstood the Director to say Bewurstsein. "Was ist das?" said I, delighted beyond belief, "BeWURSTsein?" Awareness in German has sausage in it?! Could anything possibly be more perfect, I asked the Pole?! She, having scored her German citizenship short days ago, merely tsk'ed.

Berlinale Soup

Back in January the Lively German had introduced me to a film director here who ended up being great fun to hang out with during the Berlinale. He invited me to another director friend's traditional post-Berlinale debriefing soup, which was more than helpful in treating the massive exploding head I'd developed from seeing so many films in so little time. This is proof I'm not cut out to be a real film reviewer... Although I am well aware that some see 4 or 6 films a day (they're the ones who walk out after 15 or 20 minutes), I simply cannot take a wine-tasting approach to film. I don't sip; I drink deeply: the deeper the better.

Last year's Berlinale was about immigration for me. This year's theme seemed to have been women. This wasn't intentional on my part - I didn't specifically seek out women-centered films. It just ended up that I saw a lot of film that made me think even more than usual about what it is to be a woman in the world these days. I call myself post-modern, but I can clearly see women ten years, and now even twenty years younger than me, strong-arming their way even less apologetically than I have done, through this man's world. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the old guard steps aside, the better. The only good thing about Pink, which in my vocabulary has now become a synonym for the worse sort of maudlin dreck, is the great contrast it presented.

I saw more competition films (three) than usual [R. wanted to see Mammoth--which turned out to be a poor cousin of Babel -- but we couldn't even letch at Gael García Bernal due to both a really unfortunate hairdo and a hopelessly flat role as a 30-plus-year-old boy]. Then Schmid's Storm was a poor cousin of Human Zoo -- if we want to represent what rape as military weapon means to women, maybe it's not surprising to think that a woman director/writer would be better equipped to do so. However, Schmid's Forum entry, Die Wundersame Welt von Wacherschaft, was a female-centered documentary: an interesting and sympathetic treatment of the hopelessly dead-end lives of Polish border women who wash Berlin's hotel laundry daily.

The only competition film I really liked was Deutschland '09, which is scheduled for a March 26th release in Germany. A set of 13 shorts at over 2.5 hours long, it held my attention quite masterfully; only a couple of the shorts would have been better ditched, interesting the first and last. Daniel Levi's piece on German's dark view of their country was screamingly funny -- picture a flying Jewish boy landing in the middle of a Neo-Nazi meeting to be hailed as the newest Führer! We also saw a masterful teacher working with 8- or 9-year-olds on conflict resolution, a cool critique of shock-and-awe capitalism, a terrifying piece on German domestic anti-terrorism secret forces gone wild, and Fatih Akin's interview of Murat Kurnaz, the German-Turk who's still waiting for the German government to apologize for its complete failure to get him out of Guantanamo at the very beginning.

Pink Pap

When one attends a film festival of the stature of the Berlinale, one expects to be protected, to some degree, from film that is total crap. Of course, the more foreign the film and the more alternative/experimental the genre, the more likely exceptions become. The experienced film-goer will of course have a certain tolerance for this and skill in correcting for it. But when the film is from the festival's home country, screened by life-long residents and fluent speakers of the language, one has every expectation of seeing the very best that the country has to offer.

Given my new-found admiration for the German language, I'd planned to spend a relatively high percentage of my time, roughly one third, on German cinema this Berlinale. Many of these films have premiered late in the festival, which means the usual two to four showings are scheduled back-to-back, and there's less time for word-of-mouth to spread. I've just attended Pink, which had premiered only last night. This film is archetypal in that it couldn't be a more perfect representation of a film one would never, in one's entire life, ever want to waste 9 minutes on, much less 90. It is insults the intelligence of its audience, of women, and of the men who have any interest in them. And it does so in a way that is not even worth the words to describe; suffice it to say that it will undoubtedly do just fine on German television, for which it was apparently made, according to the Lively German who spotted the tell-tale clues in the credits. WHAT THE HELL IS THE BERLINALE DOING, SCREENING MADE-FOR-TV FILM??? And in the "Special" section, no less! Special, my ass.

I stood up in the Q&A and asked, rhetorically, how was it the Berlinale permitted such a thing. The Berlinale staff manning the Q&A had nothing to say, and the director's response was "I made the film I wanted to make and it's too bad if you didn't like it." My reaction to this film is rather along the lines of that for the equally scintillating Girls Lie, a stellar example of male directors doing just as they please, from the 2nd Berlin Porn Film Festival. One certainly can't argue with their right to do just that, but I want to know how many of his family, mistresses, and/or debtors are reviewers for the Berlinale Special section?! I demand a refund: 7 euros down the tube. As for the 90 minutes plus 30 (as I simply couldn't let something like that go without participating in the Q&A), well, that's added one more frown line that I certainly did not need.

Seventeen New Worlds

My first Berlinale I saw 10 films, my second 13, and this year with a great deal of determination I will have managed 17, a bit short of my goal of 20. But at Day 7, as I'm about to set off to number 12, I admit to experiencing some fatigue. Each day I spend roughly one hour waiting in line, one hour or more going to and fro on transport and 4 to 5 hours inside movie theaters. The good thing is that I've now bought all my tickets through to the end (yesterday was the last day standing in line). My light-deprived state is, fortunately, counteracted by the huge head trip of whizzing in the space of short hours, from the war-torn Balkans to Istanbul slums to gorgeous Greece. Attending so many films has clearly diminished my ability to blog (eating, inconveniently, has to happen, and today I gave in to the need to actually spent time doing laundry).

I'll expand this post when I have time to breathe. But right now I'm recommending these films for the final days of the Berlinale. Yesterday was a good day -- Hayat Var from Turkish director Reha Erdem (whose work I'll definitely be seeking out on video) and a very surprising Isabelle Adjani film, La Journée de la Jupe, which was masterfully crafted from beginning to end. Today, so far, has been Strella, a Greek film that one-ups the Crying Game in a big way. All of them, along with Human Zoo, fall in my "run, don't walk (to get tickets)" category.

Mind Made Up

Living in Berlin without Kakao is unthinkable, really (and to further torture us, its website continues to be on-line). Little did I know, when I wrote this post, that that was the last time their orgasmic hot chocolate would cross my lips. It was still open when I returned to Berlin last June, but the weather was so lovely that I ordered one of their chocolate ice creams instead. Then by October when I returned to submit all my visa paperwork, they were closed. M. remembers seeing a report of a place shut down in a drug sting operation (their Klassik was decadent enough to have been declared illegal). After going by there last night, talking to the wait staff, and verifying the venue is now occupied by a completely alien business, I rushed home to immediately booked my return flight to Madrid. I'll arrive back in time to spend at least part of the spring drowning my sorrows in Spanish chocolate caliente con churros. In the meantime, what is left for me in Berlin? Ah, well, the Berlinale, of course. Sans hot chocolate.

Tickled Pink

Another Berlinale is upon us and I'm so glad I decided to stay in Berlin for it. Today the ticket windows opened at 10 AM and although very little is on sale beyond the opening night (with which I never bother), the last day (Kinotag) is available from the beginning and I picked up a couple of tickets. Early afternoon, the line at the Potsdamer Platz ticket counter was non-existent though I suspect that will change by Thursday. For my recommendations on how to approach the Berlinale, click here.

This year seems a bit different; I don't remember all the Panorama films being English-subtitled previously as they are now. There are also some films marked as having German+English subtitles; I asked twice for details, at the Berlinale office and the main ticket counter. Both times the staff didn't know the answer and had to call. We'll see, but it seems this means dual subtitling, which I run across occasionally in Spain and is quite unpleasant. However, I am willing to put up with it to see more cinema from the former Yugoslavia (Hans-Christian Schmid's Storm). Finally, an important difference this year is that sold-out films are no longer marked out on the big program board. Instead, there is an electronic screen that scrolls through 28 pages; with each projected for 15 seconds or so on, it can take up to 7 minutes to get the information one needs. That is, if one is fast enough to digest the information on roughly 20 films per page within 15 seconds. Whose brilliant idea this was, I have no idea.

In scanning the program, I recognize three films I've already seen: Solo Quiero Caminar, Berlin Calling (currently playing at the Central where it will be much easier to get tickets) and Lemon Tree (a repeat of last year's Panorama Public Award). The number of films on Israel stands out, and I hope that the Berlinale has applied its usual sophisticated political approach to this excruciatingly difficult topic. I'm considering Simone Bitton's Rachel -- about Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old Californian who was crushed to death by a Caterpillar tractor, while she was protesting home demolitions in the West Bank in 2003. I remember it so vividly as my ex was protesting in the West Bank at that time as well. The visceral fear and worry I felt for him translated into feeling completely sick-at-heart for her family and the useless waste of such a promising young life. My eyes tear up at the thought of it still, and I don't know if I could bear to see such a film, but I don't know, also, how I could not see it.

Film is my passion, it's life-blood, a way to jump out of this mind which is, all too often, an uncomfortable place to inhabit. Through it I travel worlds otherwise closed to me. For a time I'm transformed into a small Kurdish child living in forever-war (Turtles Can Fly which I reviewed here), a kid on the impossibly mean streets of Mexico City (De la Calle), a decent man (Klopka, The Trap), or the kick-ass woman I've always dreamed of being (Death Proof). It's not just an escape, but it adds entirely new layers of consciousness that could never be possible in any one single life. It's the best training I know for altruism; it reminds me, as nothing else, what it means to be human.