Berlin Film Festival Research Articles

An Uncertain Future: The 74th Berlin Film Festival

An Uncertain Future: The 74th Berlin Film Festival

The love song of Nelly and Marion: Céline Sciamma’s Petite maman (2021)

ABSTRACT Céline Sciamma’s fifth feature film, Petite maman, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in March 2021. Shot in autumn 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a brief film (72 mins) and a return to the work with child actors which typified Sciamma’s first two features, Naissance des pieuvres (2007) and Tomboy (2011). After the death of her grandmother, a child, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), helps her parents clear out her mother’s childhood home. She meets another girl of her own age in the woods, Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), who turns out to be her mother as a child. Petite maman offers space for love and care between mothers and daughters and opens out feminist perspectives on memory and grief. Drawing on representations of the mother as a child in Roland Barthes, Sophie Calle and others, as well as discussion of memory and secrecy in the work of Anne Dufourmantelle, this article explores the reimagining of love between mothers and daughters in Petite maman.

The Research on the Representational Strategies of Femme Fatale in Contemporary Chinese Film-noir

In 2014, Chinese director Diao Yinan’s feature Black Coal, Thin Ice wins the Golden Bear Award for Best Director at the 64th Berlin Film Festival, sparking enthusiastic discussion on the prospect of the so-called 'Chinese film-noir'. Among the classic noir elements that sparked discussion in these films, the lethal woman, or the ‘femme fatale’ stands out to be the one that attracts the most attention. In the span of a decade, the Chinese femme fatale varies quite enormously in her role in the narrative and the gender implication her relationship with the noir hero represents. This essay will build on Mark Conrad’s definition of film-noir, Jack Boozer’s categorization of femme fatale, and Elisabeth Bronfen’s tragic theory to analyze the construction of femme fatale in 2010s Chinese film noir. Equipped with these theoretical tools, this essay will focus on recent Chinese films-noirs and draw connections between their different representational strategy of the femme fatale to complete their noir narrative. This essay argues that while films like the Hunt Down (2019) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) approaches the lethal woman in the classic androcentric or even misogynist way, Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) and the Wild Goose Lake (2019) endows her with more subjectivity and agency while complicating her relationship with the noir hero.

A Festival without Festivities: The 71st Berlin Film Festival

A Festival without Festivities: The 71st Berlin Film Festival

Sexualidad, política del cuerpo y función socioeducativa del cine en Touch Me Not (Adina Pintilie, 2018)

Este artículo analiza la ópera prima de la cineasta Adina Pintilie, Touch Me Not (Nu mă atinge-mă, 2018), ganadora del Oso de Oro y del premio a la Mejor Ópera Prima en el Festival de cine de Berlín. En primer lugar, contextualizamos el texto fílmico, abordando su distanciamiento de la tradición del denominado “nuevo cine rumano” y su planteamiento estético híbrido, a medio camino entre el cine observacional y experimental. En segundo lugar, analizamos las tesis que el discurso fílmico plantea en su tematización de la sexualidad y el cuerpo. Para ello, nos servimos de la teorización freudiana de la sexualidad y la reflexión foucaultiana sobre el biopoder, siguiendo el planteamiento de Teresa de Lauretis (2008) de combinar a ambos autores. A lo largo del texto, abordamos la forma en que el cuerpo se convierte en un espacio desde el que pensar la relación entre lo individual y lo social, lo privado y lo público, la relación con el otro o con uno mismo. Finalmente, concluimos subrayando cómo, con una clara motivación política y socioeducativa, la película plantea un uso de una interpelación fílmica que pretende involucrar a los espectadores e implicarlos tanto intelectual como emocionalmente.

Brave New Beginnings: The 70th Berlin Film Festival

Brave New Beginnings: The 70th Berlin Film Festival

‘Pather Panchali and the cinema of Satyajit Ray, re-viewed’

ABSTRACT Widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century, the Indian Satyajit Ray (1921–92) was also a screenwriter, graphic artist, and music composer. He was additionally a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligrapher, and movie critic. Ray directed thirty-six films, including features, documentaries, and shorts. His first motion picture, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Festival. This film, along with Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959), forms The Apu Trilogy. Ray received many major awards during his career, including thirty-two Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival), a Golden Bear (Berlin Film Festival), two Silver Bears (Berlin Film Festival), and an Honorary Academy Award in 1992. This essay reconsiders not only Pather Panchali in the context of Satyajit Ray’s film oeuvre, but also Ray’s entire oeuvre itself in the context of global as well as Indian cinema.

베를린영화제 수상이후 여배우 김민희의 이미지 분석

본 연구는 제67회 베를린 영화제에서 여우주연상인 은곰상을 받은 여배우 김민희의 이미지를 분석하기 위한 것이다. 불륜의 사랑을 하는 여배우 김민희의 이미지를 한국사회 대학생들은 어떻게 보는가 하는 현상을 현상학적으로 분석 하고자 한 것이다. 즉 사회적으로 비난받으며 여배우 최고의 영광인 베를린의 공식적인 스타가 되었는데 과연 그 배우가 가지는 이미지에는 어떠한 변화가 있었는가를 밝히는 것이 본 연구의 목적이다. 연구방법으로는 현상학적 방법론을 택하였는데, 현상학(Phenomenology) 은 질적 연구 방법의 하나로 이념적, 철학적 지향으로서 뿐만 아니라 이러한 지향을 실제적으로 실천하는 연구방법론이다.BR 연구 참여자는 서울시와 경기도에 소재하고 있는 K대학, D대학, H대학 등에서 영상학을 전공으로 재학 중인 대학생 20여 명을 대상으로 하였으며 그 결과는 다음과 같다.BR 첫째, 배우 김민희에 대한 이미지는 이쁘고 연기를 잘하는 배우에서 홍상수 감독과의 관계로 불륜의 아이콘이 되어 버렸다. 주제어로 잡힌 단어가 ‘불륜’ ‘자기중심적’ ‘바람핀 여자’ ‘불건전성’등의 부정적 이미지가 훨씬 많이 언급되었다.BR 둘째, 배우의 사생활은 배우의 이미지에 상당히 영향을 끼친다는 결론을 얻었다. ‘공인’ , ‘추락’ , ‘비호감’등의 단어들이 의미 있는 주제어로 도출되었다.BR 셋째, 영화제 수상 이후에도 김민희의 이미지에는 어떠한 변화도 없었다. 특히 영화의 내용이 현재 처해있는 자신의 상황과 비슷한 점이 더욱 관객을 떨어뜨리며 분노를 산 것 같다. 영화제에서 최고의 상을 수상했지만 이미지는 좋게 바뀌지 않았다.BR 이러한 결과가 도출된 이유를 분석해 보니 한국사회에서 성문화 개방과 의식은 많이 깨어져 있으나 여전히 불륜은 문제가 있다고 보는 경향이다.

Over the Fence, Across the Water: The 66th Berlin Film Festival

Over the Fence, Across the Water: The 66th Berlin Film Festival

In Accents Yet Unknown: Reenacting Caesar’s Death in a Roman Prison

This essay focuses primarily on the Italian film Cesare deve morire (2012), an adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar acted by prisoners in Rebibbia District Prison, Rome. (1) If we use Linda Hutcheons definition of adaptation as derivation that is not a derivative--a work that is second without being secondary and Jean Marsdens description of appropriation as seizure for one's own uses, this production can be seen to fall into both of these (partly overlapping) categories. (2) At the same time, the shape-shifting Julius Caesar finds a poignantly revealing representation in its new form. This paper intends also to highlight the relevance of the presence onstage of Caesar's dead body, both in the English play and in the prison courtyard, in an attempt to demonstrate that the physical presence of the corpse is a determining element in both works. While examining the choices made by the Italian directors in order to tailor the language and the scenes to the setting of a contemporary prison, some more general considerations are made on the possible affinities between theatre and jail and on some of the implications of reading and acting Shakespeare during imprisonment. In 2012, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, both in their early eighties, winners of many prizes, and well known for their literary adaptations (Tolstoy, Pirandello, Dumas) produced the film Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die). (3) This film, which we could call a docudrama or docufilm, is based on a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by prisoners held in the Carcere di Rebibbia, a high-security prison in the eastern suburbs of Rome. (4) The film won the 62nd Berlin Film Festival, five David di Donatello awards, and was selected as the Italian entry for the best foreign language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards. The production records the yearly project carried out by the Italian theatre director Fabio Cavalli, which consists in involving prisoners--whose crimes range from drug trafficking and participation in organized crime to murder, and whose sentences vary from ten to fifteen years to life imprisonment--in acting activities organized as part of a rehabilitation program. The Taviani brothers had been to see one of these performances and suggested to Cavalli that he should attempt to put on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and that they might try to film the phases of its production, from casting and rehearsals to the actual performance on the prison stage. Cavalli agreed and the project took place. There are numerous factors specific to this Roman play contributing to making this adaptation particularly striking and memorable. The staging of the Forum scene particularly, with Caesar's dead body and speeches concerning the legitimacy of murder, acquires special resonance for inmates who know they will end their days in that same place. Widely recognized as a watershed in Shakespeare's dramatic writing, coming almost certainly in 1599 between the comedies and histories and just before the great tragedies and thus a kind of gateway to plays where the nature of power is seen in a larger perspective and with deeper symbolic significance, Julius Caesar has lent itself to multiple interpretations and classifications. Moral exemplum, chronicle, or revenge tragedy, derived mainly (but possibly not only) from North's translation of Plutarch's Lives--the lives in question being those of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony--it has often been seen as a play lacking a main character, the eponymous protagonist speaking only six percent of the total lines and dying before the middle of the play. The real theme, then, is not so much Julius Caesar but his death and the debate over the legitimacy of the killing of a sovereign when--and if--he is on his way to becoming a tyrant, a theme which has inevitably encouraged numerous rewritings for both stage and screen and which, as we shall see, brought out abundant parallels with the personal history of the Italian offenders who acted in Cesare deve morire, most of whom came from the south of Italy and were involved in criminal organizations with their own inner rules and hierarchies. …

Aproximação à Teta Asustada como uma narrativa cinematográfica intercultural hispânica

O seguinte artigo tem como objetivo principal desenvolver um estudo cinematográfico intercultural hispânico sobre o filme A Teta Assustada, escrito e dirigido pela cineasta peruana Claudia Llosa que foi premiado com o Urso de Ouro no Festival de Cinema de Berlim em 2009. O enredo do filme narra a história de Fausta, uma jovem garota descendente de ameríndios que padece de uma doença rara denominada teta assustada ou síndrome do susto, nome dado a uma suposta enfermidade transmitida pelo medo e sofrimento da mãe para com seu filho por meio do leite materno que atinge às filhas das mulheres que foram violentadas por terroristas ou soldados do exército peruano na década dos anos oitenta, em um momento de instabilidade social e política da história recente do Peru. A ligação do cinema com a sociedade e cultura fez com que surgissem significativas e estreitas relações desde uma perspectiva de um cinema intercultural que, segundo Hudson (2010), tenta traduzir em imagens a experiência de viver entre duas ou mais culturas e sociedades diferentes, que concebem novas formas de pensar e de conhecimento e se pode considerar um cinema compartilhado por pessoas que sofreram o deslocamento e que viveram modos híbridos, assim como é o caso do filme A Teta Assustada.

Producing prejudice: The rhetoric of discourses in and around current films on Roma-Hungarian interethnic relations

The rhetoric of discourses in and around current films on Roma–Hungarian interethnic relations prevents audiences from positively engaging with Roma characters. My analysis reveals the ways in which the two documentaries broadcast on national Hungarian television on Roma people since 2009 block the channels of identification between viewers and filmic characters. Additionally, this essay examines the rhetoric of the press release issued by the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice on the film Just the Wind at the Berlin Film Festival. In the press release the Ministry actively seeks to widen the gap between the racially motivated killing series in 2008 and 2009 against Roma and the filmic representation of the same events, which in fact enables audiences to identify with the victims. I argue that the seemingly different discourses overlap in their efforts to distance the viewer from Roma, thereby contributing to the strengthening of majority society’s prejudices against them.

Bingeing on Heimat: Notes from the Berlinale

This article presents a brief review of selected aspects of the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, with a particular focus on the Edgar Reitz's Die andere Heimat. Reading the latter for echoes of the original Heimat series, the article focuses on the shared spatial aesthetics of home and away, Heimat and Ferne.

Early Video Pioneer: An Interview with Skip Blumberg

SKIP BLUMBERG IS AN INFLUENTIAL FIGURE in evolution of independent video documentary and experimental filmmaking. He has produced hundreds of shorts, TV shows, installations, exhibitions, and multimedia performances and continues as an active mediamaker. Beginning in late 1960s, during inception of independent video, he collaborated with production groups including TVTV, Videofreex, Ant Farm, and Paper Tiger TV and with many other pioneering artists and independent videomakers, such as Nam June Paik and Shirley Clarke. Blumberg is active in independent video community, including having served as a board member of Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. From his seminal experimental video JGLNG (1976) to his classic video documentaries such as triple Emmy-winning Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1982), to his more recent diaries such as Nam June Paik: Lessons from Video Master (2007) and experimental nonfiction video On Dream Street . . . (2012), Blumberg brings a distinctive, warm, personal approach to filmmaking. He was one of first one-person-crew camcorder reporters. Several hundred of Blumberg's movies are online and in distribution for home viewing and for academic and public screenings through Electronic Arts Intermix, Video Data Bank, and In Motion Productions, Inc. His videos have appeared on broadcast and cable TV and in museums and festivals around world, with retrospectives in Berlin Film Festival Videofest, Rotterdam Film Festival, and Dallas Video Festival. He has received numerous awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Ohio State University Journalism Award; has been named one of Esquire magazine's Best of Next Generation; and has been screened at Museum of Broadcasting's TV Critics' Favorite TV Shows of All Time event. He was also artistin- residence at several public TV stations, at Walker Art Center, and at 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. Blumberg has produced for Sesame Street (more than 150 shorts), Great Performances (700,000-plus online views), The 90's, National Geographic Explorer, and MyHero.com, as well as for nonprofits, including Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity and Twenty-First Century Foundation. Blumberg has been a US State Department cultural envoy in Senegal, Kosovo, Herzegovina, Slovakia, and other countries and a visiting filmmaker, artist-inresidence, and teacher at universities, schools, libraries, and media centers. Blumberg currently is Special Professor in MFA documentary program at Hofstra University School of Communication. melanie l a rosa: Let's start with what's happening with your early videos now. skip blumberg: I just returned from WRO Biennale in Poland- the leading forum for new media art in Central Europe-where there was a lot of exciting work and many inspiring media artists, a week of screenings, installations, concerts, performances-and it was gratifying to see audience's interest in early video screening. I was there with Abina Manning, from Video Data Bank. We screened newly restored videotapes from Videofreex Archive from 1969 to 1971, which are in vdb.org's collection. It was great to see contemporary audience connect with work and with activism of that time period. Videofreex has had a couple of other recent well-received screenings-in Brooklyn at Light Industry and in Washington, D.C. at DC Arts Center. I appreciate these screenings-and opportunity to talk to you about early videotapes, and that era, and history of video-because it was a rare and exciting phenomenon, a very special time. What's especially important is that it was beginning of medium of video, when it was brand new. And this is also a chance to speak to you and professors about a syndrome now that I've noticed in film schools and schools of communication where history of video is sometimes ignored. …

El cuerpo y la policía: una mirada de la incorporación y de la subjetivación en la educación a través de la película "Tropa de Élite"

El presente artículo es un análisis de la película "Tropa de Élite" (2007), ganadora del prestigioso "Oso de oro" ("Goldener Bär"), a la mejor película en el Festival de Cine de Berlín (Berlinale), en el cuál se trabajan principalmente los conceptos "cuerpo" y "policía", y secundariamente los de "educación", "la política" y "lo político". La idea, entonces, es pensar a la policía en un doble sentido: coloquial y académico. A través de los personajes de André Matias y Nascimento se narra las vidas de dos agentes de policías con historias distintas pero con una recurrencia que nos permite pensarlas críticamente: desde la teoría de la subjetivación política es posible observar los espacios en los que se manifiestan disciplinamientos de los cuerpos, incorporados y reproducidos a través de la educación. Y en este sentido, se hace explicita la mención a "Vigilar y castigar", de Michel Foucault, trabajada en las clases universitarias de André, y que sintetiza en muchos de sus párrafos el debate aquí presentado.

Hong Kong and Berlin: Alternative Scopic Regimes

This essay is an analysis of Yau Nai-Hoi's film Eye in the Sky, a detective thriller set in present-day Hong Kong. Because the author viewed the film while attending the Berlin film festival, the essay focuses on the differential ways in which the two global cities manage their separation from their pasts. Berlin, now a unified national capital after a significant political reorientation, is full of large corporate and government buildings as well as large consumption emporiums in places that were once quite different. Hong Kong has also undergone a significant political reorientation and now embodies much of its past culture within its new corporate and consumption-oriented architecture. While engaging with the crime drama, which is the dominant film narrative within Eye in the Sky, the essay also analyses cultural governance—the ways in which contemporary Berlin manages the issue of Germanness and Hong Kong the issue of Chineseness. Este ensayo es un análisis de la película “Eye in the Sky” de Yau Nai-Hoy, una novela detectivesca situada en Hong Kong actual. Debido a que el autor vio la película mientras concurría al festival de cine en Berlín, el ensayo se enfoca en las diferentes maneras en que las dos ciudades globales manejan su separación de sus pasados. Berlín, ahora una capital nacional unificada después de una reorientación política significante, está llena tanto de edificios corporativos y gubernamentales, como de grandes emporios de consumo, en lugares que fueron muy diferentes anteriormente. Hong Kong también ha sufrido una reorientación política significante y ahora incorpora mucha de su cultura pasada dentro de su nueva arquitectura de orientación corporativa y de consumo. A la vez que participa con el drama del crimen, el cual es la narrativa dominante dentro de Eye on the Sky, el ensayo también analiza el control cultural—las formas en las cuales Berlín contemporánea maneja la cuestión de su carácter germánico y Hong Kong su carácter chino.

Transcultural Spaces of a Vanishing Hong Kong: Johnnie To's Sparrow

When Sparrow premiered in Hong Kong during early 2008 and later at the Berlin Film Festival, most audiences and critics noted a distinct difference from the other types of films associated with Johnnie To Kei-fung. the director made a surprisingly lightweight romantic comedy thriller far removed from his usual style and themes. Sparrow is also a film requiring that its audiences see the presence of familiar landmarks which may no longer exist. Sparrow also expects audiences to actively hear familiar songs from the past, both Cantonese and Western, that may also be transitory in a changing world characterized by a cultural clash between past and present values.

Bridges between New German Cinema and Today’s Generation of Political Filmmakers: An Interview with Michael Verhoeven

MICHAEL VERHOEVEN WAS A MEMBER OF the first wave of the New German known as the Young German Cinema that emerged during the second half of the 1960s. Born in 1938 in Berlin, into a theater and film director/actor family, he was involved, as an actor, in stage and screen projects even as a teenager. He made his debut as a stage director in 1962, and in 1966 he married actress Senta Berger, who has played the lead in a number of his films; together they founded the Sentana Film Production that year. In 1967 Verhoeven directed his first feature film, Paarungen [Making It], based on Strindberg's Dance of Death. Parallel to his artistic development, Verhoeven also completed medical studies, earning an MD degree in 1969. In 1970 his experimental Brechtlan antiwar picture o.k. caused a controversy that prematurely closed down the Berlin Film Festival; nevertheless, it won the German national film award for best screenplay in the following year. This film, as well as Die Weisse Rose [The White Rose] (1982), Mutters Courage [My Mother's Courage] (1996), and his 2006 documentary Der unbekannte Soldat [The Unknown Soldler], propelled him into the ranks of today's most prominent political German filmmakers. This status was only reinforced by his 2008 documentary Menschliches Versagen [Human Error], in which his research revealed not only the methodical deprivation of the Jewish minority during the Third Reich but also the role German citizens played to profit from it. A further politically oriented film with marked comic elements is his Das schreckliche Madchen [The Nasty Girl], which was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category in 1991 and which also won the 1992 BAFTA award. He lives in Munich (Gruenwald) and Berlin (and is not related to Dutch blockbuster filmmaker Paul Verhoeven). This interview was conducted on 13 September 2007, at the University of Texas, Austin. hans-bernhard moeller: Let me begin with the documentary. Prior to The Unknown Soldier1 you have had experience with this form, for Instance with the documentary about Anja Rosmus, the real-life model foryour/Vosfy Girl. I remember hearing at some point about a similar companion documentary to go with The White Rose.2 But when I checked on that last fall, I could not find anything except your 2001 Die kleine Schwester. Die Weise Roseein Vermachtnis [The Sister. The White Rose- a Legacy]. This documentary does not appear In the Internet Movie Database (imdb. com). Could you tell us something about the Little Sister and any other documentaries you might have made earlier? Michael verhoeven: Actually, when !showed the film The White Rose in schools, I liked to have the younger sister of Willy Graf with me. She was one of the students of the White Rose and in later years a teacher. I thought she would be able to explain how it was, how she saw it then, [and] how she sees it today, and she knows how to talk to young people. She was committed more or less to the life of her brother, which was very short. She wanted to fulfill what the brother couldn't do, because the Nazis killed him. He was executed like the other students of the White Rose and their professor, [Kurt] Huber. I accompanied her, when she was traveling in other countries, to talk to school children and to tell about what the White Rose was, what her brother had in mind, why they resisted, how they resisted against the Third Reich, and how it Influenced her all of her life. We did this quite often, so I had the feeling it would be nice to make a portrait forTV of this marvelous old woman, elderly woman I should say, because in schools there is always just a very small audience. Not many people can see this TV film. It is not on DVD, and this might be the reason why it is not in certain handbooks or collections like the IMDb. It is a TV film, coproduced with WDR in Cologne and only forty-five minutes long. It is not a real documentary, though it is a documentation. …

Update on the Film Metropolis

Update on the Film Metropolis Julie Wosk To the Editor: There is an important update to my cover essay on Metropolis (T&C, April 2010). Key scenes—thought to have been lost forever when the original film was drastically edited shortly after its release in 1927—were rediscovered and digitally restored in a new version, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2010 and the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood in April 2010. The new version, which contains about twenty-five minutes of added scenes and reaction shots, was made possible by the discovery of reels containing a copy of the original film found in canisters on the shelves of the Museo del Cine archives in Buenos Aires. The new reels were an exciting discovery because they give added coherence and depth to the film. For the first time viewers can gain new insights into Rotwang's obsession with Hel, his rivalry with Joh Fredersen and his wish for revenge, Freder's friendship with his father's secretary Josaphat, and the role of the sinister "Thin Man" in the film. Other restored shots include previously edited sections of the false Maria's notorious erotic dance and shots where she leads workers underground to destroy the Heart Machine. The story of the journey of these lost reels from Berlin to Buenos Aires is in itself like a detective story. Here is what happened: In 1927, only a few months after the premiere of the film in Berlin, Adolfo Z. Wilson, a Buenos Aires film distributor, took a copy of the original film to Argentina for showings there and in Europe (small changes were made in the film's ending). Meanwhile, other copies of the original film—which ran about two and one-half hours—were heavily edited by Paramount and by UFA, the German film studio, and the other copies of the original were lost or destroyed. The surviving original copy in Argentina was later acquired by Manuel Peña Rodríguez, an Argentine film critic and collector. (During the 1970s, however, the original 35 mm nitrate film negative was made into a 16 mm copy at a lab, and because the lab did not clean the original film, the copy was in many places heavily scratched and a few sections even too damaged to be digitally restored in the 2010 version. After the copying, the 35 mm version was destroyed.) Rodríguez then sold or donated the film copy [End Page 1061] to Argentina's National Endowment for the Arts, which then donated it to the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires in 1992. In 2008, researcher Fernando Peña and Paula Félix-Didier, the director of Museo del Cine, discovered the 1970s print in the museum's archives. These reels were subsequently restored by the F. W. Murnau Foundation in Germany, and many of the newly restored lost scenes were integrated into the partially restored 2001 version (the new insertions are identifiable because of their scratches). With the discovery of the original film—which had long been the holy grail for film historians—viewers can see for the first time sections of the film that dramatically highlight Rotwang's preoccupation with Hel, the woman once loved by both Rotwang and Fredersen, who died giving birth to Fredersen's son Freder. (Some have argued that references to Hel were edited out because her name looked too much like Hell.) In one restored scene, Fredersen goes to Rotwang's house and pulls back a set of curtains. He is astonished to see a monumental sculpture of Hel's head. Fredersen is filled with grief but Rotwang comes in, enraged at the discovery of the towering sculpture of his beloved Hel. Rotwang shows Fredersen his metallic robot and says that in another twenty-four hours (after the workings of his "transformation machine"), no one will be able to tell the difference between the robot and Hel. Indeed, as Rotwang later chases Maria, he calls out, "My Hel!" Says Rotwang, "The woman is mine!" In another restored key scene, Rotwang's wish to get revenge is seen as he instructs the robot to destroy Fredersen, Freder, and the city...

Intercity Cinema: Hong Kong at the Berlinale

This article is an analysis of Yau Nai‐Hoi’s film Eye in the Sky, a detective thriller set in present‐day Hong Kong, which was viewed at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival. The article is situated by the author’s experience of viewing. Just as the author was continuously involved in timing his movements within the rush of the city of Berlin, one of the film’s main protagonists, the head of a theft ring, was also busy timing Hong Kong’s movements. The author’s film experience thus involved movement from one fraught temporal habitus to another. In addition, both the city that was the locus of the author’s viewing and the city of the film are newly reconfigured. Berlin, now a unified national capital after a significant political reorientation, is full of large corporate and government buildings as well as large consumption emporiums in places that were once quite different. And Berlin’s reconfiguration, like Hong Kong’s, has taken place in a highly politicized context — in Berlin’s case, an attempt at an architecture of civil society, of public space and of “democratic transparency”, in order to reorient the problem of Germanness, while Hong Kong is also involved in an identity problematic, its relationship with Chineseness. From the start, the city was the natural backdrop for film. (Wesemann 2000, p. 31) Multiple temporalities coexist in urban space. (King 2006, p. 16)