Berlin International Film Festival Research Articles

Around the Circuit: Around the Circuit: Berlin International Film Festival, 10–20 February 2011

Around the Circuit: Around the Circuit: Berlin International Film Festival, 10–20 February 2011

Editors' Picks

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The Athens Dialogues involved a year of preparation, with each presenter providing a paper for publication by the Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies on the Internet at http://www.athensdialogues.org (accessed on 1 September 2010). Four expert respondents were selected to lead the dialogues on quality of life with prepared questions for clarifications, challenges to propositions made by the speakers, and seeking an integrative understanding of how the diachronic sense of Greek contributions may have contributed to the topic. The session was then opened to discussion by the larger audience of invited scholars and members of the public for an extended dialogue on quality of life. 2. The Quality of Life by Emmy Award–winning playwright-director Jane Anderson was winner of three 2008 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards, including Best Play, Best Playwright, and Best Lead Actress (Laurie Metcalf). It was also nominated for four 2007 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards. 3. Quality of Life is a narrative feature film and authentic story of Michael “Heir” Rosario and Curtis “Vain” Smith, the most prolific and talented graffiti writers in the Mission District in San Francisco. It was a winner of a prestigious Special Mention jury award at the Berlin International Film Festival. 4. Human Development Reports, http://hdr.undp.org/en (accessed 1 September 2010). 5. Economist Intelligence Unit's quality of life index, http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/quality_of_life.pdf (accessed 1 September 2010). 6. Calvert–Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, http://www.calvert-henderson.com (accessed 1 September 2010). 7. R. Costanza, B. Fisher, S. Ali, C. Beer, L. Bond, R. Boumans, N. Danigelis, J. Dickinson, C. Elliott, J. Farley, D. Gayer, L. Glenn, T. Hudspeth, D. Mahoney, L. McCahill, B. McIntosh, B. Reed, S. Abu Turab Rizvi, D. Rizzo, T. Simpatico, and R. Snapp, “Quality of Life: An Approach Integrating Opportunities, Human Needs, and Subjective Well-Being,” Ecological Economics 61, no. 2–3 (2007): 267–276. 8. C. Alexander, The Nature of Order, An Essay on the Art of Building and The Nature of the Universe, Vol. 1, The Phenomenon of Life (Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002). 9. P. Crutzen, and E. Stoermer, “The Anthropo-cene,” Global Change Newsletter 41 (2000): 17–18. 10. J. Ravetz, “Post-Normal Science and the Complexity of Transitions Towards Sustainability,” Ecological Complexity 3 (2006): 275–284.

Around the Circuit: Berlin International Film Festival, 1121 February 2010

Around the Circuit: Berlin International Film Festival, 1121 February 2010

Berlinale 2009

BERLINALE (2009) Festival PoliticsAsked whether the Berlinale has fostered an image as a "political" film festival, Christoph Schlingensief, the German jury member at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival (5-15 February 2009), blurted out: "A competition entry here scarcely stands a chance otherwise." Schlingensief, a highly motivated political filmmaker in his own right, hit the nail right on the head. You only have to look back at the past Golden Bear winners. In 2007, the Grand Prix went to Wang Quan'an's fiction-documentary Tu ya de hun shi (Tuya's Marriage, China). Set in rural Mongolia, Tuya's Marriage mirrored the plight of nomadic shepherds whose way of life is threatened by the government's misguided plans to move them to urban shelters. In 2008, it was awarded to José Padilha's Tropa de elite (The Elite Squad, Brazil). Set in 1997, when the Pope announced his visit to Brazil, that news triggered...

The Black Balloon. Directed by Elissa Down. produced by Tristram Miall, Icon Home Entertainment, 2008

Released September 2008, The Black Balloon , winner of the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival, had its UK debut at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2008. The writer and director Elissa Down was present to answer questions after the screening. The film explores the dynamics of

Appointment with Berlin

BERLINALE (BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL) BERLIN FEBRUARY 7-17, 2008 This year's Berlinale (the 58th Berlin International Film Festival), like that of many Berlinales past, was soaked in history. Given its Cold War inception and combative orientation since then (in 1970 director George Stevens led a jury walkout in protest of a film critical of the Vietnam War, for example), it would be difficult for it to be otherwise. As wide-ranging and colossal as the city in which it is located, a social focus ran through the offerings from the retrospectives of Luis Bunuel, Francesco Rosi, or American films on the Vietnam War, to films based around the struggles of homosexuals in Egypt and hip-hop musicians in Uganda. It was present in the new documentaries from the cataclysm in Iraq, like Full Battle Rattle (2008, by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss), and Heavy Metal, in Baghdad (2007, by Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti). So, one of the world's largest--and for the European market, most crucial--film festivals was far more than a fashionable premiere for new films. Contained in various forums and alternative groupings that have proliferated over the years, festival offerings ranged from potential blockbusters to the more experimental fare as shown on tiers of the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, such as Isabella Rossellini's take on the sex lives of insects in Green Porno (2008), to revisited structuralist classics. By any measure one of the more extraordinary offerings on hand was the epic 190-minute docufiction United Red Army (2007) by Japanese new wave director Koji Wakamatsu. Now 72 years old, Wakamatsu was smack in the middle of the militant New Left in Japan and often sought to explode the erotically charged and scandalous pink eiga genre from within in films like Secrets Behind the Wall (1965), Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969), and Ecstasy of the Angels (1972), all of which were shown at the Berlinale in a tribute to the filmmaker. United Red Army is several films in one: a black-and-white documentary of the Japanese student and antiwar movement (in the form of a relentless display of demonstrations, riots, and statistics of arrests and killings, which convey an inexorable and violently contested history); a partly fictionalized account of the relationships of members of the various militant student factions that ultimately join forces as the United Red Army; and a docudrama of the United Red Army itself in its clandestine mountain base. Wakamatsu's film culminates in the group's takeover of a mountain ski lodge in Asama in 1972 and the ensuing firefight with police. For the sake of a certain realism, Wakamatsu shot these scenes at his own mountain cabin, destroying it in the process. Scored to rumbling, splintering psychedelic music by Sonic Youth's Jim O'Rourke, Wakamatsu presents one of the starkest portraits yet committed to film of the disintegration of once hopeful, revolutionary idealism into despair, fanaticism, and mad fratricidal violence. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This year's Berlinale was riddled with dilemmas of history. Documentaries ranged from portraits of Vaclav Havel and Ariel Sharon to the denizens of Mafrouza (a poor section of Cairo) to Isaac Julien's Derek (2008) and Jesus Christ Savior (2008) by Peter Geyer. Typical of the festival, the results of these were wildly uneven. …

Berlinale 2008

58th BERLINALE 2008 Box Office BonanzaWill it ever end? During his seven years as Berlinale director, Dieter Kosslick's festival tenure is annually boosted by success at the box office. Following the close of the 58th Berlin International Film Festival (7-17 February 2008), bonanza statistics were promptly released to the press. The 58th Berlinale recorded an overall audience of 430,000, of which some 230,000 purchased tickets, thus exceeding last year's record by more than 6,000. The number of visiting film professionals (exhibitors, sales agents, industry representatives) increased to 20,000 from 125 countries, topping last year's total of 19,155. The number of accredited journalists rose to 4,105. The sum of public screenings also rose to 1,256, compared with 934 screenings in 2007. Only the number of films participating in this year's official programs dipped in comparison to last year - down from 396 to 383 - but even this adjustment...

The Black Balloon

Released September 2008, The Black Balloon , winner of the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival, had its UK debut at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2008. The writer and director Elissa Down was present to answer questions after the screening. The film explores the dynamics of

57th Berlinale 2007

EUROPEAN Film MarketNow in his sixth year as director of the Berlin International Film Festival, Dieter Kosslick takes particular pride in changing the image of the festival each time around. This year, for the 57th Berlinale (8-18 February 2007), he expanded the European Film Market (EFM) beyond the environs of the roomy Martin Gropius Bau, a short three-minute walk from festival headquarters on the Potsdamer Platz. "Last year, we offered buyers and sellers 5000 square metres of space in the Gropius Bau," he said in an interview, "but this year every nook and cranny of the building couldn't accommodate all of the market professionals who requested stands." So, to handle the overflow, the fifth floor of the Berlinale Service Center in the Debis atrium was reserved for latecomers. Altogether, more than 5000 market professionals were accredited for the Berlinale, while over 250 films from 51 countries were programmed...

My American Books

My American Books Mo Yan Translated by Sylvia Li-chun Lin (bio) Mo Yan, which means "don't speak," is the pen name of Guan Moye. He was born in the Shandong town of Gaomi in 1956, the son of peasants. His childhood was characterized by bitter poverty and constant hunger. In 1976 he was admitted into the People's Liberation Army (pla), where he served until 1997, when he accepted a position in the editorial offices of the Beijing Procuratorial Daily. He graduated from the pla Academy of Art and Literature and received a master's degree in literature from Beijing Normal University. His novels include Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads, Thirteen Steps, The Republic of Wine, and Big Breasts and Wide Hips. He is also the author of novellas, short stories, essays, and film scripts. Red Sorghum, a film based on Mo Yan's novel of the same name, won the 1987 Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and received critical acclaim in both Asia and the West. Mo1 Yan's novels and stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages. The following talk was given at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado, in March 2000. My first novel translated into English was Red Sorghum. Before it was rendered into English, it was made into a movie by China's renowned director Zhang Yimou and won a major prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. The novel became famous because of the movie. In China, when my name is mentioned, people say, "Oh, Red Sorghum!" Forgive my immodesty, but, as a matter of fact, Red Sorghum evoked strong reactions in China before it was made into a movie. So Zhang Yimou benefited from my novel, and then my novel benefited from his movie. I wrote Red Sorghum when I was still at the PLA art college. It was the early 198Os, the so-called "golden age of contemporary Chinese literature." An enthusiastic readership inspired writers to become passionate about literature. People were no longer content to create or read stories written in traditional styles. Readers demanded that we be more creative, and we dreamed of nothing but becoming more inventive. A critic quipped that Chinese writers were like a flock of sheep being chased by a wolf—a wolf whose name was Innovation. [End Page 31] At the time, I had just crawled out of mountain ditches and didn't even know how to use a telephone, let alone possess any knowledge of literary theories. So the wolf of innovation was not chasing me. I hid out at home, writing whatever I felt like writing. Now that I have some rudimentary knowledge of theory, I realize that slavishly following trends is not true innovation; real creativity is writing honestly about things you're familiar with. If you've had unique experiences, then what you write will be unique. And being unique is new. If you write something different, you will have developed a unique style. It's like singing: training can change your technique, not your voice. No matter how diligently you train a crow, it can never sing like a nightingale. In other talks I've given, I've brought up my childhood. While city kids were drinking milk and eating bread, pampered by their mothers, my friends and I were fighting to overcome hunger. We had no idea what sorts of delicious foods the world had to offer. We survived on roots and bark, and were lucky to scrape together enough food from the fields to make a humble meal. The trees in our village were gnawed bare by our rapacious teeth. While city kids were singing and dancing at school, I was out herding cows and sheep, and got into the habit of talking to myself. Hunger and loneliness are themes I've repeatedly explored in my novels, and I consider them the source of my riches. Actually, I've been blessed with an even more valuable source of riches: the stories and legends I heard during the long years I spent in the countryside. In the fall of 1998, when I visited Taiwan, I participated in a...

Copacabana's other side: Marcos Bernstein and The Other Side of the Street at the Berlin Film Festival 2004

Marcos Bernstein, Brazilian screenwriter and director, attended the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004. His film O outro lado da rua (The Other Side of the Street) proved to be a great success due, in part, to the participation in the film of Oscar-nominated actress Fernanda Montenegro (who starred in Central Station, for which Bernstein wrote the screenplay). This interview focuses on what led Bernstein to direct his first movie, his experience as a screenwriter, his conception of film-making and the plot and themes of this new film. As a result of his fascination with Fernanda Montenegro, the ‘first lady’ of Brazilian film, he resolved to make a movie about the life and love affairs of older people in Copacabana, the beach-front Rio de Janeiro district where many old people live.

Images

Images Lynn Hershman Leeson’s first feature film, Conceiving Ada, was shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, The Toronto International Film Festival, The Berlin International Film Festival and thirty-five other festivals worldwide. It also received the award of “Outstanding Achievement in Drama” from the Festival of Electronic Cinema. Conceiving Ada was released by Fox Lorber in February 1999 and on DVD in February 2000. She was awarded the 2003 Alfred P. Sloan Award for writing and directing Teknolust, starring Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Davies, which premiered in the American Showcase of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. In fall 2005 the University of California Press published the monograph Secret Agents Private I, The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson. Her touring retrospective is organized by the Henry Gallery in Seattle. Hershman Leeson is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, and an A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 2) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 13) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 24) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 37) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 47) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 6. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 58) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 7. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 81) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 8. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 91) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 9. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 103) Copyright © 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Homosexuality and South African Cinema

The following is an excerpt from a larger manuscript HOMOSEXUALITY AND AFRICAN CINEMA, a co-operative effort of Dr Botha (CityVarsity, Film & Television and Multimedia School in Cape Town, South Africa) and Professor Dethier and Dr. Willemse at the Free University of Brussels. IN A GLITTERING ceremony at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival a full-length South African film, The Man Who Drove With Mandela won the Documentary Teddy Prize. It was rewarded for its unique contribution to gay and lesbian history and for bringing forward a challenging and politically engaging subject. The Man Who Drove With Mandela was directed by Greta Schiller and researched by the co-writer of the outstanding compilation on South African lesbian and gay lives, Defiant Desire, namely Mark Gevisser. No other film in South African history chronicled the lives of lesbian and gays in the way Gevisser's documentary has done(1). It is a...

The Past, the Present, and the Future An Interview with Wu Ziniu

Wu Ziniu has been considered one of the most important Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers. Wu has directed more than ten films, such as Evening Bell (1988) and Nanjing 1937 (1995), and won numerous awards both at home and abroad which includes a Silver Bear Award in the Berlin International Film Festival. In October 2000, he was one of four featured Chinese directors at an international symposium on Chinese cinema at Swarthmore College, and lectured at Temple University, Columbia University, and New York University. Kong conducted this interview in Beijing, May 31, 2002.

Stars Directing Our Fate: Millennium

The Berlin International Film Festival, February 10-21, 1999. New Directors/New Films, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 26April 11, 1999. The Time of Our Lives and Keith Piper, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, July 15-October 17, 1999. The New York Video Festival, Walter Reade Theater, New York, July 16-22, 1999. The Blair Witch Project, a film by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, distributed by Artisan. Festival des Films du Monde Montreal/Montreal World Film Festival, August 27-September 6, 1999. Le Mois de la Photo a Montrial, Marche Bonsecours, Montreal, September 2-October 17, 1999. The Independent Feature Film Market, New York, September 17-24, 1999. The New York Film Festival, September 24-October 10, 1999. Secret Defense, a film by Jacques Rivette, presented by Fabiano Canosa. The Annual African Diaspora Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, New York, November 26-December 12, 1999.

Berlin 1997

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE BERLINALE, or the first time in the history of the Berlinale, a Latin American entry was awarded the Golden Bear: Walter Salles's Central do Brazil (Central Station) (Brazil). And for the second time, Dutch animation director Gerrit van Dijk was awarded a Golden Bear for Best Short Film -- in 1989 for I Move, So I Am. Generally speaking, critics and public agreed that the festival prizes at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival (11-22 February 1998) went to the right films and directors. Two Irish films were standouts. Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (a co-production with the USA) continued his insightful dialogue on the crisis in North Ireland -- together with In the Name of the Father (1993) and Some Mother's Son (1996) it appears to form a trilogy -- and confirmed once again that Daniel Day-Lewis is one...

Lousy Films Had To Come First--Im Kwon-taek, Korean Director

Im Kwon-taek has been an important figure in the Korean film world for about thirty-five years, directing both commercial and artistic successes, tackling subjects that have led to controversy at times, and garnering a number of awards. Born in 1936 in the southern part of Korea, Im debuted with Dumangang-a Jalitkora (Good-bye! Duman River) in 1961. His films won the Grand Bell (Korea's top award) in 1978 (Jokbo or The Family Tree Book), 1979 (Gitbal Obnun Gisu or The Hidden Hero), 1981 (Mandara), 1982 (Abengo Gongsugundan or Abengo Air Green Berets), 1985 (Gilsodom) 1987 (Yonsan IIgi, or Diary of King Yonsan). Other films have won the Korea Paeksang Arts Grand Award (1976, Wangsimri; 1983, Angae Maeul) and Yongpyong Award (1987, Ticket). Mandara was selected to compete in the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival, as was Gilsodom in 1986.