The retrospective strand this year is Larger than Life a presentation of the 70mm large screen format. A great selection of films included West Side Story, Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia. With trying to see so many new films it feels too much of a treat to settle back and see a classic. Although I always remember the year when I couldn’t make sense of what was on – never mind which day it was – and noticed that Ridley Scott’s Alien was screening. I went to see it and was blown away by Scott’s audacity in pacing and filming (the extreme close up of the cats eye and reflection of the alien, comes to mind). In can be like rediscovering cinema.
Back to this year, I noticed that Stanley Kubrick’s monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey was part of the Larger than Life season and made note in advance to treat myself to taking this opportunity to see it in the scale it was meant to be seen. There is a real difference to the impact and meaning of a film when it was intended for such an epic scale. The screening was on at the International Kino, a classic of soviet style 60s architecture in the middle of the old East Berlin at 9.30 in the morning. A bit of a trek but worth it to see Kubrick’s classic film.
I had asked the day before for a ticket but was confidently told “that’s a free screening and you do not need a ticket” – you know where this is heading! I turn up to a huge queue of eager young folk buying tickets with eager anticipation. Delegates get a lottery ticket, mine is 175, they let the first 15 in. It’s difficult at these moments not to punch something or specifically the person who told me I did not need a ticket. I leave deciding that thinking positive is better for my health, look at the schedule and see that there is a screening on in the Forum back at Potsdam Platz in a couple of hours. Taking the time I walk through previous East Berlin socialist town planning paradise, through Alexanderplatz where I discover great public art celebrating the working woman and onto Unter Den Linden one of the great European roads which was sliced in the middle at the Brandenburg Gates by the wall.
The film I am planning to see is called Beeswax and they keep delegates back whilst a steady stream of paying punters walk past us. It is completely full. I decide a letter to Festival director Dieter Kosslick might be in order when I am reminded how much was paid for the pass. This constitutes a crisis: having been knocked back from two screenings. A film must be seen and what is next up The Pink Panther 2. It shocked me to see that it was in competition and it shocks me even more to find myself inexorably heading for the press screening in the main Berlinale cinema but I have to feel the lights go down and the images start. Never have I laughed so little. Why? oh why?… from the sublime to the ridiculous in one cross city walk.
The afternoon is markedly more successful and better quality (it could only be after such a low) and leads back to the sublime with the 80 year old Andrzej Wajda’s masterful new film Tatarak (how could this be in the same competition progamme as aforementioned PP2!?) and Johan Grimonprez’s witty and astute Double Take which weaves parallels between Hitchcock and body double with the battle between TV and cinema in the 50s and the rise of East/West tensions. Never has the Avant Garde been so entertaining.
The 59th Berlinale comes to a close with the reflection that the most interesting cinema is most definitely coming from out with the mainstream. They are challenging in that they tell thought provoking sometimes difficult stories in unconventional ways and, unlike the Pink Panther, they will find it much more of a challenge to find their way to cinema near you. There is much work to be done. Til the next one Auf Wiedersehen
Back to this year, I noticed that Stanley Kubrick’s monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey was part of the Larger than Life season and made note in advance to treat myself to taking this opportunity to see it in the scale it was meant to be seen. There is a real difference to the impact and meaning of a film when it was intended for such an epic scale. The screening was on at the International Kino, a classic of soviet style 60s architecture in the middle of the old East Berlin at 9.30 in the morning. A bit of a trek but worth it to see Kubrick’s classic film.
I had asked the day before for a ticket but was confidently told “that’s a free screening and you do not need a ticket” – you know where this is heading! I turn up to a huge queue of eager young folk buying tickets with eager anticipation. Delegates get a lottery ticket, mine is 175, they let the first 15 in. It’s difficult at these moments not to punch something or specifically the person who told me I did not need a ticket. I leave deciding that thinking positive is better for my health, look at the schedule and see that there is a screening on in the Forum back at Potsdam Platz in a couple of hours. Taking the time I walk through previous East Berlin socialist town planning paradise, through Alexanderplatz where I discover great public art celebrating the working woman and onto Unter Den Linden one of the great European roads which was sliced in the middle at the Brandenburg Gates by the wall.
The film I am planning to see is called Beeswax and they keep delegates back whilst a steady stream of paying punters walk past us. It is completely full. I decide a letter to Festival director Dieter Kosslick might be in order when I am reminded how much was paid for the pass. This constitutes a crisis: having been knocked back from two screenings. A film must be seen and what is next up The Pink Panther 2. It shocked me to see that it was in competition and it shocks me even more to find myself inexorably heading for the press screening in the main Berlinale cinema but I have to feel the lights go down and the images start. Never have I laughed so little. Why? oh why?… from the sublime to the ridiculous in one cross city walk.
The afternoon is markedly more successful and better quality (it could only be after such a low) and leads back to the sublime with the 80 year old Andrzej Wajda’s masterful new film Tatarak (how could this be in the same competition progamme as aforementioned PP2!?) and Johan Grimonprez’s witty and astute Double Take which weaves parallels between Hitchcock and body double with the battle between TV and cinema in the 50s and the rise of East/West tensions. Never has the Avant Garde been so entertaining.
The 59th Berlinale comes to a close with the reflection that the most interesting cinema is most definitely coming from out with the mainstream. They are challenging in that they tell thought provoking sometimes difficult stories in unconventional ways and, unlike the Pink Panther, they will find it much more of a challenge to find their way to cinema near you. There is much work to be done. Til the next one Auf Wiedersehen
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