Film Festivals
Berlinale 2005
“The Berlin Film Festival (“Berlinale”) in many ways is like Cannes in that it is in reality an umbrella for a number of different organisations and activities, but in reality is noticeably smaller, so consequently is saner.
Amongst the many aspects of the Berlinale are the Film Competition, the Talent Campus and the European Film Market. The competition is relatively straight forward, the winner taking home a golden bear. The Talent Campus is something that we will be looking to get on next year. It is a week long series of seminars for up and coming film makers. I had a friend who was on it and the quality of lecturers they had was quite breathtaking. Apparently it is free as the British Council will pay for your air fare and the accommodation is provided gratis.
The main attraction of the Berlinale though was the European Film Market (“the EFM”). As I've said, it is on a much smaller scale than Cannes, but that is in many ways no bad thing. Much of the business that is done in Cannes is set up in Berlin so the purpose of this venture was to set up meetings. This was successful. The main difference to Cannes is that the EFM is distinctly a European market, whereas Cannes is global, and so it did have a different atmosphere.
One bonus of going to Berlin this year was that there was a huge Stanley Kubrick exhibition, in the hall that the EFM will occupy next year. I took nearly four hours going round it and still felt I rushed it. There was a large room dedicated to each of his films. There were many of his original scripts and shooting schedules, including many interesting bits of random memorabilia such as tickets for the preview screening of Dr Strangelove that never happened. The tickets were marked in Kubrick's own hand saying “never happened - day that Kennedy was shot”.
Sadly I can't give you any photos as cameras were completely banned. I wasn't entirely surprised given my experience when my student union tried to show a copy of Clockwork Orange when it was still forbidden to show it. That's another story, but suffice to say we were made to realise fairly soon that we really shouldn't show it...
Berlin itself is fascinating. I was lucky enough to be shown round some sections of it by a guy (Joachim Gering) who grew up in East Berlin. He could see the wall from his primary school playground! Joachim kindly took many of the photos on this page of the website as well. There is a lot of amazing modern architecture much of which is occupied by the Berlinale. I was also able to go up the dome in the Reichstag, which is a fantastic way to see the city.”
Images taken by Joachim Gering