Berlin Shortfilm Festival: IC DOC 03 “Going Places”
There was one film that I found very intriguing: the clip on Ostkreuz, a really really old train station in Berlin. So I stepped over my prejudices of documentaries being all boring and filled with these horribly sleepy narrator voices: I voluntarily watched one of the documentary compilations. It was quite a surprise and I’m so glad to have seen this.
Nezrimoe (Russia 2007, 25:00)
In many respects, this was actually an amusing movie. Somebody involved with the short film was there, and from the questions it was very clear that the film was a little bad at conveying its message. I found it rather easy to understand, but I also think this is quite a good example of a film that is artistically somewhat interesting but unable to get to the point. And here I thought russians are experts at populistic propaganda *cough*
How to save a fish from drowning (Scotland 2007, 12:42)
It looks like some scottish people had a nice vacation in rural North Dakota. And wow, this is quite an amazingly enjoyable documentary about a thoroughly boring topic: Basically, it’s about nothing more than the exodus in the rural areas of the US, but it’s so delightfully done. I must admit that I have makes me want to go ice-fishing in a fishing house with a hole in the middle of it. XD
This review is describing its greatness quite aptly. To me, it was quite an eye-opener how hilarious and informative documentaries can be at the same time.
The Spot (USA 2007, 17:30)
This is about the spot where JFK was murdered. Today there’s a white cross there, with tourists running on the streets and taking pictures of themselves. Unfortunately, the whole thing had lots of special effects, a narrator who spoke about religion all the time and made no sense whatsoever, my my.
Ostkreuz (Germany 2007, 8:30)
As the title says, the film is about Ostkreuz, probably the ugliest and most horrid train station in Berlin. However, everybody loves it (including myself) and the idea of this torn-down thing that has stayed the same throughout the whole 20th century + 30 years is going to turn into a large shopping mall is somewhat sad. This sadness is not what the short film is conveying though, the clip is rather a very lovely portrait of Ostkreuz – without any dialogue, just showing the station from different angles, in different seasons, with its positive and negative aspects. Sure, the whole thing was somewhat pointless, but as somebody who has passed Ostkreuz multiple times, I just had to like this.
Garcons Manqués (Germany 2007, 33:30)
For those who are not french, I doubt that anybody still remembers the burnt cars in the Parisian Banlieues from 2005. But for me, this was quite an interesting period of time, and while I find the banlieues unbelievably ugly, they have caught my special interest. In that respect, I was expecting quite a bit of this film, and I can’t really say whether my expectations were met. On the one hand, I have not found it to be boring; on the other hand, I feel like the film didn’t contribute to my understanding of those people’s lives at all. Also, I was a little disturbed by this main protagonist who keeps saying that she hates the police, but wants to be in the police at the same time. Her reasons are not very clear (perhaps she’s just not very good at expressing herself?) and she doesn’t say much more than “I don’t want to be like them”. Hm.
In the end, I wish I had seen more documentaries. While short films can never give a thorough portrait of something, these were mostly very interesting little insights into their specific topic.