It is also a “tradition” for every Berlinale to have one interesting short film collection. This year, it’s clearly the collection of the Retrospective. With that said, what makes the Berlinale this year so worthwhile and special is clearly the incredibly vast collection of good classic films. While we always perceive the Berlinale as a festival where new films premiere and don’t see that many old films, this year there are many old obscure titles for which we get the chance to enjoy them on a big screen.
This is especially for silent films like “Faust” or some of these shorts: They come with live piano accompaniment! For “Faust”, we had Günther Buchwald who has a very classic style (we saw him many times before at the Stummfilmfestival) and for the shorts, Stephen Horne was playing. Most of the shorts are quite avantgarde, and so the piano accompaniment was similarly crazy. He used multiple instruments and – my favorite – in a dance scene, he put a Berlinale program magazine onto the strings of the baby grand he was playing on, to create an amusing sound effect. I was thrilled, and we went to see multiple more films (“Nasake no hikari”, two Sessue Hayakawa films and “Jujiro”) just to see Stephen Horne play again.
Rhythmus 21 + Rhythmus 23
Germany 1921/1923-25, Hans Richter, 4’+3’
These two shorts were essentially geometric shapes and figures moving around. The short film collection is called “Absolute Film”, which essentially translates into the concept of making movies for the sake of making movies, without any plot or even any sort of meaning. It’s just about the image and, well, shapes. For seven minutes, especially with capable accompaniment, I had a lot of fun seeing these almost video-installation-like films.
Entr’acte
France 1924, René Clair, 20’
I think this part was my favorite. When I saw the screenshot you see above, I immediately knew that I wanted to see this collection of short films. Avantgarde 1920’s short films with dance sequences, yay! Of course I couldn’t have known that the film didn’t actually have any dance sequences in it, but I got recompensated with other fun scenes.
“Entr’acte” had some sort of story, but not really, and there was something overtly playful about this collage of scenes. Everything just looked so 1920’s style, reminding me of the fact that those times were amazingly fashion forward. It feels like European culture made a huge jump in these Weimarer Republik days, only to crumble again after the 1929 depression and the subsequent rise of fascism. So sad.
Emak Bakia
France 1926, Man Ray, 21’
Man Ray was another reason why I was interested in this short film collection. I have seen a lot of his works in museums before, and without really understanding them I was always fascinated by his sense of esthetics. Plus I liked that he dabbled both in film and photography when both arts were still rather young, and I find his works strangely timeless. Strangely, I don’t perceive “Emak Bakia” as a typical Man Ray work. I thought it was a lot of fun, but very similar to “Entr’acte” it’s not much more than fun film even though it made me laugh a few times.
Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse
France 1925, Henri Chomette, 6’
This little short was essentially a camera speeding through Paris – on the roads, in the metro, over the bridges onto the river going on and on. It was actually quite fast and head-spinning, and the 6 minutes felt like they were over way too quickly. It’s a fun, very simple little film and so so French.