After Pixelmatsch pointed out to me that this would be our 1000th posting on About Chocolate Parfaits, I spent days agonizing what to write here. I wanted it to be something special and – since these are the afterthoughts – something meaningful. And then the unavoidable happened: My feelings of the Berlinale this year began to fade. It was very reminiscent of last year’s Berlinale where I had very similar feelings. It feels lame to quote myself, but it’s so true for this year as well:
About one month after it happened, I look at it with fond memories, but I already see that they are less vivid than when it happened.
On top of that, last year’s Berlinale was a blast. It was stressful and it was during a time when O still needed much care and attention (whereas this year he went to daycare, though that mean that I had to be there to take him there and back from Monday to Thursday), but in many ways it totally blew my mind. We saw some amazing films (this year’s best films would be perhaps comparable to last year’s 7th or 8th ranked film), had tons of silent films with live piano accompaniment and spent such an incredible amount of time in movie theaters. It was just amazing. Therefore it’s rather unfair to compare this way, but my honest feeling is that this year was overshadowed by last year’s experience: Getting tickets was annoying as hell, it was “only” 20 films in 9 days vs. 27 films in 10 days, my terrible cold made Berlin’s weather feel even worse, and the number of interesting titles for me was much smaller this year. While last year had some 50+ titles I thought were interesting, this year had perhaps 30+ or so.
Nevertheless, I cannot so easily write off an event I have been spent basically a month of my life on: Preparing for it, watching films and then blogging them. We had some great surprises (“Under Electric Clouds” is so incredibly brainy and sophisticated, it’s Russian filmmaking at its essence, really, and reminds me that I need to check out Zvyagintsev’s other films), a few disappointments (ugh “Ten no Chasuke” and “Der Geldkomplex”) and most generally things went very smoothly (no long delays and the likes).
This year, Shii couldn’t make it to the Berlinale (*still crying about it*) but luckily 6451 came to visit! Despite a relatively short 4 1/2 day visit, he managed to see 2 operas and 13 films, now how efficient is that? It’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to see all of these with him, but even though some of the films we saw were not so great, just having seen them together made me enjoy it. I think the presence of 6451 would even make “The Prince” enjoyable (and actually I reminisce fondly about our experience of seeing the film in the AMK Hub, even though the film itself is total crap), and that makes his visit the definite highlight of this year’s Berlinale. I am so glad we ended up getting some take-away food at the end and hung out at Pixelmatsch’s place, eating delicious köfte, drinking tea, looking up stuff on the internet and – most importantly – talked about the films we saw, life and everything else. We even talked about our fear of death, to which 6451 made one of the wittiest, most memorable jokes I have ever heard in my life.
Another nice side effect to the terrible wait at the ticket lines was my coffee and lunch with the old guy I met, who I really enjoyed talking to. I have basically already said everything about this in my posting on “Koza” though, hm.
My dream is still to have one Berlinale with plenty of good films where the entire PIFF can attend!
Finally, here are the statistics for this year’s Berlinale. Unlike last year, we were happily able to go to the Berlinale Palast, the Zoo Palast and the International, but only Pixelmatsch made it into the Cubix (twice even!) Neither Pixelmatsch nor I have been to the Friedrichstadt-Palast or the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year, but 6451 saw screenings there. I miss the Cubix hahaha. After I missed out on the International last year, I had 3 screenings there this time, and if I happen to catch another Berlinale in my life again, I will make a visit to Cubix 9 a top priority.
Cinemas
CinemaxX – 8
CineStar – 5
Arsenal – 4
International – 3
Zeughauskino – 2
Cubix – 2
Zoo Palast – 1
Berlinale Palast – 1
Delphi – 1
Filmtheater am Friedrichshain – 1
Countries
USA – 6
Japan – 6
Germany – 4
Korea – 2
Czech Republic – 2
Slowak Republic – 1
Ireland – 1
Palestine – 1
Russia/Ukraine/Poland – 1
Romania/Bulgaria – 1
Mexico – 1
Brazil – 1
Spain – 1
Sections
Forum – 10
Retrospective/Classics/Hommage – 7
Generation – 4
Competition – 3
Panorama – 3