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Berlinale 2014, Day 5 (Short Films: Absolute Film)

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.

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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.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 5 (Faust)

It’s Zeughauskino time again. After seeing “Tui Na” early in the morning, I spent the rest of the day at home and only went out to see “Faust” and the shorts from the Retrospective section at 7pm and 10pm respectively. Besides waking up way to early, that actually made my day quite pleasant with reasonably little stress. Shocking!

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Faust. Eine deutsche Volkssage
Germany 1926, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 108’

In order to save people from dying from the pest, the old professor Faust makes a deal with the devil. But after the devil turns him into a young man, he discovers his libido and seduces rich women. One day, he falls in love with Gretchen, your generic innocent, pious country girl, which he pursues and subsequently impregnates. Gretchen gives birth to a baby who freezes to death, after which she is condemned to die, and it is only then that Faust realizes what he has done.
Death count: 4.

I have to confess something here: It’s been 10 years since I read Goethe’s “Faust I” (I never finished “Faust II”), on which the film is based on, and I must have forgotten large parts of it. Back, the story in Goethe’s “Faust” seemed meaningful to me and I thought touched upon existential questions, but it seems that I barely remembered what happened. I used to really like Gretchen’s character, the way she spoke to Faust and I thought her love for him had something exemplary, almost allegorical. When I saw the film, however, most of the storyline drawn from Goethe’s “Faust” seemed almost dumb to me. It almost made no sense to me how obsessed Faust was with his youth when he started out as the wise professor, and I don’t know why I had the impression that Faust was dealing with an existential problem when he’s just acting upon his lust for Gretchen. Even in Gounod’s “Faust” version, Faust and Marguerite’s love made more sense to me. Perhaps this is all due to the fact that this is a silent film without all that much dialogue. When you don’t know what actually goes on in Faust’s mind, not only does it seem unbelievable how he turns from good old professor to delinquent youngster, but Faust and Gretchen’s relationship also get reduced to something very physical and superficial looking.
With that said, I especially hated the way that baby died, incidentally a deviation from Goethe’s “Faust” in which she drowns her baby on purpose. For Goethe, Gretchen actually becomes crazy and actively kills the child; in Murnau’s version, she is a terribly pitiful person who begs people to save her dying baby and then hallucinates in an long, drawn-out tearjerking scene. Ugh.

Apart from that, Murnau’s directing is so incredibly awesome. I loved the first part of the film to pieces, essentially everything before Faust meets Gretchen. Much like in “Der letzte Mann”, the dark atmosphere in this first part is splendid, and I strongly doubt there are many directors out there who can use images in such an intense way as Murnau does. Just for those images, it was worth seeing this film, and it perfectly makes sense to me why “Faust” is perceived as a classic.

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Berlinale 2013, day 6 (the value of perseverance)

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Senzo ni naru (Roots, ?????)
Japan 2013, Kaoru Ikeya, 118′

Naoshi is an 80-year-old lumberman and farmer, living in Rikuzentakata, one of the towns completely swept away by the Tsunami of 2011. Having lost his son, but not the house he built himself 55 years ago, even though it was flooded until the second floor, he toughs it out and perseveres against almost everyone’s wishes trying to rebuild his house so he can spend his last years there, remembering his lost son.

TL;DR most wonderful stubborn old man ever. I’m not crying, there must be onions hidden nearby.

He is old, he is stubborn, but at the same time he is also incredibly determined to not let the Tsunami win. Naoshi tries all he can to convince his neighbours and family to not give up the town and fights for rebuilding together with some friends and acquaintances even though the city and prefecture try to dissuade them. One incredibly moving moment is Tanabata of 2011 (July 7th): the city celebrates their traditional festival on this day and is known for its demonstration of giant wooden floats crashing into each other in a reverse tug-of-war. Three of the four floats representing the districts have been swept away so it looks like there will be no festival, however Naoshi succeeds in motivating the local youth to try and with his help (he is still a very skilled lumberman at his age) they manage to repair the remaining float and to hold the festival. At the end one of the young residents, after thanking everyone for coming, cries out that they will not be defeated and that they will rebuild. Cue everyone on and off screen crying. The film alternates between those stories of little achievements and setbacks (especially when dealing with the government) and little tidbits about Naoshi who is just wonderfully witty, especially when he explains how he once did “research” while bathing so he could carve a big wooden penis for a local fertility shrine: “Now it’s not as magnificent and hard as this wooden one anymore.” Unfortunately he does not reveal where he got his “inspiration” for the giant wooden vulva on the other side of the shrine.

For the Q&A we had the director and cameraman. Both were overjoyed about the long applause (I suppose it will be the longest I witnessed at this Berlinale) and the director read a message from the “stubborn old geezer” as he called himself, because he could not come to Berlin due to his health. In a very teary moment (I guess the director just cries easily) he explained that his cameraman lost his son too, a few months before the earthquake so that is probably the reason why Naoshi was able to relax around them so they could get him to talk and get this wonderful portrait of a simple, but proud and witty man.

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Sieniawka
Germany, Poland 2013, Marcin Malaszczak, 126′

Docufiction about the homeless and residents of a mental asylum in Sieniawka, a little village in Poland’s weird southwestern Appendix bordering massive open-cast mining of brown coal.

TL;DR just don’t watch it

If a movie does not have plot it can somehow save itself by having a great atmosphere or style, or the way round. If it lacks both, screens at night and I am tired then I just walk out halfway. Dialogue and plot were nearly nonexistent and the mood shots of the open-cast mining and the mental asylum were neither interesting nor “beautiful” So I did the unthinkable and just like many others fled the scene.