I knew it was time to leave the screening of THE BLUE HOUR, an LGBT title from Thailand which I was really willing to give the benefit of the doubt, when the line “I forgot to tell you when I brought you here: a gang probably dump the bodies of people they’ve murdered here.”
The “here” in question is a rubbish tip: the two protagonists have gone on a joy ride to find somewhere to make out in peace. The reply to this statement was “That’s O.K.” I’m sorry, I might not have high standards when it comes to locations for a date, but a gangland dumping ground for dead bodies is not somewhere I’d consider taking a loved one for a bit of rumpy-pumpy smoochy-woochy. It was 11pm and I’d seen three other films in the day. There comes a point at a festival where you just tell yourself to quit whilst you’re ahead. They’ll be more films the next day. And who takes their boyfriend to a rubbish tip to make it?! Seriously!
Rewind back twelve hours to the start of the day, and I took a phone call from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire in my hotel room to talk about the BAFTA results. It was sleeting outside, and I’m not sure the presenter quite realised I was on the phone from Germany. Looking back on this instance, it’s a real treat to be multi-tasking in such a way for so many different organisations here. We talked for about five minutes live on air about THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING and my personal favourite, THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL. Then it was time for breakfast and a walk back to Potsdamer Platz.
Day Three at Berlinale was a real World Cinema affair. I took in German, Czech, Spanish and Thai films. This feels particularly exciting considering the fact that back home, even out of the Awards Season, you’ll only see one film per brochure from these countries. That’s (on average) one film from a drastically different culture every five or six weeks. Outside of the Cambridge Film Festival, I can’t remember the last German film I saw at the Arts Picturehouse Cinema. It just doesn’t seem like they get picked up much for UK distribution at the moment. We do screen French and Italian cinema on a regular basis, and the odd Spanish film here and there, but for some reason German cinema rarely makes it over to the UK unless it’s for a film festival. All the more pleasing, then, that my favourite film of the festival has turned out to be German!
I hadn’t heard anything at all about AS WE WERE DREAMING before I came to Berlinale. There is a trailer on YouTube, but with no English subtitles. So it’s understandable that the film may not have enjoyed much online buzz pre-premiere. As with KNIGHT OF CUPS, I won’t go into the plot too much as it’s touched upon in my review – but in short, it’s a coming-of-age story, set in Leipzig, in the reunified Germany of the early 1990s.
The film managed to do that wonderful thing of triggering multiple shivers up the spine…
My friends Chrisha and Eva, who were managers in Cambridge back in 2008, moved out to Leipzig and have started a family there. I’ve visited them twice, and fallen in love with the city : a combination of the Christmas Markets and a Patrick Wolf concert in a derelict, old 1930’s cinema sealed the deal for me. So I’m already partial to a spot of Leipzig on screen. The film managed to do that wonderful thing of triggering multiple shivers up the spine, from the base to the shoulder blades, which I usually get in only in a cinema screening – and definitely only when the combination of image, story, and sound are working together in harmony. AS WE WERE DREAMING did that for me, so it’s sitting at the top of the list at the moment.
In a moment of self-reflection, I find it interesting that Celine Sciamma’s GIRLHOOD was my favourite film at Cannes last year – another coming-of-age tale, this time set in Paris and with a band of girls to whome the film’s French title, BANDES DES FILLES, refers. Is this my go-to genre for film festivals, I wonder? I also really liked Leah Meyerhoff’s I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS at Edinburgh Film Festival, and both Xavier Dolan’s MOMMY and Greg Araki’s WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD at London Film Festival. Something for me to ponder over as I do this kind of thing more and more with a critical eye…
Back to Berlinale! I finally got a chance to explore the Potsdamer Platz Arkaden. It’s like a bigger version of Cambridge’s Grand Arcade, with more escalators, and far more shops I’d never seen before. The Festival pop-up shop is in the middle of the Arkaden, so I’ll try and visit that on my last day here and nab a t-shirt or mug as a memento. I also indulged in one of my favourite pastimes when on holiday in a foreign country: I went to a German supermarket. There’s something really exciting to me about seeing what other countries have on offer in their supermarkets. What kind of fruit and vegetables they have in season; how they display them; how the packaging differs from ours. It’s good to take breaks every so often from sitting in a darkened screen all day. I think the maximum I managed at Cannes was five films in one day. So far here it’s been four, and the weather does leave you inclined to stay wrapped up indoors more the Cote D’Azure did, so maybe I’ll be able to hit five again?
I finished the day, after sitting through half of THE BLUE HOUR, walking back to my hotel near midnight, catching up on the latest podcast from Bums on Seats, with Mark Liversidge at the helm. This is the community aspect of film I love. You can be in a new city, meeting old friends in the day, and then listening to good friends on the walk home, from a Cambridge 105 archive stored on your phone. Tomorrow I take in a Russian, German, and Ghanian film, with space either side to catch something if timing and tickets allow. I almost feel like getting my passport stamped for all these different journeys!
httpvh://youtu.be/x_BKQLz8Psk