Some Notes on a Festival

Some notes on the Berlinale, 2011

Into Thin Air was the first film I saw. It was in the program, Geographies of the Other Power, and was directed by Mohammadreza Farzad. In this short film he uses the scant bit of footage in existence from the 1978 “Bloody Friday” massacre that took place in Tehran. The director uses small circles to isolate anonymous participants who stood up the Shah’s police force, and took us on speculative journeys in an attempt to put a “real” person into the tragedy. What may this or that person have done that day, or who they may have been? These questions help us recover that event for Other histories, one consequence of which is that histories of resistance to injustice become global, and the bravery and enragement find their places both in their original, local context, and also become linked in another way to what we are now seeing in Egypt, Tunisia, or in the recent past of Thailand. It was a fine film for this reason and I thank the director for recovering this.

The second film was Similik, from the National Parks project of Canada. The director was Zacharius Kunuk. In this film we see images of the arctic slowly move from the glacial to the barren as a fisherman tells a tale of what his father had told him about predicting weather. Slowly you see a culture and a way of life vanish. Life on the Front of global warming. The music was also fine in this short, but I was left wondering why a shot of the musicians was included in the film. It seemed to have nothing to do with the film, nor help it in any way. This question was answered when at the Q and A afterwards that this was one of 13 commissioned films with a clear concept; pairing a filmmaker with musicians in a National park to make a film in five days. That said, the whole series would have been nice, and kept everything in a context. Set aside, I think this nice work would have been much stronger edited specifically to stand alone.

Follow Me, directed by Johannes Hammel was the first feature I saw. I was attracted by the still used in the catalogue. I like masks. Indeed, the film starts with a carnival, and masked people are everywhere. Sometimes I want life to be like this. The film was beautifully shot, the sound design was amazing, and the editing was really seamless. The film told the story of a family in disintegration with the skill and subtlety of a hammer. It is a simple one to one narrative where the director walks the skilled actors through an A-B-C drama. It may be a fine film for twelve year olds confronting oppressive power structures for the first time, but presumably this was for adults. Hmmm.

The next day I saw the second program of Other Powers. The First film in the program was called Führung, and was made by Rene Frölke. It was a document of a head of state visiting an art school. The merging of art languages with languages of power, mixed with a little philosophy and economics was entertaining and clever. For me this was about all this film was. The next film in the program, National Motives, made by Raphael Grisey really got me. I love this kind of film making. It was mainly static shots of monuments in Budapest, and the city itself was the main character. Local audio provided the narration and acting. It was a beautiful short film, and the intensity reached its peak when shots of statues were accompanied by the sounds of a right wing political rally. Perfect. The next film was called Found Cuban Mounts, and was made by Adriana Salazar Arroyo. It consisted of shots of monuments shot in partial close-up, very quick shots, edited to a speech of Fidel Castro. These monuments were broken by shots of the lush vegetation of Cuba, the hard skin of stone at times broken with what looked like bullets contrasting with the soft skin of leaves and soil. Both of these last two films made me leave this program really moved.

Cheonggyecheon Medley by Kelvin Kyung Kan Park was the second feature I saw. What a fine movie filled with fine compositions of machinery in close-up and an ambience of another lost world; one of labor in the last gasps of the industrial revolution, which could be called World War Two. A family of three generations of iron workers located in one specific neighborhood is examined, the third and last of these generations being the one to question the damage done to lives, to bodies. This is done in the form of a letter to a dead grandfather and through a recurring dream. The voice over is very poetic, and does not shy away from examining class structures through work occupation. The forefathers were working class men, the new generation represented by a film maker. The film relies on no tricks, and depicts a kind of hell blossoming on our planet earth; wasted lives and useless neighborhoods in the never-ending effects of global economics.

Heinz Emigholz makes….no, excels at making a type of film I love. In Random Thoughts he combines his own craft, film making, with other crafts, disciplines and arts that he loves. He does this incredible feat in the a diaristic form, erudite, concise and critical. He will in a single “scene” (often borrowed from a painting or building the camera rests its gaze on) describe the craft he examines….the brushstrokes of a painting, or when a building was erected, and anylize it, weave in its historical context, while at the same time tell you something very personal about his life. Fucking brilliant. I had to leave, it was too much for the moment, I found myself wanting to gaze at the peanuts I had left on the balcony railing as my head kept reeling with each new scene. I will have to see this whole thing when I am ready.