byronic :: mad bad and dangerous to know

My Berlinale - Day 4

Spent Valentine’s Day with somebody I love, my adoptive little brother Ben (whose tumblr is Fußgänger). Ben is staying in Berlin for a few months to research material for his PhD on German theatre; he took me on a walk along the astonishing Karl-Marx-Allee, the glorious boulevard of the DDR. The area is infused with what Germans call Ostalgie - nostalgia for the East and for Soviet-era style, architecture, products, and even politics. It wasn’t as cold as it’s been, but the sky was the colour of milk, and a light icy drizzle filled the air. A sunny day wouldn’t have been appropriate to explore this area: Ostalgie projected its faded tint onto my expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed. The buildings on the Allee look imposing and deserted. The shops and cafés are dark from the outside and spartan on the inside, but somehow they’re welcoming and cosy. We talked about Nabokov, friendship, and growing up, and made a pact to go and see the Northern lights in Iceland together at the end of the year.

The Kino International is a wonder of 1960s cinema architecture. I was caught taking pictures and asked to stop, so here are only a few shots of the interior, but click the wikipedia link for more. Unfortunately we saw what is likely to be the 2012 Berlinale’s worst film: Cherry - a poor attempt at a Mike Leigh-style social drama about a teenager who chooses to be become a porn actress to escape her awful family. A collection of stereotypes, standard indie/’Sundance’ aesthetics, awful dialogue, improbable characters, misguided understanding of female emancipation, sexuality and gaze - it was shockingly bad.

By contrast, in the morning I saw Miguel Gomes’ new film Tabu - a beautifully shot, beguiling Portuguese love story/colonial fantasy involving a 1960s pop band, an explorer, a suicidal film producer, a deluded elderly lady, and a crocodile. I haven’t quite made up my mind about it yet - it was enjoyable but very long and very slow, and I’m not sure its pace was adequate to the story. Great visual work though, all shot in lyrical black and white, with some delightfully surreal meta-filmic sequences and flashbacks accompanied by voice-over narration.

Harun Farocki’s lecture in the evening (at the Berlinale Talent Campus) was worth the trip to Berlin alone. He’s a master of explaining the political implications of film grammar, and since my friend Boris introduced me to his work, Farocki has been a constant source of inspiration. He showed Baruchello & Grifi’s fantastic experimental film La Verifica Incerta, then proceded to explain various techniques and theories involved in its making. He also has a rich and very dry sense of humour, which made it all not just enlightening, but also immensely pleasurable.

Got back to Schöneberg for a glass of wine with my friend and host, then off to bed.