Berlinale, Berlin’s international film festival will continue for ten days. Like in last year, our correspondent Daniel Tkatch be there to cover new cinematographic developments from a pan-European and cosmopolitan perspective. Tune in to this page, our Twitter account and Facebook page for live updates, film reviews, and red carpet gossip.
Articles
- Images projected on walls: Berlinale and the global political drama By Daniel Tkatch
“Images projected on walls: Berlinale and the global political drama” By Daniel Tkatch
Live Updates
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- Watch the opening gala of the Berlinale on ZDF (German).
- [quotes] “Difficult times stimulate real artists,” said Dieter Kosslick on the red carpet before the start of the festival’s opening gala. He has been the director of the Berlinale for the last 16 years.
- [facts] Since this year a brand new prize will be awarded at the Berlinale — Glashütte Original Documentary Award for the best documentary film, which will be endowed with € 50,000. Among the jury members this year is Laura Poitras, the director of CITIZENFOUR, a film about Edward Snowden, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2015, from the German Film Prize, the prize of the Director’s Guild of America, and the BAFTA prize.
Laura Poitras (Photo: Jan Stürman)
- [guests] This is perhaps the most unusual guest ever to attend the Berlinale opening gala: the President of Slovenia, Borut Pahor. What is he doing here?
- [quotes] “Berlinale is so popular with the wider audience partly because it takes place in the city of Berlin. In Venice one would usually see just a few pensioners on the red carpet, Cannes is de facto the film industry’s incest orgy, while the special atmosphere in Berlin is made by the big city’s pouring into the cinemas.” — Katja Nicodemus, a film critic
- [quotes] “Alternative facts and bizarre performances were, until recently, almost exclusively limited to films, not democracies.” — Monika Grütters, Germany’s Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
- [quotes] “Humour paired with courage results in hope, and the current Berlinale’s programme reflects an entire wave of such hopeful films.” — Dieter Kosslick
- [film recommendation] The world première of the film The Bomb, which was accompanied by live music performance, perhaps as a historic tribute to silent cinema. The film is a power reminder that the threat of nuclear weapons by no means belongs to history.
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- [film recommendation] “Politics, instructions manual” is the story of the people behind Podemos and about their struggles to create the movement. It also poses the question whether it is possible and legitimate to utilise populist means for progressive ends?
Pablo Iglesias and Alexis Tsipras (Filmstill from “Politics, instructions manual”, ©Berlinale)
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- [quote] “For decades now, Paul Verhoeven has been developing a fascinating cinematic gaze on the human body: the erotic body in his Dutch films from the 1970s, the technified body in RoboCop (1987), Sharon Stone’s sexualized body in Basic Instinct (1992), the fascistoid body in Starship Troopers (1997), and, most recently, the violated body in Elle (2016). What a crazy choice of a jury president!” — Katja Nicodemus, a film critic.
- [quote] “For decades now, Paul Verhoeven has been developing a fascinating cinematic gaze on the human body: the erotic body in his Dutch films from the 1970s, the technified body in RoboCop (1987), the sexualized body played by Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992), the fascistoid body in Starship Troopers (1997), and, most recently, the violated body in Elle (2016). What a crazy choice of a jury president!” — Katja Nicodemus, a film critic.
- [film recommendation] Aki Kaurismäki’s film The Other Side of Hope is a humoristic story of two travellers whose ways cross: Khaled, a Syrian refugee, and Wikström, a travelling Finnish salesman peddling ties and men’s shirts.
Filmstill from “The Other Side of Hope”, ©Berlinale
- [quote] “You can’t have a democracy if you don’t think of the weakest, the most vulnerable, the minorities.” Agnieszka Holland
The editorial team of Katoikos
