Posted by Larry Gleeson
Once again the Berlinale Goes Kiez special series is bringing the glamour of the festival to Berlin’s very diverse neighborhoods and the city of Potsdam. The Berlinale will screen at seven select arthouse cinemas known for participating in and contributing to cultural life in their respective neighborhoods.
In Neukölln a new cinema w o l f will be opening its doors for the first time with the Berlinale. And in the Wrangelkiez, one of Kreuzberg’s most upbeat neighborhoods, the Red Carpet will again be rolled out at the newly converted and enlarged EISZEIT cinema.
From February 11 to 17, 2017, a selection of films from the official Berlinale program will be shown in neighborhoods, ranging from Berlin-Weißensee to beyond the city limits in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Each evening one arthouse cinema will be turned into a festival venue.
Members of film teams have already announced their intention to present their works personally and discuss them with audiences after the screenings. At each neighborhood cinema a prominent film personality will serve as its patron.
The Berlinale Goes Kiez series will also begin with the official opening film of this year’s Berlinale. Django (Competition) by Etienne Comar will kick off the evening at the Bundesplatz-Kino in Wilmersdorf. Local moviegoers can expect a long and interesting evening, as shortly before midnight a film from the Berlinale Classics program will be presented as well: the digitally restored version of George A. Romero’s horror classic Night of the Living Dead.
For the first time NATIVe, the Berlinale special series on Indigenous cinema, has been invited to participate in Berlinale Goes Kiez. At the EISZEIT cinema in Kreuzberg, two films from Canada will represent this year’s special region of focus, the Artic.
At the w o l f in Neukölln, Berlinale Goes Kiez and Berlinale Talents will launch their first collaboration. In public talks titled “Local Heroes: Community Cinema Reloaded”, innovative international cinema operators will discuss with the audience ways to curate, finance, and involve the neighborhood in local movie theatres.
Festival Director Dieter Kosslick: “Our ‘local heroes’ are neighborhood cinemas in Berlin and Brandenburg that are open to topics important to the community and foster an on-going dialogue through the stories presented on their screens.”
Advance sales start on February 6, 2017; tickets will also be available at the respective cinemas.
Neighbourhood cinemas and programme
Saturday, February 11 at Bundesplatz-Kino, Wilmersdorf
6.00 pm Competition
Django by Etienne Comar
9.00 pm Competition
Teströl és lélekröl (On Body and Soul) by Ildikó Enyedi
11.45 pm Berlinale Classics
Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero
Sunday, February 12 at Toni & Tonino, Weißensee
3.30 pm Generation Kplus
Die Häschenschule – Jagd nach dem Goldenen Ei (Rabbit School – Guardians of the Golden Egg) by Ute von Münchow-Pohl
6.30 pm Competition
Wilde Maus (Wild Mouse) by Josef Hader
9.30 pm Perspektive Deutsches Kino
Back for Good by Mia Spengler
Monday, February 13 at Odeon, Schöneberg
6.30 pm Berlinale Special Gala
Le jeune Karl Marx (The Young Karl Marx) by Raoul Peck
9.30 pm Competition
Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman) by Sebastián Lelio
Tuesday, February 14 at w o l f , Neukölln
4.30 pm Talents Go Kiez
“Local Heroes: Community Cinema Reloaded”
Public talk (in English)
6.30 pm Panorama Special
Tiger Girl by Jakob Lass
9.30 pm Forum
Chemi bednieri ojakhi (My Happy Family) by Nana & Simon
Wednesday, February 15 at Thalia Programmkino, Potsdam-Babelsberg
6.30 pm Competition
Toivon tuolla puolen (The Other Side of Hope) by Aki Kaurismäki
9.30 pm Competition
Beuys by Andres Veiel
Thursday, February 16 at City Kino Wedding
in Centre Français de Berlin, Wedding
6.30 pm Forum
Tiere (Animals) by Greg Zglinski
9.30 pm Berlinale Shorts Go Kiez
Fishing Is Not Done On Tuesdays by Lukas Marxt, Marcel Odenbach
Kometen (The Comet) by Victor Lindgren
Everything by David OReilly
Estás vendo coisas (You are seeing things) by Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca
Os Humores Artificiais (The Artificial Humors) by Gabriel Abrantes
Friday, February 17 at EISZEIT cinema, Kreuzberg
6.30 pm Culinary Cinema Goes Kiez
Theater of Life by Peter Svatek
After the screening menu at Markthalle Neun
9.00 pm NATIVe Goes Kiez
Tungijuq by Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël
Angry Inuk by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
Berlinale Goes Kiez is supported by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Its complete programme can be found at http://www.berlinale.de. Please contact Uschi Feldges for more information (feldges@berlinale.de).
(Source: Berlinale Press Office)
“R100” (The title is itself a play on the Japanese movie ratings R-15 and R-18) is an almost early-Woody Allen-esque comedy (think “Without Feathers” era or “What’s Up, Tigher Lilly?”) about Takafumi Katayama (Nao Ohmori, the star of “Ichi The Killer” fame) whose life has gone a bit pear-shaped. His department store job is mindless, his father-in-law is helping Katayama raise his young son while his wife is in a coma in the hospital and things are just looking kind of rough for the guy (the color palette for much of the film is all browns, tans and neutrals, washed out and quite 70’s looking in spots).
The Dutch director and screenwriter Paul Verhoeven began his directing career in 1969 with the successful Dutch television series Floris. After his feature film debut Business is Business in 1971, came the erotic thriller Turkish Delight in 1973, a big hit in the Netherlands that also garnered a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1974 Academy Awards. Following his international breakthrough Soldier of Orange (1977) and The Fourth Man (1983), Paul Verhoeven moved to Hollywood to focus on an evolution of style in his work. Large productions featuring lots of action and special effects, like RoboCop (1987), and especially Total Recall (1990), were big box-office hits that revolutionised the science fiction film genre while maintaining credibility as auteur films. The provocative, erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), which was nominated for two Academy Awards, saw Paul Verhoeven return to themes prevalent in his Dutch works. In 1997 and 2000, he once again focused on science fiction with Starship Troopers and Hollow Man. After nearly 20 years in Hollywood, Paul Verhoeven returned to the Netherlands in 2006 to film Black Book (2006). Starting in 2007, he moved his attention to writing. In 2016 he returned to the screen with Elle, which not only won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in the category Foreign Language, but also earned Isabelle Huppert the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha Fourati is something of an institution in the film world. The English literature graduate started off as a teacher and translator of screenplays. In 1992, she launched the Carthage Film Festival “Projects’ Workshop” to assist Arabs and Africans in developing their scripts and the follow-up initiative “Takmil” to support post-production in 2014. In 1995, she founded her own production company Nomadis Images. The many fiction and documentary features, and short films she has produced and co-produced include: Raja Amari’s multiple award-winning Satin Rouge (2002), Barakat! (dir: Djamila Sahraoui, Berlinale Forum 2006), Raja Amari’s Buried Secrets (2009) and Foreign Body (Berlinale Forum 2017). She produced all of Mohamed Ben Attia’s short films and his full-length debut Hedi, which screened in the Berlinale Competition in 2016 and won the Best First Feature Award and Silver Bear for Best Actor (Majd Mastoura). Dora Bouchoucha also founded the screenwriting workshop SUD ECRITURE for Arab and African scripts in 1997 which has launched many award winning films to date. She was festival director of the Carthage Film Festival in 2008, 2010, and 2014. She was appointed president of the Fonds Sud Cinéma of the CNC in 2010; and president of the follow-up institution, Aide aux Cinemas du Monde, in 2014.
Born in Denmark of Icelandic parentage, Olafur Eliasson quickly garnered international attention after completing the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He participated in the Berlin Biennale in 1998 and the Venice Biennale in 2003, and his piece “The weather project”, which was installed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, attracted over two million visitors. Today, with his sculptures, installations, paintings, photographs and films that often focus on physical phenomena in nature as well as climate change, he has become one of the world’s most important contemporary artists. Eliasson, who founded his studio in Berlin in 1995, has received countless awards. Besides being involved in art, he is the founder of a global sustainable energy project and social business called Little Sun, as well as the international architectural firm Studio Other Spaces. His latest artworks include a number of installations at the Palace of Versailles in 2016.
Celebrated American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal is one of the outstanding talents of her generation. After studying literature at Columbia University in New York and acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, she became known for her roles in Donnie Darko (dir: Richard Kelly, 2001) and in Spike Jonze’s Berlinale Competition entry Adaptation (2002). Her big breakthrough came when she played the lead in the film Secretary (dir: Steven Shainberg, 2002). For it she received her first Golden Globe nomination and won several awards, including an IFP/Gotham Award for Breakthrough Performance. She went on to star in, e.g., Mike Newell’s Mona Lisa Smile (2003), Marc Forster’s Stranger than Fiction (2006), Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006), Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), Sam Mendes’s Away We Go (2009), and Roland Emmerich’s White House Down (2013). For her role in Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart (2009) she was nominated for an Oscar. In 2014 she headlined the British TV series The Honourable Woman, for which she garnered a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. Gyllenhaal, who in recent years has performed on Broadway, is currently cast to star in The Deuce, a new HBO series that she is also producing.
After finishing her studies at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, Julia Jentsch, who was born in Berlin, began her career on the stage. In 2002 “Theater heute” magazine rated her the best female debut of the year. Her breakthrough on the screen was in The Edukators (2004, dir: Hans Weingartner) and in Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (Berlinale Competition 2005), for which she won not only the Berlinale’s Silver Bear, but also both the German and European Film Awards. The film itself, which was directed by Marc Rothemund, was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then Julia Jentsch has starred in a number of works, including 33 Scenes from Life by Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska, Hannah Arendt by Margarethe von Trotta, and I Served the King of England by Jiří Menzel. With Effie Briest (Berlinale Special 2009, dir: Hermine Huntgeburth) and 24 Weeks (Berlinale Competition 2016; dir: Anne Zohra Berrached), Jentsch was again invited to the Berlinale. Most recently she performed in front of the camera in Hans-Christian Schmid’s mini-series Das Verschwinden, which will be released in 2017.
Diego Luna’s breakthrough role came with Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también, for which he shared the Marcello Mastroianni Award with Gael García Bernal at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. His feature film acting credits include Frida (dir. Julie Taymor, 2002), The Terminal (dir: Steven Spielberg, 2004), Rudo y Cursi (dir: Carlos Cuarón, 2008), Milk (dir: Gus van Sant, Berlinale Panorama 2009), Contraband (dir: Baltasar Kormákur, 2012) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir: Gareth Edwards, 2016). Next fall he will star in Flatliners (dir: Niels Arden Oplev). Luna’s directorial debut, titled Abel, premiered at the film festival in Cannes in 2010. This was followed by César Chávez (Berlinale Special 2014) and Mr. Pig, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016. He and Bernal co-founded “Ambulante” in 2005, a charity organization dedicated, among other things, to promoting documentary film. Luna is also a member of the board of the Washington Office on Latin America.
The director and screenwriter trained first as an actor before he turned to filmmaking. After studying at the Beijing Film Academy, Wang Quan’an, who was born in Yan’an in Shaanxi province, presented his debut film Lunar Eclipse in 1999. It screened in the Berlinale’s Forum section in 2002 after making various award-winning appearances at festivals around the world. He was selected with Tuya’s Marriage for the Competition in 2007 and, as the third Chinese filmmaker in the festival’s history, won the Golden Bear. Three years later, Apart Together was chosen as the Berlinale’s opening film and went on to win the Silver Bear for Best Script, which Wang co-wrote with Jin Na. He returned to the Berlinale Competition in 2012 with White Deer Plain, an adaptation of the historical novel of the same name, where his director of photography, Lutz Reitemeier, won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution.
On the next 3-5 years, all exhibitors will need to focus on the customer experience to stay competitive, but this can look very different depending on their type. On the one hand, we are seeing the emergence of a technologically oriented cinema optimized for experiencing blockbuster fare. On the other hand, we are seeing a focus on human interactions and live performance – so called “live cinema” – as a rapidly developing segment of the exhibition sector, helping audiences both new and old to build relationships with institutions and curators. These ostensibly very different styles of exhibition have in common that they are immersive, allowing the viewers to place themselves socially or physically inside the story, or to engage with its themes together. The social aspect is also at the heart of the growing market for film festivals aimed at general audiences.
