This is the 59th annual film festival in Berlin. I have an accreditations pass to see most of the films for free, without waiting for tickets, or at least I am able to see any others I want and get tickets for free. Friday night was a kicker opening and all the affiliated establishments and theaters everywhere around had free wine. The films I am seeing for class, and truly the more interesting contributions to the festival, are the Forum films, of which this is the 39th anniversary in the Berlinale. These are mostly independent foreign films (with english subs at least!) done low-budget and perhaps a bit overshadowed by the big commercial films (and the presence of their cast and crew) which get most of the press here in Berlin. Friday I saw a documentary (called Defamation) about anti-semitism which left me a bit unmotivated but it was well-done for the most part and the director of this film handled his interviews intelligently and wittily. He was really searching for answers about anti-semitism as he had never experienced much of it while living in Israel his whole life.
I had a great start to my Saturday waking up still drunk from the previous night of revelry in the streets in order to see a 9:30am film which lasted 237 minutes and blew me away with constant enthrallment. Love Exposure by Japanese director Sono Sion is about a perverted son of a corrupt Catholic priest who sins in order to have something to confess to his father's demand that humanity isn't good enough. The actors are convincing to a scary degree, as the film is at times scary and graphic and perverted and twisted, with a great soundtrack of J-pop and religious music, hm. A cool feature of a film festival as large as this is the attendance of directors and actors who are glad to talk about their films and respond to the audience. Sono Sion seems like a funky dude and seriously genius. After four hours of this movie I only wanted to see it again. Piecing the movie together are really creative interplays of light-heartedness and intense drama and in the end of things Sion uses the nature of man's erection to reach out to the righteousness of living and loving. "Love between two people cannot create war," he says, while love for one's country certainly does.
I saw two other movies this day, only one about which I care to expound. One was just shitty, American, and shitty. Shitty acting and shit, and shit. But there was one good song and the cinematography was decent. Otherwise shit. But then I saw this film Mann Tänker Sitt, a Swedish film but a Norwegian saying as the title which translates to something like "Man Thinks It's Own" but which was presented as "Burrowing" to the english-speaking audience; the story of a boy Sebastian finding himself in the world at the young age of pre-pubescency, observing his small community and venturing into nature while venturing into his own mind as the place where decisions are made and life is created as it should belong to one's own. I want to see this again before the end of the festival to pick up some of the lines which were so philosophical and prophetic. Referenced in the film are Thoreau and Whitman, to give an idea of the standpoint here. The young boy narrates his world and the film is beautiful throughout. So beautiful. The soundtrack is impressive in elucidating the emotions of characters who have little dialogue except to point out inadequacies and faults of their own understandings of life, which Sebastian is very keen on picking up himself.
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