Lauras Stern, world premiere in Berlin

 Yesterday was a very busy day for me and one of my priorities was to find a good children movie. CinemaxX in Potsdamer Platz is always a good option, because you can fill the idle time of waiting with a walk and some nice cookies. Right at the entrance, it was a red carpet - not for me, of course - for the guests attending the world premiere of the children' movie Lauras Stern und die Traummonster, a Warner Bros production. Obviously, the movie theater was full of happy kids and their parents and lots of presents for both of them. Probably I will go to see this movie as well in the very near future. Till then, some pics before the official launch.

Movies to skip: 1.Mai - Helden bei der Arbeit

This could be the worst movie about Berlin for me: a normal Mayday in Kreuzberg, where blind violence is the word of the day. Not even the 11-year-old Turkish kid Yavuz isn't spared as he is almost about to kill a Maoist/Anarchist freethinker/or freelancer he met on the street. Any single minutes you see blood, violence, aggression and anarchy, with or without reason. 

The kitsch of the characters and their actions is the bitter taste I got after watching this movie, telling maybe something about some people from some part of Kreuzberg. 

Sun Avenue, Berlin East

Ossi life

During the years of the Wall, Sonnenallee was one foot in the West - for hundreds of meters - and another in the East - for kilometers. I've been in the area for the first time a couple of months ago and I don't think I will visit the place soon: the high concentration of the social problems is reflected in the strange behavior of its inhabitants, mostly if it is late in the evening after a couple of beers. 

I couldn't resist the temptation to see the movie with the same name, introduced as a comedy, in fact a sweet-bitter comedy of the communist life as we wish to see years after we learned - or been teached - the daily practice of freedom. A book dedicated to the same Sun Avenue - Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee - was published shortly after the release of the movie, in 1999, and includes several individual stories of younsters' lives in East Berlin.

Teenagers from the wrong side of Berlin are living their "normal" lives: listening to rock music - smuggled from the "evil" West, challenging their brain-washed communist teachers, falling in love, betraying - when Stasi temtaption is high, getting drunk or making public apologies. You will find a highly neutral and humorous presentation of the daily life-style. Actually, it was normal for the citizens of the DDR to cue for food, to smuggle everything possible, to enjoy the pleasure of some cheap capitalistic luxuries - coffee, cigarettes etc. And maybe, if not the rock'n'roll, we would still need a passport to go in the East - of course, not for asking the citizenship of the "real Germany" but only for the fun of some anthropological experiments. 

Movie Review: The black sheep

Lots of laughs and grins, but at the end I concluded that it's too real to be not untrue. Schwarze Schafe is a one hour and a half comedy filmed in Berlin, mostly black-and-white, where you will meet all of the daily stereotypes of the citizens of the Berlin Republik. 

What we can find in this box: alcohol, a lot of alcohol (actually, I must confess that I didn't have such a frequency of opportunities to drink since in the high-school; in comparison with other places I've been to, here poor or rich, educated or non-educated, all are desperately enjoying the pleasures of alcohol, whatever the content of the bottle and the hour of the day), the pleasure of being supported by the state, the coloruful wolrd of the U-Bahn, the psychedelic dreams, the Munchen vs. Berlin state-of-mind, the cheap geopolitical thoughts about the Middle East at a joint (the anti-American opinions included), river Spree, the parks, the double lives (modest at day, brave at night), the Satanist grotesque. 

There are many stories in stories, with people rarely crossing each other, but most likely to meet, with a lot of chilling out and working for nothing. 

This is Berlin.

Berlin Movies: Fremder Freund/Stranger Friend

This is not a movie about Berlin, but it's using the city as a pretext and framework. However, as a Berliner, I was able to identify many aspects and details that are specific to certain daily habits of the city.

Chris found Yunes, a student from Yemen (played by the Iranian-German actor Navid Akhavan) through an ad from a Turkish grocery shop. They move together - as many people do easily in Berlin, without knowing too much each other - share their lives and free time. Yunes is helped to get in touch with a girl he thought it's the woman of his life - but obviously she's belonging to a different cultural and social background, they party together and learn from each other's customs. 

At the beginning Yunes is a non-observant Muslim, shy and childish somehow in his enthusiasm about people and relationships. After the break-up with the girl friend, he's becoming more and more observant, is attending various discussion groups about Islam, it's growing a beard and start praying. 

Although from the point of view of the behavior, those changes were new, from the point of view of the discourse, we don't have too many reasons to be surprised. Once, during a going-out to the sea with Chris, its girlfriend and his girlfriend, Yunes's passionately involved in explaining the "situation in Gaza" through the anti-Semitic stereotypes. From this point on, later on, his various negative affirmations about non-Muslims could be a natural development of reasoning. 

The movie starts in March 2000 and end up shortly after September 11. More than one year of full time in the life of youngsters in Berlin. The movie is operating through various flash-backs and reinsertion of time sequences helping you to understand various events from Yunes's life. A couple of months before September 11 he disappear without any trace, the parents don't know, the former girlfriend doesn't. When Chris goes to search after his acquaintances - and you have also an image of the old mosque in Wilmersdorf, out of service for a long time - all the roads are leading to his death. Yunes, who loved to dance turned into a "fedayyin" for other people's causes.

If you ask me, I would suggest to discuss this movie to a discussion group about Islam, it would be a better subject touching upon integration and cultural tolerance, better than any other theoretical and theological approach. It's about life - and death - of the soul. 

I found the movie extremely relevant for the daily life in Berlin and for the challenges many youngsters of Muslim background are facing here, not always with a successful happy end.
PS. The music, by Matthias Beine is wonderful.

Berlinale, the love after

Berlinale is over, obviously. In my case, given some family and professional reasons, I ended up exactly one week ago, but I have only now some more time to filter my - not too many memories and very personal impressions.

As I previously wrote, for me it was the first time since I live here when I attended an extended program at the best European film festival. Last year doesn't count, as I attended only one evening, at Arsenal, of short movies. Not to many things, really.

This year, I was more than ready and even convinced some of my hectic friends to join me for some screenings and was extremely happy to meet international people visiting the Berlinale. Good memories and discussions and, from this point of view, Berlinale was an excellent social opportunity.

For finishing short with the negative part: What I didn't like AT ALL - the mess with getting the tickets, reserving the tickets, waiting in line, missing good opportunities because of the creepy website, the unfriendly presentation of the movies - both in print or online.

What I enjoyed: the mass of people moving around Potsdamerplatz looking for movies, talking about movies, the usual Babel I was hearing for every screening, the nice, cosy and intellectual discussions after and before the screenings, the good German translations of the movies - even not always necessarily, but I am get used now with this obsession of translating almost every single movie - the smart film directors and actors presents for various events, the shuttle bus connecting various places, the chance to live in Berlin.

Nice memories already.

Movie review: No place to go

Still from the category "movies", an older one, I watched at the end of the last year: "No place to go" or, in the German version: Die Unberührbare (used for the Indian cast of the Untouchables).

Hannah Flanders, once a glamorous author and left-journalist, living in Munchen, is keen to move to Berlin, after the news of the fall of the Wall. Here, he is facing not only sentimental deceptions but also realize that the communist ideas she supported from her Western fancy appartment while financially supported by her bourgeois parents, weren't shared by the East Berliners. The reality of the deteriorated appartments from the East, in the middle of no man's lands separating an area from another, in contrast with the familiarity of the hotels from the West is obvious. Her life-long ideals are falling in the same time with the bricks of the wall.

The movie is sharing a bit of the traditional conflict between North and South, Berlin and Munich and the eternal denial of the Western Germany left. 

Movie Review: Berlin Calling - The German Trainspotting

Still under the influence of the Berlinale film festival (about which I will share my final conclusions in a later post), I intensively continued to watch some movies, among which the very popular Berlin Calling. As directly related to the culture of my host city, I was more interested to grasp some more information and inspiration about the recent and very recent history. With a normal taste of jealousy, because sharing episodes I haven't been part of. 

Paul Kalkbrenner aka DJ Ickarus is not a Berliner by birth, being born in Dresden, but the big reunited city is his main playground, be it for ad-hoc concerts in small barracks or for the rehab in a Moabit clinic. The rhythm of the city - sometimes depressing - is coinciding in many sequences with the pace of the city itself: going through a new facelift, imposing a new change of perspective and attitude. Ickarus' music is introducing in his songs the sounds of the new city - including variations of the obsessive signal of closing the doors from the S-Bahn. The big pressure of change is pushing some people apart, ignoring others, pushing some at the brinks of depression or nothingness. It is why the electronic music here is very original, without too many Indian/Oriental influences. You are what do you hear. The German Trainspotting is playing its own music, with its kids of the Berlin Wall and its stoned stars going by S-Bahn. The glimpse of the popular glamour.
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