Emma's Berlin Blog: Entertainment - Film as a cultural event

Hallo Leute!

For 10 days every year, Berlin hosts one of the biggest international film festivals in the world, called Berlinale (you can click this link for more information). It attracts tens of thousands of people each year, including 20,000 professionals and 3,800 journalists. It was founded in 1951 (71 years ago) and started at the beginning of the Cold War so that there could be a "showcase of the free world" after the end of WW2. The political roots of Berlinale are reflected heavily in many of the films today. (If you'd like to read more about this political beginning and history of this festival, click here, here, and here!!). Because the goal is the festival is to showcase a multitude of perspectives, there are about 400 films submitted to the festival in a variety of categories (to compare: Sundance Film Festival showed about 100 films and had an attendance of about 46,000 people in 2016). The categories include Competition, Shorts, Panorama, Perspektive Deutsches Kino, Generation, and more. There are showings of every film multiple times every day and at a multitude of theatres all over the city and the tickets are VERY affordable and cheap (around 15 euros to only 7.5 euros for students or kids) which makes this an accessible cultural event for most of the public! This year 320,000 tickets were sold. Fun fact: My friend sat 2 rows in front of Matt Damon at one of the showings this year!!!)

I was so lucky that I was in Berlin to experience and attend the Berlinale this year. Because I was away both weekends of the festival and had school during the week, I was only able to make it to three films. Buying tickets was very easy, all I had to do was go online and see which films looked interesting to me and could buy a student discount ticket. The ticket was downloaded onto my phone. I wanted to experience German film so the first film I saw was a Deutsches Kino LGBTQ+ film called "Knochen und Namen" (Bones and Names). This was held in an AMAZING theatre called Zoo Palast with 4 theatres. The outside of the theatre had a red carpet and security guards but unfortunately, no celebrities were there at the time. I didn't know what to expect from this screening. Would the theatre be packed to the brim? Would I be the only one there? I came to realize that I should NOT have arrived one minute before it started because I was stuck in the very front row of a sold-out crowd. Germans are ALWAYS on time and I should've known better. Nonetheless, the film was incredible. It was the debut film of the filmmaker and the audience was definitely pleased. I wish I was fluent in German so that I could understand the movie without reading the English subtitles, but the actors portrayed a lot of emotion through their voices, face, and body. I went alone to this screening, which I was a bit nervous about, but I have learned to be confident and ask "English, Bitte" or "Sprechen Sie English?" if I don't understand what someone is saying to me. A lot of the time you can get away without understanding everything someone is saying to you in another language at events like these.

I had to run quickly over to my next showing that started 30 minutes after Knochen and Namen, and it was 29 minutes away. Luckily I have learned how to use public transportation here so I hopped onto the U-Bahn (underground train!) and took it to the other theatre! I met up with a friend for a Panorama Documentary film called Iron Butterflies which was about the war between Russia and Ukraine. It documented the attack on Malaysian Passenger Jet MH17 (from the Netherlands to Malaysia carrying 278 passengers) by Russian Forces as it flew over a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine. It was a bit of an abstract film mixed with documentaries, interviews, raw footage, real audio of Russian forces, and more. I had no idea about this incident during the war because it happened in 2014, but I am so glad I went and learned about it. After the film, the director and producer came out and talked about how they made the film and answered questions from the audience. On the way out, we were handed souvenirs.

The last movie I was was called The Fablemans by Steven Spielberg. It is a true story based on Spielberg's childhood. The venue was Verti Musical Hall, which is a huge venue for big concerts. I am not sure how many people were in the audience but I want to say around 300? Since this was the next day, I knew to arrive 30 minutes early for a good seat. I went with three other friends and we sat in elevated seats so we could get a good view. The showing was at 10:30pm and the movie was 2.5 hours long so it was hard to stay awake but I am glad I did. The movie was moving, funny, sad, confusing, and inspiring. I felt a lot of different emotions watching it and that is an ode to Speilbergs filmmaking talent.

The three films I saw were unique to each other as they each focused on a different aspect of life. I think this is why Berlinale attracts thousands of people every year from around the world. It does not intend to hide or block reality, but rather showcase it, even if it hurts or could offend people. I think this is different from America because so many things are filtered out whereas Germany has more of a raw edge to it in terms of entertainment. There is more of an international awareness here. I have also noticed there is significantly more awareness of the war on Ukraine (and other crises around the world) than in the US. Although the physical closeness of Germany to Ukraine plays a role, I don't think that should affect anybody's knowledge of atrocities of any event around the world. Besides the Iron Butterflies documentary, there were films about pretty much every age group, religion, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, etc. The political roots of Berlinale are VERY strong still and people come to see what is happening around the world. Another thing about Berlinale is that it is not only for film nerds whereas some other film festivals in the US may be solely for super film fans because most films are indie. Here there is surely something for EVERYONE (Berlinale plays old Disney movies like Cinderella) and that is why it is so special. I am so glad I got to experience this AMAZING film festival and I hope I can come back another year!