The EFM reports almost 40,000 visits during the first half of the European Film Market. At peak times on Sunday, more than 2,400 international industry attendees poured into the Martin-Gropius-Bau. This is a new record compared with 2009, which registered 1,738 trade professionals. EFM Director Beki Probst expressed her delight at the positive, energizing atmosphere in the Martin-Gropius-Bau and the Marriott: “People are coming in large numbers, the choice is enormous, the cinemas are full, th...
While Bollywood is among the most recognizable cinema genres in the world (and rivals Hollywood in its prolific popularity), there is another Indian cinema, of a more independent stripe, that is emerging. The Berlinale is focusing on these groundbreaking films that tackle serious and poetic subjects, with nary a dancing girl in sight.
One of the films generating the most excitement and interest is THE MAN BEYOND THE BRIDGE, a bittersweet dramatic film that has already captured t...
While there is certainly a network of gay film festivals around the globe, the Berlinale (in particular the Panorama section) is considered ground zero for programmers and distributors interested in films with a gay persuasion. The Festival not only proudly showcases the work but also is the only major A list festival to give out a specific award for gay cinema, the legendary Teddy Awards. The Teddys celebrate their 24th anniversary this year as the "gay Oscar".
Feature...
With a record number of sales companies participating at this year's European Film Market (along with an obvious drop in the number of buyers), it is heartening to hear that there are new companies coming into the fold, attempting to re-energize the sales sector and infuse it with new blood and new energy.
A company that is coming on strong at the Market is CINESAVVY, a new sales and production company based in Toronto. The buzz surrounding this new kid on the block is the high-profile c...
Jonah and the Vicarious Nature of Homesickness by Bryn Chainey wins the Berlin Today Award 2010
Festival Director Dieter Kosslick, together with the heads of the Campus, Matthijs Wouter Knol and Christine Tröstrum, director Isabel Coixet and film composer Alexandre Desplat, opened the Berlinale Talent Campus 2010 on Saturday evening (13.2) in the Theater Hebbel am Ufer. Until February 18, 350 Talents from 95 countries will meet with renowned international experts at the Hebbel am Ufer...
Side by Side LGBT International Film Festival receives prize from the Teddy Award Foundation at this years 60th Berlin International Film Festival.
The Teddy Award Foundation has awarded Russia's first annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) film festival Side by Side a monetary prize of 2000 Euros. The prize was awarded on the opening evening of the 24th Teddy Award by Klaus Mabel Aschenneller director of the Teddy Award Foundation in recognition of Side by Side'...
The Berlinale, because of its history and Berlin's geographic location as the nexus between Western and Eastern Europe, has become an important place for Eastern European organizations to make announcements and for Eastern European films to be showcased.
One of the oldest film festivals in Europe, Film Festival Zlin in the Czech Republic, will kick off its 50th anniversary celebration in Berlin on Tuesday evening, 16 February with a cocktail reception at the Czech Republic Embassy...
As has become a pleasant habit here at the Berlinale, Asian cinema is highly prominent in all sections of the Festival. The Berlinale has long been the international launching pad for films and filmmakers from the Far East. The Festival is credited with giving their first international recognition to such celebrated filmmakers as Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, Kim Ki-Duk, Johnnie To and Chan Wook Park. Ang Lee's debut film PUSHING HANDS premiered in Berlin and Lee eventually went on to win ...
One of German cinema's most famous and respected actresses, Hanna Schygulla, is receiving a multi-film hommage as part of this year's 60th anniversary celebrations of the Berlinale. This iconic actress, who is most associated with the work of German pioneering director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, has been a prolific actress since the 1960s and is one of the only German talents known around the world for her vivid acting style.
Hanna Schygulla was born in 1925 in Königshütte, Upper ...
As part of the sixtieth birthday celebration, the Berlinale is hosting the world premiere of TRACE OF THE BEARS (Spur Der Baren), a German documentary by Berlin-based Zero Film, that traces the history of one of the world's great film events. While other A-list festivals such as Cannes or Venice are artistic, economic and tourist events, the Berlinale is unique for its political dimensions and its highly developed sense of social and world consciousness.
The Festival’s history r...
In a first for the Berlinale, a film from Iraq had its world premiere last evening in the Panorama section. SON OF BABYLON, co-written and directed by Mohamed Al-Daradji, is a stirring drama about coming to terms with tragedy and moving forward despite the burden of personal loss. Filmed in stark poetic set pieces, the film follows the journey of a Kurdish grandmother and her precocious grandson as they travel (mostly on foot) to discover the fate of the boy's father, who has been miss...
A flashy two page center spread in the popular daily tabloid BERLIN KURIER offers a list of "Sixty Facts about the 60th Birthday" of the Berlin Film Festival, which is tantamount to listing sixty good reasons not to miss this one. The spread is adorned with a top to bottom leggy photo of a winsomely smiling Jessica Alba, star of Michael Winterbottom's "The Killer Inside Me", and smaller shots spaced around the layout of Leonardo Dicaprio, who will be here to promote the new...
One of the anticipated titles having its International Premiere at the Berlinale today is HOWL, one of the hits of last month's Sundance Film Festival. More than 50 years after its initial publication, the tone poem HOWL is still a shocking bit of humanism, a cry for tolerance and a yell for individual self-expression. The poem's author, the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, remained a controversial figure his entire life. The impact of this envelope-pushing literary classic and the bohemian ph...
As birthdays go, 60 is not quite as significant as 50 or 75, but it seems that anytime a person or an event reaches a milestone that involves a 0, it is an opportunity for reflection on the past. For its 60th anniversary, the Berlinale is both looking back and looking forward, with a number of retrospective programs as well as ambitious new ones that will define the Festival for decades to come.
First a look backwards....the Festival was established in 1951 as a kind of cold wa...
The 60th Berlin International Film Festival will open tomorrow, February 11, 2010 with the world premiere of the Chinese film Tuan Yuan directed by Wang Quan’an, in the presence of the director and the actors Lisa Lu, Ling Feng, Monica Mo and Jin Na.
With Klaus Wowereit, the gay mayor of Berlin looking on, Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick will open the festival along with Jury President Werner Herzog. The event will be broadcast live on television and music for the gala will ...
Along with new festival directors, this year the Sundance Film Festival had an entirely new vision.
Main Street was crowded, people dined and socialized well into the early morning and Sundance just felt more "alive" than it was last year. This could be partly due to the slight rise claimed in the American economy or it could simply be the better selection of films.
As proof that the festival is doing it's job, many of the films are moving on to be featured in o...
The Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival, affectionately called the Berlinale, has always been devoted to stories about people on the edge. The program strand, which was founded by legendary archivist and distributor Manfred Salzgeber and continues under the exquisite taste of current director Wieland Speck, is also home to the gay and lesbian films that will inevitably cause a stir and make their mark at gay film festivals around the world.
It could be s...
Like many displaced Europeans during the Nazi occupation of much of Europe, the French filmmaker Jean Renoir spent the war years (and sometime afterwards) in the United States. His sojourn in the hills of Hollywood was not especially a positive one. Like other auteurs, he was appalled by the Hollywood factory system and the condescending attitude towards the director. In France he was a God, in America he was a worker for hire.
However, from this brief American period comes one ...
The 2010 edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, a film event second in importance only to Cannes, begins on Thursday evening with the International Premiere of a new Chinese film. APART TOGETHER by Tuan Yuan will kick off the festivities at the Berlinale Palast, the showcase cinema in Potsdamer Platz.
Chinese cinema has been in the ascendant as the country itself flexes its political and economic muscle. However not all the press has been positive. Last month, the Ch...
Dec 17, 2009:
On-screen Turning Points and Alternative Paths - Jury and First films of Berlinale Generation
For this year's anniversary Berlinale, Generation has invited five award-winning and renowned individuals into its International Jury: 21-year-old Iranian filmmaker Hana Makhmalbaf won a Crystal Bear at the 2008 festival with her debut film Buda Az Sharm Foru Rikht. With Philippe Falardeau, another award winner will return to Berlin. His film C’est pas moi, je le jure! convinced both t...
Roman Polanski, who is under house arrest in Switzerland while awaiting word about an extredition proceeding that may bring him back to a United States prison, will be represented at the upcoming Berlinale (even though Polanski will, presumably, only be there in spirit). The controversial filmmaker's latest film THE GHOST WRITER, an adaptation of novelist Philip Roth's tome, is one of the high profile films announced that will be competing for the Golden Bear prize at the 60th edition...
The first seven titles for the Competition of the 60th Berlin International Film Festival have been confirmed. The films selected so far are from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Germany, India, Iran, Turkey, the UK and the USA.
This first group of films selected for the Competition is characterized by up-and-coming young directors, stars and masters of filmmaking like Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski.
"The Competition of the 60th anni...
The latest issue of Mas y Mas, monthly newsletter of NISI MASA is ready for you to read.
In this issue you will find the Dossier on the Berlin Cinema
Scene , an exploration of this German city and its cinephile inhabitants. It's
now 20
years ago that the Wall fell, and with this anniversary, we wanted to
unravel what life is like now and how the city has changed. So, this is a selection of what we have lined
The Berlinale Talent Campus (February 13-18, 2010) has secured its financing thanks to the project funding of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media(BKM).
Minister of State for Culture and the Media Bernd Neumann has said: "Dieter Kosslick's idea to establish a platform for aspiring film talents during the Berlinale has proved very valuable. Not only the Festival - which has successfully presented a number of films by former Campus participants - b...
The Franco-German Youth Office (FGYO), official partner of the Berlinale, is calling for applications to enter the jury for the "Dialogue en perspective" award in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section.
Young filmlovers can apply from now on to become a jury member for the independent Berlinale award "Dialogue en perspective".
The prize is donated by the FGYO, and will be awarded atthe 60th Berlin International Film Festival (February 11 - 21, 2010) ...
