Have I mentioned the soap and paper tissue dispensers at Berlinale yet? They’re automatic!
I’m not saying it’s over-engineering, or engineering for engineerings sake, I was just very surprised to swish my hands under the soap today in the press grotto of Berlinale Palast to find out a little computer sensor was telling a pump somewhere to spit out a globule of foam soap onto my palms. How long before this revolutionary technology comes to the UK? Perhaps it’s already arrived and I’ve just been living a sheltered life when it comes to toilet technology? Either way, Germany is certainly ahead of the UK when it comes to the automated manner in which their soap and paper tissues arrive for service to our toiletry cleanliness. There we are, you don’t get this kind of on-the-ground insight from a UK broadsheet newspaper, I suspect. A culinary treat I had forgotten is far better in Germany that the UK is its bread. They sure know how to make great tasting Rye Bread! Enough Jack, enough with the comparisons!
I started today off with my first Russian film of the festival, UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS. The film is in competition, which is where my other favourite film of the festival, AS WE WERE DREAMING, has come from as well. It reminds me why I chose to explore the multi-voiced narrative for my Masters dissertation at university: it’s a narrative device that I find closer to the way we go about our focuses and desires in real life, with a pleasing way of linking lots of different strands under art form. I’ve gone back to sitting on the front row of the auditorium where possible, as it not only gives me enough room to stretch my legs and shuffle about a bit whilst the film is playing, it gives that lovely feeling of being incredibly small in front of a giant representation of a human face. I find it comforting and all-encompassing. It might make some of you feel sick. Such is the variety of the human experience.
Tuesday also presented the first mad dash of the festival. I was queuing to see Wim Wenders new film, EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, in Cinemaxx in the early afternoon. The queue for this press screening had turned from an ordered line, to an expanding crowd, to a baying throng of red badge-wearing festival goers, all eager to see Wenders latest foray into 3D filmmaking, starring James Franco, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Rachel McAdams. Was it the Franco effect? He is in three films at the festival. Was it the Wenders effect? He is playing to a home crowd here. Was it the Gainsbourg effect? She is AWESOME. We’ll never know. All I can tell you is that with ten minutes to go till the start of the screening, the usher informed about two hundred of us that Cinemaxx7 was full, and as a result, they had programmed in a last minute extra screening over the road in the Sony Centre’s Cinestar Cinema. Cue aforementioned mad dash across the road, down escalators, along corridors, down some more escalators, and I had rather suddenly made it from the back of one queue, to the very front of the other. Nice work, Toye.
I finished the day off at an Asian Restaurant discussing 70mm films with friends and colleagues from the Cambridge Film Festival, and finding out about the merits (and perils) of buying a film at script stage at a film festival. As we were all walking back to our respective hotels, it dawned on me that this was my third and final night in my hotel. I’ll be at a different hotel tomorrow and up early on Thursday morning to catch the train out to Berlin Schoenefeld airport. Where is the time going? The days and weeks at work in Cambridge have a rhythm and pace to them that is completely altered in a festival time zone.
I’ve got a few more films on my list for tomorrow, and then I’m dedicating some time on my schedule for sitting down and writing – as well as paying a visit to the Berlinale pop-up shop to buy my housemates and Nan some festival chocolate. It’s the obvious purchase from a film festival.
httpvh://youtu.be/g9LnLOR3_ks