Berlinale: Comedy and Nuance

Experience has taught me to avoid German comedies like I do all films called “Dumb and Dumber” or which should carry that name. Sure, there might be funny German comedies now, but I wouldn’t know, since I have learned from past experience.

My colleague enjoyed Doris Dörrie’s “Die Friseuse”, but the poster looked too much like “ain’t fat people funny.”

I found a true German comedy in the daily diary of veteran producer Regina Ziegler in the daily newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel”. It starts with “As soon as day breaks, I jump out of bed” and ends “my evening ends deep into the night.” Who could say it better? (more…)

Berlinale: The Robber Runs

Johann Rettenberger runs. He does marathons and sprints - and he’s good. He’s also good at running away. Seven long years he ran in circles or on the treadmill and had no way to escape. This left a mark on Johann. He used every opportunity to train while in prison and when he got out, he devoted himself once again to the loneliness of the long distance runner. He also robbed banks, then ran. Running - the most important part of the story.

What was that? What’s did you say he was doing? (more…)

Berlinale: Banksy presents Exit Through The Gift Shop

Tall tale? Or did this all really happen? Whatever! The story told by enigmatic street artist Banksy in his debut film is still in touch with reality. Exit Through the Gift Shop is a dizzying and intriguing documentary that leaves you rubbing your eyes and asking in disbelief DID I REALLY JUST SEE THAT? A devise that is key to Banksy’s style. He manages to bring the disorientation that he achieves by manipulating reality, from the streets and into the cinema.

(more…)

Berlinale: Forum Expanded - Art, Conception and Experiments

Cinema is often a celebration of excess in the pursuit of success - in terms of profits, at least. (See most recently, James Cameron’s “Avatar”). You waste 200 million to earn 400 million. Waste as business model.

Forum Expanded pursues a different kind of excess. Here  ideas and experiments in moving images by 72 artists from all over the world are presented in 20 venues all over the city. A cornucopia of kinetic arts. Excess as inspiration to expand the understanding of what cinema can be. (more…)

Berlinale here we come!

Hurray, the Berlin Film Festival begins today - and the realeyz.tv team is raring to go!

Natalie is especially looking forward to Aljoscha Weskott’s and Marianne Kesting’s Sunny Land - a documentary about Sun City, the “playground of the rich” in apartheid South Africa. She’s also interested in Oskar Roehler’s Jud Süss - Film ohne Gewissen, a feature film about the notorious the UFA Nazi propaganda film “Jud Süss” which didn’t have the effect the Nazis had planned. (more…)