From Feb. 6th to Feb. 11th i´ve had the chance to visit the film festival in Berlin – the 59th Berlinale. I want to thank Dirk & Toni for the possiblity to join them and all the experiences i was able to make.
Between Business and Pleasure
My trip to the Berlinale was not merely for business meetings, nor for private festival pleasure – it was somewhere in between (a very good combination as it turned out).
During the meetings with Dirk and Toni i´ve met great people – professional german authors, script consultants and great actors (I won´t give out any names since the project in in pre-production and i shouldn´t spoil anything).
It was a great experience to take a glimpse into such high class meetings.
Festival Fever
After all the Berlinale is a film festival and not just a meeting point for networking – which i loved nevertheless.
It can be quite confusing when hundrets of people run around like ants – i just wanted to watch a movie, not really important which one. So i went into the Cinemaxx – just to hear somebody yell that the screening for Ghosted was out of tickets. Well, as i said i wanted to watch any movie, so i didn´t care much – until a guy ran into me wanting to sell his ticket because he only got one and was there with his girlfriend.
Nice chance, so i watched the world premiere of Ghosted, which is by the way quite a nice movie:
A mysterious love story between Hamburg and Taipeh. The unsolved murder of her young Taiwanese lover Ai-ling (Keru) leaves the Hamburg artist Sophie Schmitt (Inga Busch) completely disoriented…
The Aura of Stars
If you live in L.A. you´re probably used to bump into “real stars”, that´s not so much true here in Vienna. Honestly i don´t really care about star-ism, but then again i´m not used to it either.
So the other night i decided to watch a movie again. This time i thought i would probably be not so lucky to bump into someone who sells a ticket and rather bought one at the counter – which was completely empty. Funny because two hours later the red carpet was crowded and people wanted to buy tickets.
Too sad i had to leave my camera bag at the wardrobe, but if had known that Keanu Reeves, Robin Wright Penn and Blake Lively would sit two rows in front of me i would have thought of a way to sneak in my camera.
The Private Life of Pippa Lee is that kind of movie that puts a smile on your face. Not because it is so funny, which it is, simply because it is a so lovingly told story with great characters in kind of weird relations. I really enjoyed that movie…
Filmmakers Against Racism
On the last day i attended the panel of Filmmakers Against Racism. It was a great discussion and later that day i attended the screening of five short documentations from them.
I´ve met great people there and hope they keep up their great work – filmmaking with a meaning!
Personal Gain?
Besides the great city, the festival, the nice people i´ve met and the movies i´ve seen, the most important part for me was that i had lots of time to think about my future and what i would want to do. I was able to strengthen the ideas and projects i envisioned before my trip and compiled a huge, and i mean huge, to-do list which i´m working on right now. I´ve got so many great projects coming up that it´s hard to decide which one to work on first!
Photos
I put some of my photos on my flickr page, you can see them there:
Berlinale – The Festival | Berlin – The Sights
