Kino Krokodil: Forum & Friends: A review of Eastern Europe

The fourth edition of Forum & Friends is a review of the 55th Forum, focusing on the cinema of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Plenty has been written in the festival annals about the “abstinence of the socialist states from the Berlinale” (W. Jacobsen). Until 1974, only non-aligned Yugoslavia represented the "East". This is where Želimir Žilnik's crazy feature debut Rani radovi (Early Works) emerged in 1969, a year after the failure of the New Left (and two years before the Forum became part of the festival and a guarantor for the presence of Eastern European cinema). It went on to win the Golden Bear despite competition from many other greats (from Buñuel to de Palma to Godard).
This year, with tears in his eyes, the 82-year-old director talked about his film and turned the opening of the Forum into a magical occasion. Just a few days earlier, he had supported the student protests in Novi Sad and Belgrade. (Barbara Wurm)

At Kino Krokodil, Greifenhagener Str. 32, Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg