As a follow-up to the 50th-anniversary Forum program at this year’s Berlinale, we will show two more films from the first Forum in 1971 this month, starting with LETTERA APERTA A UN GIORNALE DELLA SERA (Open Letter to the Evening News, Francesco Maselli, I 1970, 12.10.) A group of Marxist intellectuals responds to an appeal by an evening newspaper with an open letter in which they propose to head a delegation joining the war in Vietnam. When approval and interest begins to flow in from across Europe and even Vietnam’s Communist Party accepts the proposal, the group finds themselves in trouble. ICH LIEBE DICH, ICH TÖTE DICH (Uwe Brandner, BRD 1971, 19.10.) was described by its director as “a picture story from home.” A young teacher arrives at a remote village in Bavaria’s Altmühltal region. There, wealthy gentlemen have created a hunting ground for themselves at the edge of the wilderness. The friendship with the local gamekeeper develops into a love affair, which heralds the end of the fragile idyll.
The Professional – Michael Mann Retrospective
70 mm: 2001 – A SPACE ODYSSEY
11. ALFILM – Arab Film Festival Berlin – Nomad Edition
Big Cinema, Small Cinema #35 What's ringing, scratching, rustling there in the film?
Forum 50
"Olanda"
OLANDA opens on the starry sky over Romania’s Carpathian Mountains. The first two images mark the dimensions to which the film is dedicated: on the one hand, details and delicate structures; on the other, constellations and the big picture. At the center of the documentary is a seasonal economic commodity of the region: the mushroom. No one is more closely attuned to it than the mushroom collectors, and the film stays mainly with them, following them on walks through the forest, at their camps and in their conversations. From here the film follows the rhizome-like branches that spread out ever further in the form of money. Beyond an analysis of economic structures, however, the film is also a sensory document of the rhythm of everyday life in the forest as experienced by the collectors.
"The Two Sights"
The closing titles say The Two Sights was “collected” on various islands of the Outer Hebrides from 2017–19, but what does the film gather? There are the images, captured on a 16mm camera, which survey all this ravishing landscape contains, taking in its rocky cliffs, beaches and plains, alighting on its flora and fauna and the houses and ships sprinkled over it, picking out currents, reflections and shifts in light. Then there are the sounds, recorded with the mic visible in the first shots, keening birds, the roaring wind, the crashing, gurgling, trickling of the water.
Symposium: The right to a public - working with TV archives
Big Cinema, Small Cinema #35 What's ringing, scratching, rustling there in the film?
Our next film event for children takes place on September 20, for all aged eight and above: Since the first time films were shown in 1895, they have been accompanied by sounds and music. Noises, music, sounds and language are combined to make a soundtrack. Before we make our own sound experiments and create a soundtrack to DÉMÉNAGEMENT À LA CLOCHE DE BOIS by Alice Guy (France 1905), we will find out what can be seen and heard in four shorts: In ROOTS (Germany 1996) by Bärbel Neubauer, colors and shapes swirl around and keep transforming themselves. In his FILMSTUDIE (Germany 1926), Hans Richter plays with light and shadows. LANTOUY by Isabell Spengler and Daniel Adams (Germany 2006) entices us into a magical world of images and sounds. Finally, in Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet’s PLAY (Germany 2003) a moment full of suspense between thundering applause and the beginning of a piece of music being played seems to be never-ending.