M eet the M ento r s
THE ‘MEET THE MENTORS’ Q&A
MARYANNE REDPATH
Maryanne Redpath, Head of the Generation section of the Berlin Int’l Film Festival
Personal impression by Xiaojuan Zhou I can’t claim that I know her well, this mentor. However, her team has selected a number of our films over the years. I have witnessed first-hand how she treats films, with lots of love. I have seen how she received filmmakers from around the world with tremendous respect and warmth. I’ve sat on the stairs in the Zoo Palast cinema to catch an otherwise obscure film with local kids glued to the seats of the big auditorium. She reminds me of the gentle people I met in her home country, New Zealand. Like me, Maryanne is an immigrant. She joined the Berlinale in the early 1990s and became the head of its Generation section in 2008. For all these years, this highly educated (PhD in Drama) and determined lady has
kept the Generation brand both prestigious and innovative. In popular words, she keeps pushing the envelope. Maryanne,
The Sound of Music
lets sing along to THE SOUND OF MUSIC, on the hillsides of the Alps (or, closer to me, Vermont), one day!
Can you describe your childhood and early exposure to movies? Marianne Redpath: I grew up in Aotearoa, New Zealand. My parents and in particular my Grandmother took me to the movies in the early sixties, long before we had a television in the house. Back then, musicals such as MARY POPPINS, MY FAIR LADY and THE SOUND OF MUSIC inspired my young and vivid imagination. I remember seeing 101 DALMATIANS which – me being an animal lover – scared the living daylights out of me. I was not aware of it then, but I had become hooked on the magic of cinema. Who, fictional or real, inspired you the most? Redpath: I admit to having admired Julie Andrews. She could sing, dance, she knew about things. She was anti-authoritarian in those roles, which appealed as I have always been a rules-challenger myself. When I was a bit older, I went to the theater in our local town, with friends and without parental supervision. There was only one cinema and we watched whatever we could, from early Tarzan
18 | Journal 4 | 2021
