Berlinale Forum 2018 lenta.pioner-cinema.ru/en/berlinale-forum-2018-2 June 8, 2018
Founded in 1971, the International Forum of New Cinema (or the Berlinale Forum) was invented as a collaboration between the Berlin Film Festival and the Friends of the German Film Archive, otherwise known as Arsenal, the Institute for Film and Video Art. Today, 48 years later, the screening room on the ground floor of the institute on Potsdamer Platz remains the festival’s official location. Erika Gregor, the co-founder of the institute, once spoke of the Forum as the ideal programme for Arsenal’s cinema. It’s true: the programme this year includes an incredible spectrum of work. There are thesis film debuts like Our House by Yui Kiyohara, a student of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s, to unfinished works like Djamilia by Aminatou Echard, a documentarist and ethnomusicologist. There is relevant contemporary film, like Aufbruch, directed and performed by Ludwig Wüst; Mónica Lairana’s La cama; and Sandro Aguilar’s Mariphasa, alongside new works by Sang-soo Hong, Corneliu Porumboiu, Sergei Loznitsa, Guy Maddin, and Ruth Beckerman. There is even experimental animation (La casa lobo) and all manner of documentary and cross-genre film. There are 45 films in total, not counting those included in the Forum Expanded programme of screenings and installations. Their regular collaboration with Arsenal both as a cinema and as an institute allows the festival to support ties with the city and with the cinema community. It’s interesting to note that Arsenal, like the British Film Institute, Picturehouse Cinemas (especially the regional theatre in Crouch End), and the Paris Cinémathèque gives Berliners the opportunity to become subscribers or co-owners, and in doing so turns into a club or even co-op of sorts. The Forum’s autonomy, just like its status as a sub-festival taking place at a separate location – unlike multiplexes such as CinemaxX, Cinestar, and Cubix, Arsenal is a modest two-room cinema seating 236 and 75 people per hall – is underlined by the fact that for its principally non-concourse programme, several independent juries and prizes are organised. Among them are the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Prize, the Caligari Film Prize, and the CICAE (International Confederation of Art Cinemas, of which Pioner is a member) Prize. In turn, it’s clear that its inclusion in the festival process, with its organizational and financial opportunities, allows Arsenal to show the best young cinema from around the world, according to the selection committee. However, this mutually beneficial collaboration has a downside: even in Berlin, where a decades-old community has formed around (and with the help of) Arsenal, the ten-day, 45-film programme seems endless. It would seem that the Forum’s curators share this understanding, as reflected by how they labelled the painstakingly filled out cover of the catalogue with NOT FIT.
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It must be said that with a few certain exceptions, the programme is ideally crafted. Apart from the films previously mentioned as part of the festival’s categories (such as debut, genre, and documentary), several trends and patterns are also easily visible. The latter is more self-referential, which is to say referring to the principles of the programme’s composition, while the former bear witness to the state of the world that we live in today. However, it’s not always possible to draw a clear line between them without losing something precious and interstitial.
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Tuzdan kaide The talented, confused, and visually-arresting debut of young Turkish director Burak Çevik’s Tuzdan kaide is a sensitive, tactile piece of cinema, fascinated with water, streetlights, neon signs, and their reflections in cafe windows. This journey to the edge of Istanbul’s night opens with the realization of a pregnant woman in search of her sister, who is disappearing deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of merchants, workshops, and enclosed spaces. Burak Serin’s excellent camera work is the key to the film’s mysteries. The leading role in Tuzdan kaide, just as in Wong Kar-Wai’s films, is played by the camera and the effects of stylization and look (or vision, depending on the relationship to the author) that it creates. Something similar takes place in the Portuguese film Mariphasa, all the way to the accents placed on scenes parallel to the main plot: for example, a long sequence of sisters playing in the bath, or the destruction of cars with a bat. But unlike the visually and narratively darkened work of Sandro Aguilar, Tuzdan Kaide is less focused on itself. Tuzdan kaide on Berlinale website: https://www.berlinale.de
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