Berlinale blues

By Phillip Bergson    

Life is change, but as the Dalai Lama says, the Lightbulb has to want to change. New dates, new directors, new directions, and what changing temperatures during this 70th edition of one of the most celebrated international film rendezvous in the calendar, created by a former (in dispute), charming (not in dispute as I remember him well on my first-footing, fresh from Oxford University, to what was to become the last summer edition of the Cold War celluloid showcase in the metropolitan oasis of West Berlin, firmly tucked in behind the Iron Curtain).

With Gina Lollobrigida, one of Woody Allen's  funniest earlier features, and boat trips on the Spree, it was a memorable debut for my reportages on air (on the famed Radio 4 nightly arts programme Kaleidoscope and an 850-word article in the historic weeky The Spectator) and I was clearly willkommen to return to subsequent editions, having paid my own way in its last summer, as the first Festleiter enjoyed reading my review and ensured that not only were my hotel costs covered, for 12 days, but even daily gutscheine were provided for sustenance between press screenings, galas, and Forum premieres.

Colleagues from the East quickly realised these meal vouchers were worth  their weight in Deutschmarks, and soon began ordering a mere coffee, and then the waiter would tip them, in any Festival bar, and in bar. No wonder the Bears really used to dance at night. The Festival has now come full circle, as it provides the press with free cappuccino, provided they bring their own cups.

Or as Marlene might say, waist not, vont not.

The best is yet  to come...fasten your seat-belts!

Phillip Bergson                                                            www.berlinale.de

Phillip Bergson  is a Film Critic, UK, member of Fipresci Writing about Films and Festivals.

Winner of the Student Journalist of the Year competition in the UK weekly New Statesman, as a Classics Scholar Phillip Bergson then founded the Oxford Film Festival and, on graduating, was selected by "The Sunday Times" as a 'New Critic' and in the same week began broadcasting on film for many BBC Radio programmes. A contributor to the "Times Literary Supplement", "TES", "Screen International", "Film Bulletin", "Film a Doba" inter alia, he also worked for the "European Script Fund", has scripted shorts and features (that have been produced and released) and, fluent in eight-and-a-half languages, currently programmes and advises several international film festivals. At the National Media Museum in his native Yorkshire, he created the "Eurovisions" project, to promote classic and contemporary European cinema.