The 61st Berlin International Film Festival starts this Thursday, and runs until February 20.
Some 24 features will compete for the coveted Gold and Silver Bear awards and this year’s competition section will encompass new works by such established directors as Béla Tarr, Wim Wenders, Michel Ocelot and the Coen brothers, whose wild west themed True Gritwill open the festival.
There are also a considerable number of first features in competition, such as Ralph Fiennes’ Shakespeare adaptation, Coriolanus. Isabella Rossellini will act as head of festival’s international jury, which will include Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan, Canadian director Guy Maddin, and British costume designer Sandy Powell.
Acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi was also invited to serve on this year’s jury, but in December the Iranian government sentenced him to six years in prison, and placed a 20-year ban on him directing or writing films. In protest, the festival will leave one empty chair on the jury, host a panel discussion about censorship in Iran, and screen a selection of Panahi’s work. Offside, Panahi’s film about the challenges of being a female football fan in Iran, won the Silver Bear in 2006, and will again be part of the Competition this year.
Alongside the Competition section, Berlinale ’11 will screen nearly 400 films in its other six sections: Panorama (independent and arthouse films), Forum (international experimental films), Generation (films for kids and young adults), Perspective (contemporary German cinema), Berlinale shorts (short films from around the world) and Retrospective (a selection of classic films chosen by the curators of the Berlin film museum).
Some of these films are eligible for other awards, such as the Crystal Bear (for the best film aimed at young people), and the Teddy Award (for LGBT-themed films).
British cinema will make a strong showing at this year’s Berlinale. In addition to Coriolanus, there will be screenings of firm audience favourite The King’s Speech, Submarine, West is West and SJ Clarkson’s adaptation of Nigel Slater’s memoir, ‘Toast’, which already attracted 6.2 million UK viewers during its New Year’s eve screening on BBC1.
Toastwill come under the heading of ‘Culinary Cinema’, a special section now in its fifth year. Following the screening of each of the 12 food-themed films, the audience will have the opportunity to enjoy a meal prepared by Berlin’s best chefs, inspired by the film. Other films in this year’s ‘Culinary Cinema’ include Hans Dortmans’ Divine Pig, Minoru Kurimura’s Food and the Maiden and David Gelb’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
This year’s retrospective section features a comprehensive selection of films by one of cinema’s history’s biggest names, Ingmar Bergman. It will also present the work of Shibuya Minoru, a Japanese master who will be new to most viewers at the festival. This retrospective of his work comes to us from November’s FiLMeX festival in Tokyo.
For a taste of Minoru’s quirky, entertaining approach, check out this clip from Radishes and Carrots (which will be screened at the Berlinale).
Of course, one of the most exciting parts of any film festival is the opportunity to see the latest in contemporary filmmaking from around the world. The names of some familiar directors immediately jump out. Perhaps best-known for his gruesome Oldboy, Park Chan-wook has joined forces with Park Chan-Kyong (who together style themselves ‘PARKing CHANce’) to make an eerie-sounding short called Night Fishing, about a fisherman who catches a young woman in funeral garb.
Céline Sciamma, whose made her feature debut with the mesmerisingly atmospheric Water Lilies, will have her second feature, Tomboy screened as part of both the Panorama and Generation sections. The festival will also present 3, the latest feature from Tom Tykwer, of Run Lola Run fame.
There is always the question, for any country hosting an international festival, as to how prominently domestic features should figure in the programme. The London Film Festival always seems quietly proud and excited about new British films included in its programme. Toronto used to devote a special section to Canadian films, but now gives them a chance to hold their own alongside films from around the world in sections organised by theme and genre.
Berlin continues to segregate its homegrown cinema with its ‘Perspective Deutches Kino’ section. Although it seems a bit immodest for a country hosting an international film festival to use the occasion to promote its own national cinema, any nation must also ask itself: if we don’t promote our own cinema, who will?
While established directors will have less trouble finding an international audience for their films, it seems a good idea for every country to take responsibility for giving its own new generation of directors a chance.
Berlin International Film Festival 2011 – Preview (text) by Alison Frank is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
