(posted by tobias)
In answer to the burning question I know is on all of your minds these days – namely, how is tobias going to spend the next week or so?… well, it’s the film festival time over here, and not just any film festival but (I am told) the biggest and some say best of them all, the mighty Berlinale. Some highlights we will be checking out this week:
Brothers Of The Head, about Siamese twin punk rock stars (do you really need to know more?)…
Tintenfischalarm (Octopus Alarm), in which a German hermaphrodite named Alex describes the suffering of intersexual children at the hands of those determined to force them to adhere to social norms…
Vitus, from Switzerland, tells the story of a boy who has hearing like a bat, plays piano like the young Mozart and reads the encyclopaedia at kindergarten but prefers to spend his time tinkering in his idiosyncratic grandfather’s joiner’s workshop, and dreaming of flying…
Kan Shang Qu Hen Mei (Little Red Flowers), about a four-year-old individualist at a Chinese kindergarten in 1949…
Der Rote Kakadu (The Red Cockatoo) set in 1961 Dresden, in and around the famous club of the same name, that dared to play music from the West – something unheard of in the GDR at the time…
We’ll also look in on All About Eve and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, from the retrospective series; I’m Your Man, the documentary/concert film about Leonard Cohen; and Big River, a Japanese/Pakistani road movie set in the American Southwest. Should be an eclectic and stimulating week! If I feel inspired I’ll blog the hits and misses as we go along…