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If there were any actors in the November 2nd Press opening of the 23rd International Short Film Festival of Berlin they might rightly have returned back to Stanislavski in despair and asked “So, where’s my motivation, now?” Of the eight films showcased for the sparse audience four were animations and another yoked performers to a blast of loud spectacular special effects - the film is entitled Silence is Golden (UK/France, 14 min). That left three films that actually built their dramas around ensembles of human performers - Lee Ho-kyung’s engaging Young-gil’s Angels (South Korea, 13 min); Adrian Sitaru’s Checkovian drama on the beach Valuri/Waves (Rumania, 16 min), and, for this writer, the star of the show, Ismet Ergün’s playground fable Bende Sira/It’s My Turn (Germany/Turkey, 2007). The screenings were heralded by the Festival’s own trailer that features the ‘Poster Girl’ (Anne von Keller) who enters her dingy bathroom and is then magically morphed by Director Sven Wegner through her bathroom mirror into a public park, then to a hairdresser, then, yes, to the disco. No engagement with others, so no dialogue needed. Just hugging shots of her lithe movements and smooth curves. Take away the titles and we could have been suffering a promo for toiletries. The same mind-set seems to have dictated the design of the 21st Festival website trailer that featured an extended panorama shot around a digitalized Berlin (never any rain) populated by isolated cutout digitalized flaneurs (they used to be people) who look to the sky for salvation from their ennui. It comes in the form of the brand logo for the Festival itself. If anything is on display, then, it is the technical virtuosity of computer animators and the enormity of the producer’s ambitions towards greatness. This is evident in Milen Vitano’s My Happy End (Berlin/Potsdam, 5. min) and Juan Carlos Mostaza’s Broken Wire (Spain, 8 min). The use of 3D graphics in both films is astonishing. However, Vitano’s cute story about a dog in need of a friend is overwhelmed both by the production values of the effects (the shadowing is excellent) and frantic music accompaniment (Copland? Bernstein?) that muscles out whatever genuine engagements the film has to offer. It should be Scooby Doo, but it aims for Roger Rabbit, with full Berlin orchestral score. Similarly, Broken Wire opens in grandiose Cinemascope format (though actually filmed on 35 mm). It is a wordless adult Noir bathed in exquisite sepia tones, and another expansively rich score, that tracks an adulterous affair to its tragic conclusion. What’s amazing, however, is that we are in the company of wire figures (hence the title) that allows for a particularly grim finale. Given its sheer professional polish, it’s little wonder that the film was celebrated in its home country with a Goya for Best Animation. More amazing dazzle for the eye came from the French/China Production Under Construction (9 min). Directed, edited, shot, and written by Zhenchen Liu it assumes to expose the silent destruction of vast quarters of present-day Shanghai. The camera (or is it a camera?) takes a dreamy wander around the vast wreckage of what used to by a bustling suburb. We track through broken windows, boom over wrecked walls, pan over layers of fallen timber. Flocks of birds pass by, a dog fixes us in his sights. We then fall into the lives of two actual people, a young man and old woman who bewail their forced ejection from their homes. Just at the point when it seems we have landed, we are off again, twisting and turning around the blasted landscape. A fly not on the wall, but through the wall. The camera movements are, in the real world, of course impossible, they leave the Steadicam standing. Which makes the city inspected city a false one, but the lives of the people still very real and very painful - which seems to undermine the point of the elaborate exercise. Within a few minutes, then, we are confronted with an aesthetic dilemma that complicates the moral thrust of the film. By design or not, the film confronts audiences with the digital dilemma. How to act purposefully in a world that is/could be/sometimes might be/ existent only within the eye of the computer animator. While we are perplexing our aesthetic responses, however, somewhere someone is rendered homeless from a place that did exist. There was a point, then, during the showcase screening where a certain restlessness seeped in. It is of some dramatic irony that the arrival of stories featuring real people became itself a special effect in its own right. Step forward, then, Adrian Sitaru and Ismet Ergün. Both directors and their producers have taken determinedly risky ventures with their ensemble actors working in real spaces. Sitaru (Valuri/Waves, 16 min) has placed his camera and excellent actors amidst the Black Sea beachgoers. Performances, editing and framing brilliantly and precisely captures all the uncomfortable inconveniences of the New Europe, as they must settle together in their ‘holiday’ space. The drama neatly closes as a mixed-tone mystery piece. Finally, we turn to Ismet Ergün’s Bende Sira/It’s my Turn (Germany/Turkey, 2007). Another ensemble piece - five young lads and a sister - and a location, a bare playground in Turkey. The film follows a simple ritual: without enough money for all, the group scrambles together just enough coins for a cinema ticket. The deal is that the lucky winner must return each time and retell the film’s story for his eager listeners. We witness the ritual from the point of view of the young sister, her fascination and enjoyment of the tales - that quickly become passionate enactments - becomes ours. Whether by design or not, the absence of subtitles makes the film all the greater. The magic of the process - and the performances - reminds us of what interactivity used to be. Like Valuri/Waves the film is a brilliant and thoughtful celebration of its own restrictions and provides a timely reminder for all filmmakers that less can really be more, and, with intelligence and restraint, better. Post-screening reflections, then, become thick and heavy. There was a time when filmmakers and audiences had some agreed shorthand about what ‘short’ meant. The cost of film created its own logistic limitations that demanded greater creativity. The emergence of digital technologies - for visual and sound - allows the virtual realization of the screenwriter/director’s imaginative reach, and more. What starts as a viable, manageable story idea, however, and one that meets an audience’s understanding of ‘short’, becomes - with temptation and ambition - on a pare with Hollywood blockbuster pretensions. Matching the narrative form with style of delivery is itself the creative trick. Brilliant ideas transfer to the screen with ease but since many films may never see a regular audience, the temptation under such circumstances is at least to make an impact. A powerful sequence of ‘short’s films can therefore create its own aesthetic demands. Energy and concentration needs to be sustained over a long haul as each film closes and another is rolled out - Cinemascope, Dolby and all. Even Bruce Willis knows when to stop and take some air. The challenge for such a Festival - in itself busy with its own numbers and scope - is therefore obvious. It might be a further irony that the technologies which the Festival and other like it celebrate might very well serve their downfall. In an age when uploading is second nature - witness the phenomenal success of YouTube, and Cinemasports as examples - who needs to struggle around real cities chasing and then paying for elusive cinematic genius? If the Showcase is anything to go by, there are other concerns, as well. The flash digital wizardry that audiences are expected to admire can often obscure some uncomfortable ideological residues of what some hoped was a long distant past. Of the eight films showcased at the Press Opening, for example, one lingered - and left - a lonely old woman crying in helpless despair (Under Construction), one woman disappeared (Valuri/Waves), one (animated) woman was decapitated (Broken Wire), another woman suffered a nervous breakdown (Silence is Golden), and the main aim of three girls in Young-gil’s Angels is to be Cheerleaders for a Sumi wrestler. Even in Ismet Ergün’s Bende Sira/It’s my Turn - Locarno Silver Leopard Winner - it is uncomfortably ironic that the girl, wonderfully played by Tuana Merhard, and on whose performance the whole film depends, never gets to see the movies. Despite their surface differences, therefore, the DNA lingering at the heart of these scripts seem to uncritically retread - and give credence to - fairly dubious assumptions. Needless to say, but for the record, the name of a female director did not grace the screening that was especially arranged for the critically adept Berlin Press Corps. For a festival sprouting prizes for tolerance, some thought might have gone more thoroughly into the choice of eight films that showcased the week’s offerings. Masterly as they all are. However, according to the Press handouts, the total running time of all films amounts to 72 hrs, 42 min and 38 secs. So we can safely assume and hope that somewhere these oversights will be forgotten. The Festival runs from 6th - 11th November. The 600 films from 88 participating countries are to be shown in three of Berlin’s celebrated cinema locations: The Kino Babylon (Mitte), the Volksbuhne (Rosa Luxemburg Platz) and The Hackesche Höfe Filmtheater. Please note, there are no facilities for the physically impaired at the Hackesche Höfe. The cinema is on the fifth floor, with no lift.
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