(no subject)
The prospect of writing anything at all seems unusually daunting this evening. Here, everything comes so rapidly, no time to breathe, it hits so hard I loose my breath. It’s true, it seems I can never take a breath deep enough to satisfy me, the air goes someplace but the breath is void and the oxygen lost. This is both metaphorical and frighteningly physically true.
Today marks the end of the Berlinale, the Berlin film festival. In the past seven days and nights I’ve watched fifteen films. Barrage, Pale Eyes, This Charming Girl, Top Spot, Alein, Berlin Stories, Wasting One’s Youth.doc, Brasileirinho, Crash Test Dummies, Festival, Guidebook, Oxhide, World’s End Girlfriend, 10 Lakes, Towards Mathilde. There’s an entirely separate list of films I wish dearly I had been able to screen, but the time simply slipped away. Each time, there would be a crush of bodies funneling frantically through the door to the theatre, awaiting it’s opening, and then, you would step into the huge velvet space, and it would seem to soar, the breath, I always wanted to lift my arms and reclaim my space. Themes intersected, velocity, razors, tears, reality vs fantasy vs memory, the passing of…nothing tangible has left the screen and coated my bones yet but I’ve a new passion for film and something intrinsic has shifted that leads me to believe it will. You could smoke in all the lobbies, drink under the shifting lights, watch the endless stream of beautiful people buried in the basement of the theatre. Potsdammer Platz used to be empty after the wall fell, void, now the Sony Center and the Arcade reek of commercialism and the area swarmed with festival goers.
Thusday we were all invited to the Forum Party, in the space of an enormous old theatre in East Berlin. Hundreds of beautiful film lovers drinking free wine from silver platters atop marble and beneath chandlers. Hundreds of dizzy late night bodies dancing to Interpol and the Scissor Sisters, smoking recklessly, stumbling, kissing, exchanging numbers. I danced with an adorable German boy named Felix, a law student, who promised to call me but never did, I’m not ready for that game. Melinda vomited into a beer glass, I danced like never before, spun about, we laughed so hard, I returned home at five in the morning and no one from our group went to language class the next morning.
I cried twice in German class last week, I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m fine, and I’ve only five classes left. I hate to admit it but I’ve simply given up on German, most people here speak English and if they don’t than I know gestures and smiles and frustrated giggles can suffice.
Last night we went to a bar called Doctor Pong, beer is 2 euro, the couches are squashy leather and the music is cliché American indiepop. But the amazing part, in the front room, there is a huge ping pong table, and everyone has a paddle, and stands in a circle that rotates around the table, so when it’s yr turn, you try to hit the ball, and if you miss, yr out, and if you hit it yr in until to miss. Eventually there are two people left and they have to run around the entire table every time. It’s brilliant, and somewhat indescribable. Only in Berlin.
I adore Sundays here so. Today the flea market in front of the Rathaus. I purchased a sparking black sweater and ten postcards from the early 90s. I will send everyone a postcard at some point during the semester but please be patient as my time is painfully scarce and anything I compose in that small space is remarkably inadequate. Tanning is now part of my Sunday routine, the beds look like spacepods and the warmth on my skin is comforting in the most satisfying way. We found a hidden second story café with a grand piano and plants everywhere and seven little rooms, cheery yellow walls and ample ashtrays. It’s our little Stegliz gem. Overall, though, I rather loath Stegliz. It’s quaint enough, and we’ve what we need but I crave the east, I do. It takes me an hour to get to the aforementioned pong bar and the equally quirky and amazing places that surround it. I went out with Allison from Hampshire and also a girl named Becca from Hampshire, to a place called White Trash Fast Food (in the easaast), and it was simply brilliant to be able to speak of Hampshire without explanations.
Today we met with the director of one of the movies we screened at the festival. Oxhide was filmed in 40 days in one claustrophobic Chineese apartment. Written and directed by a 23 year old film student it features only her and her parents, with eloquently scripted vignettes of moments that really did happen. The 8 of us met at Carol-the-Lexia-director’s house to make salads, toast Turkish break, brew coffee, entertain her six year old, and eventually chat with this director. It felt like a family. All the ceilings in this city of 15 feet. All the floors hardwood. Children and cookies and candles and jump ropes and cameras and chaos but it was so comfortable and familiar and we heard tales of China and secrets about the filming of Oxide. We stayed for six hours and now the Sunday sun has set.
I wake every morning to a sliver of a steeple slicing the sky.
I leave you with a number of entirely unrelated photographs and an apology for not updating more often. Now that the Berlinale is over I should reclaim a bit more of my time.
Today marks the end of the Berlinale, the Berlin film festival. In the past seven days and nights I’ve watched fifteen films. Barrage, Pale Eyes, This Charming Girl, Top Spot, Alein, Berlin Stories, Wasting One’s Youth.doc, Brasileirinho, Crash Test Dummies, Festival, Guidebook, Oxhide, World’s End Girlfriend, 10 Lakes, Towards Mathilde. There’s an entirely separate list of films I wish dearly I had been able to screen, but the time simply slipped away. Each time, there would be a crush of bodies funneling frantically through the door to the theatre, awaiting it’s opening, and then, you would step into the huge velvet space, and it would seem to soar, the breath, I always wanted to lift my arms and reclaim my space. Themes intersected, velocity, razors, tears, reality vs fantasy vs memory, the passing of…nothing tangible has left the screen and coated my bones yet but I’ve a new passion for film and something intrinsic has shifted that leads me to believe it will. You could smoke in all the lobbies, drink under the shifting lights, watch the endless stream of beautiful people buried in the basement of the theatre. Potsdammer Platz used to be empty after the wall fell, void, now the Sony Center and the Arcade reek of commercialism and the area swarmed with festival goers.
Thusday we were all invited to the Forum Party, in the space of an enormous old theatre in East Berlin. Hundreds of beautiful film lovers drinking free wine from silver platters atop marble and beneath chandlers. Hundreds of dizzy late night bodies dancing to Interpol and the Scissor Sisters, smoking recklessly, stumbling, kissing, exchanging numbers. I danced with an adorable German boy named Felix, a law student, who promised to call me but never did, I’m not ready for that game. Melinda vomited into a beer glass, I danced like never before, spun about, we laughed so hard, I returned home at five in the morning and no one from our group went to language class the next morning.
I cried twice in German class last week, I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m fine, and I’ve only five classes left. I hate to admit it but I’ve simply given up on German, most people here speak English and if they don’t than I know gestures and smiles and frustrated giggles can suffice.
Last night we went to a bar called Doctor Pong, beer is 2 euro, the couches are squashy leather and the music is cliché American indiepop. But the amazing part, in the front room, there is a huge ping pong table, and everyone has a paddle, and stands in a circle that rotates around the table, so when it’s yr turn, you try to hit the ball, and if you miss, yr out, and if you hit it yr in until to miss. Eventually there are two people left and they have to run around the entire table every time. It’s brilliant, and somewhat indescribable. Only in Berlin.
I adore Sundays here so. Today the flea market in front of the Rathaus. I purchased a sparking black sweater and ten postcards from the early 90s. I will send everyone a postcard at some point during the semester but please be patient as my time is painfully scarce and anything I compose in that small space is remarkably inadequate. Tanning is now part of my Sunday routine, the beds look like spacepods and the warmth on my skin is comforting in the most satisfying way. We found a hidden second story café with a grand piano and plants everywhere and seven little rooms, cheery yellow walls and ample ashtrays. It’s our little Stegliz gem. Overall, though, I rather loath Stegliz. It’s quaint enough, and we’ve what we need but I crave the east, I do. It takes me an hour to get to the aforementioned pong bar and the equally quirky and amazing places that surround it. I went out with Allison from Hampshire and also a girl named Becca from Hampshire, to a place called White Trash Fast Food (in the easaast), and it was simply brilliant to be able to speak of Hampshire without explanations.
Today we met with the director of one of the movies we screened at the festival. Oxhide was filmed in 40 days in one claustrophobic Chineese apartment. Written and directed by a 23 year old film student it features only her and her parents, with eloquently scripted vignettes of moments that really did happen. The 8 of us met at Carol-the-Lexia-director’s house to make salads, toast Turkish break, brew coffee, entertain her six year old, and eventually chat with this director. It felt like a family. All the ceilings in this city of 15 feet. All the floors hardwood. Children and cookies and candles and jump ropes and cameras and chaos but it was so comfortable and familiar and we heard tales of China and secrets about the filming of Oxide. We stayed for six hours and now the Sunday sun has set.
I wake every morning to a sliver of a steeple slicing the sky.
I leave you with a number of entirely unrelated photographs and an apology for not updating more often. Now that the Berlinale is over I should reclaim a bit more of my time.