Berlin Film Festival, 10 – 20 February 2011
The Berlin International Film Festival, this year running from 10 to 20 February, is one of the most significant events of the European cinema scene. The festival boasting markedly democratic principles and a diverse and extensive film programme has also evolved into one of the most important events in the cultural life in Germany and Berlin.
Launched in 1951 in then West Berlin, for years the festival served as a bridge linking the West and the East. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Berlinale has been deliberately preserving and developing this particular niche, presenting extensive international film programmes and often focusing on politically topical subjects. Unlike the world's oldest film festival in Venice and the world's most influential one in Cannes, the Berlin Festival makes a point of addressing the local residents and visitors of the city alongside the film professionals and the usual twenty thousand guests of the festival.
Should you happen to find yourself in Berlin in early February, the traditional time of the Berlinale, you will have every opportunity to see the films compiled by the organisers into a number of profiled programmes, including the Competition Programme which, obviously, is the most important one; the Panorama Programme; the Forum, a programme more open to experiments; the Berlinale Shorts; the special Children's Film Competition, as well as a string of retrospectives, etc. The organisers of the Berlinale take great pride in the impressive quantities of tickets sold (last year's number was 270 000!) that proves that the Berlin Film Festival is so much more than a get-together for insiders; it is an open, public-orientated cultural event that features a selection of the best of the world's latest movies. Professionals, on the other hand, are mostly interested in the European Film Market held as part of the Berlin Film Festival, one of the largest film markets in the world.
The Berlin Film Festival is definitely the year's most important international event for Latvian filmmakers. Every year, dozens of professionals flock to Berlin like 'film pilgrims' to forge new contacts and find new collaboration partners, presenting their works at the Baltic Films stand. Two Latvian films have been selected for the official Competition Programme: homo@lv, a documentary by Kaspars Goba dealing with the treatment of sexual minorities in Latvia and Acorn Boy (Zīļuks), a puppet animation film by Dace Rīdūze.
If your next visit to Berlin coincides with the Berlin Film Festival dates, do spare some time to visit the epicentre of the festival at the futuristic Potsdamer Platz where the excitement of the Berlinale is in the air - even if you do not set foot inside the any of the auditoria. Having said that, it would still be worth your while to visit at least one of the venues and see at least a couple of the festival films to pick your own winner and root for it to win the Golden Bear, the festival's most valuable prize. Alternatively, you could plump for some classical values and catch a film from the retrospective of the brilliant Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, definitely one of the highlights of the festival.
How to purchase a ticket: http://www.berlinale.de/en/service/eintrittskarten/index.html
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