Berlinale Day One: International Jury Press Conference

Published on February 6, 2014

Berlin

James Schamus, the pres­i­dent of the jury, is an ex­cep­tion­ally pro­duc­tive pro­ducer, script writer, dis­trib­u­tor and scholar. The fes­ti­val surely aims to profit from Schamus’s mas­tery in bal­anc­ing be­tween com­mer­cially ori­ented film pro­duc­tions (key­word ‘Hol­ly­wood’) and art-house cin­ema. This bal­anc­ing act ex­actly has char­ac­ter­ized Berli­nale pro­gramme se­lec­tion for many years. Apart from his con­tri­bu­tions to many cel­ebrated films (Far from Heaven, Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, Lost in Trans­la­tion, Milk, Dal­las Buy­ers Club, The Kids Are All Right), Schamus pro­duced sev­eral Ang Lee films and co-writ­ten the screen­play of Lee’s Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Dragon. Schamus ap­pears to have deep rooted in­ter­ests in China.

Re­cently, China is mak­ing a lot of head­lines with its as­pi­ra­tions to boost its cul­tural ex­ports and to com­pete with the soft power that the Amer­i­can com­mer­cial cul­ture has been ex­er­cis­ing glob­ally. ‘Chi­nese cin­ema is going global,’ said Tony Leung, Chi­nese actor and film di­rec­tor. ‘There will be more and more Chi­nese films on in­ter­na­tional film fes­ti­vals.’ In­deed, China is rep­re­sented with three films in this years Com­pe­ti­tion sec­tion alone.

What is Berli­nale’s role in a world where moviego­ing as a shared ex­pe­ri­ence is in de­cline. ‘Moviego­ing as an ex­pe­ri­ence is not de­clin­ing,’ replied Schamus. ‘If you go to places like China, where they are build­ing seven cin­ema screens a day. And these screens are serv­ing younger and younger au­di­ences.’

Hoff­man, Allen the Pro­fes­sional Haz­ards of the Film In­dus­try 

Re­ferring to Hoff­man’s death, a re­porter from Reuters asked whether the act­ing pro­fes­sion is be­com­ing in­creas­ingly haz­ardous. Schamus, laugh­ing off the ques­tion replied: ‘Maybe. But not quite as dan­ger­ous as cer­tain forms of jour­nal­ism, such as yours for ex­am­ple.’

Feel­ing con­fi­dent in his role as the pres­i­dent of the jury, Schamus an­swered him­self every sin­gle ques­tion that was not di­rectly ad­dressed to some­body spe­cific. Half ju­rors are ac­tors them­selves and I would much rather hear any­body else an­swer that ques­tion.

In­vok­ing Woody Allen’s re­cent trou­bles, a jour­nal­ist asked the jury to which ex­tent ‘eth­i­cal moral and eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions’ are in­volved in its de­ci­sion mak­ing. ‘I be­lieve that moral and eth­i­cal de­ci­sions were al­ready made by the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee.’ was Schamus’ diplo­matic an­swer.

Michel Gondry’s con­tri­bu­tion to this year’s fes­ti­val is a dou­ble one. He is both a mem­ber of the jury and a con­trib­u­tor to Panorama sec­tion with his own doc­u­men­tary about Noam Chom­sky Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?. The di­rec­tor of the suc­cess­ful Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind (2004), for which he re­ceived an Acad­emy Award, nev­er­the­less made a hum­ble and slightly con­fused im­pres­sion. ‘Christoph here, he even got two Os­cars,’ said Gondry, ’this is ex­tremely rare.’

Waltz the Charmer and the Re­served Ladies

Christoph Waltz, un­doubt­edly the star of the jury, acted ac­cord­ingly. Elo­quent, sharp-wit­ted, al­most elu­sive, and slightly ar­ro­gant, but still charm­ingly so. When asked how will he go about his new task of judg­ing the filmic per­for­mance of oth­ers, he replied that ‘there are no basic prin­ci­ples ac­cord­ing to which one eval­u­ates a film.’ As to the dif­fer­ences be­tween Cannes and Berli­nale, he added: ‘One major dif­fer­ence is the lack of a beach in Berlin. While Berli­nale is def­i­nitely try­ing to set bolder stan­dards than Cannes, the food is still said to be bet­ter over there.’

It has been a tra­di­tion of Berli­nale to in­vite Ira­ni­ans to be mem­bers in its the jury every sin­gle year since 2011. Ini­tially in part a re­ac­tion to the un­suc­cess­ful 2009-2010 elec­tion protests in Iran, this has since be­come a yearly po­lit­i­cal state­ment against a regime that lim­its the free­dom of cin­e­matic ex­pres­sion.

The some­what timid Mitra Farhani (born 1975) had to hold her ground, dis­tanc­ing her­self from from the im­pres­sion of one jour­nal­ist that her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the jury is but a great ca­reer op­por­tu­nity for a young film­maker: ‘I’m old enough to judge oth­ers’ films.’

Oth­ers jury mem­bers Greta Ger­wig, Trine Dyrholm, Bar­bara Broc­coli were not ex­cep­tion­ally talk­ative. And I too should prob­a­bly wrap it up here.

Cafeba­bel Berlin cov­ers the 64. Berli­nale Film Fes­ti­val

We love film and we've got a lot in the pipeline! You will find daily up­dates right here in the mag­a­zine or on Berlin.​Babel.​Blog and @CafeBa­bel­Ber­lin. Ex­pect ex­cit­ing movie re­views, in­ter­views with stars and pho­to­graphic glances from the fes­ti­val grounds.