Culture Club

A film:
(or two, or three, or four...)

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 

Scroll over to see the answers (in order):

1. Legenda o Suramskoi Kreposti (The Legend of Suram Fortress)
2. Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza)
3. A Serious Man
4. An Education

(Kinoglaz.fr, info-palestine.net, The Austin Chronicle, Critic.de)

My favourite? Definitely A Serious Man, all about uncertainty, doubt, and trying to find answers when spirituality can't offer them. I don't think you need to be Jewish to "understand" this movie. It helps, however, to be a little bit of a nihilist. (It also helps to "get" physics.) No wonder this film is so popular in Germany ;)

For its acting, An Education was brilliant...definitely an escapist kind of movie, but you also leave feeling a little disillusioned, or, as Carey Mulligan's character, Jenny, says at one point: "I feel old. But not very wise." I couldn't shake the fact that Peter Sarsgaard was *woah* creepy, too...

The first film, The Legend of Suram Fortress, which I saw at the Berlinale, was a Georgian nationalist fable that propagated the kind of exoticized folklore that Soviet-era films loved to do. But SO pretty. Especially Georgian writing --> ამბავი სურამის ციხისა (the title in Georgian).

Oh, and Aisheen? Meh. Kind of disappointing actually, even though I did get to see it in West Berlin's coolest cinema, the Delphi Filmpalast.

The only good thing about the film was this awesome featured hip-hop group, DARG Team. I felt the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a documentary or not.

A trip:
(or: > 24 hrs. in Bern and Zurich)
Switzerland is kind of of on everyone's shit list right now, from Libyan leader Qaddafi calling for a global jihad against the little mountain state to German tax evaders sweating it out because they fear their financial secrets are no longer safe in Swissy.

Me? I really just can't understand what they're saying.




More pictures here.

An exhibit:
Bestiarium by Walton Ford at the Hamburger Bahnhof.
Eothen, 2001.

Walton Ford is originally from Larchmont, NY, and he specializes in large, jewel-toned, striking images of animals engaging in violent acts. The exhibit was all nature and brutality and the tenuous distinction between humans and animals. It was a little bit like Audubon gone to the dark side. Absolutely stunning.

A[nother costume] party:
I went as Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction.

Am now considering dyeing my hair ;) What do you think?

The party was cool, a very international crowd (Americans, Frenchies, Mongolians ;) and we listened to Balkan Beat Box and Die Antwoord. So, a fun night!

ALSO, IT'S FINALLY SPRING!!!1!

Sorry for the silence!

Will be back next week...

Up next: political accessories and a Berlinale update!

Squee!! I got tickets to the Berlinale today!

(Berliner Morgenpost)

[...for a Georgian subtitled film called The Legend of the Fortress Suram.]

Competition for tickets was intense, though. I've never seen such buzz around Potsdamer Platz, which has quickly emerged as Ground Zero of the festival...although, to be fair, it's also V-day (Happy Hallmark card day, everyone!)

Potsdamer Platz is also the site of Berlin's two biggest commercial cinemas, the CineStar and the CinemaxX (and believe me, those names are as much of a mystery to me as are to any English speaker), not to mention the Grand Hyatt and the Ritz-Carlton, favoured by Hollywood stars attending the festival. The CineStar is actually one of the few cinemas where you can see major Hollywood blockbusters *in English*, which is why it's also a popular spot for American expats/tourists.

Films compete for a Golden Bear, which is conveniently also the symbol of Berlin. It's also pretty damn adorable.

(Hamburger Abendblatt)

The Berlinale is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year (did I pick the best year to go to Berlin, or what?), and I am majorly feeling the scale and scope of the whole event and its effect on the city. It's not just the dizzying array of films that's making my movie buff heart beat faster - short films, indie films, films about war, films in Japanese, Nouvelle Vague retrospective films -, there's also been a certain unmistakable energy to the city in the past few weeks, a kind of palpable sense of pride in the legacy of film-making that the city has to offer, and of celebration in what has become a lasting and meaningful/important festival.

Anyway. I was also planning on getting one of those Berlinale messenger bags that everyone who is anyone seems to be toting around, just so I, too, can be insufferable. Unfortunately, this year's bag looks like this:

FUGLY.

Last year's was *so* much cooler:

...and in 2008:

(Süddeutsche Zeitung)

*sigh* What do you think? Should I shell out 20 Euros for a bag this mediocre, even if it is somewhat special??

• Official Berlinale site
• German news coverage of the festival: Berliner Morgenpost, Tip and Zitty.
• A really cool photo retrospective on the history of Potsdamer Platz.

Phew! That took a lot longer to write than I thought it would....good night!

King Karl on German TV...

...bringing some much-needed glamour to Monday-night programming.

Hubert Burda, German media magnate, is fiercely channeling Mickey Rooney on the far right of the screen. Next to Karl is Burda's wife, the super-talented and gorgeous Maria Furtwängler. Also: (off-screen, but you can kind of see his crazy hair poking onto the screen) is the obvious star of this show, Reinhold Messner (German mountaineer who is officially BATSHIT).

Seriously. This is him:


So far, the show has gone something like this:
Burda: ZOMG I've disovered the Internet.
Lagerfeld: *giggles*
Messner: What is the Internets?
This is so weird and so cool.

Saunaing by moonlight // Mondscheinsaunen

(Not a sauna moonlighting as something else, mind you)
Pop quiz:
Are you
(a) an exhibitionist?
(b) a voyeur?
(c) an unassuming but curious sauna virgin?
Alternative answer: (d) Finnish?

So, I'm fairly certain I am neither (a) nor (b), and clearly not (d), but Saturday midnight sauna-ing on a floating ship was still pretty damn cool.

The concept works like this: in the winter, Fridays and Saturdays from 11 p.m. - 3 a.m., you can sauna, swim and shower (erm, probably not in that order...would it be reverse order? Probably.) to your heart's delight. Which, when it's cold and disgusting outside, is actually a really lovely state of affairs.

The evening began like this: after walking, no, gliding gracefully to the floating Badeschiff near Treptower Park with two friends, we paid 8 € to run from a separate changing room to the sauna room proper - i.e. OUTSIDE - clad only in bathing suits, towels and too-big yellow flips-flops printed with the Corona logo.

Luckily, once we got there, and got over the initial awkwardness of being surrounded by people in various states of undress, it was really worth it. The atmosphere was very chill and clean, but not anaesthetic. There was lounge-y type music playing, dimmed light, and S-shaped wooden chairs with plushy white felt blankets. Plus showers and two separate saunas, one heated at 65º, the other at 90º.

It also seems to have been stunning Euro twenty-somethings night. I heard, like, five different languages being spoken in the sauna, and there was a high quota of HOTNESS. Not what I expected from a sauna, but I guess the sauna-bar combination attracts a different set than the Hallenbad in Marzahn would. Also: the place HAS to be listed in a guide book or two.

Did I also mention it was super-relaxing? i.e. I don't think I had ever *really* had the full sauna experience, I guess. What was less cool were the (two) couples who were monopolizing the pool, ostensibly to engage in some kind of PDA-off, and the loner-creeper who paid 8 € to keep his clothes on and creep on people. But overall: fun!

So: a great night. I also now have a new, lovely verb to add to my vocabulary, because one of the lovely features of the German language is its near-dizzying capacity for compounding words, is sure to become a fixture: Mondscheinsaunen, or: saunaing by moonlight.

Tonight...

...Mondscheinsaunen on the Winterbadeschiff. More later!


(Flickr)

Le weekend

Here are some things I did on Friday and Saturday:
Friday, I went for a walk (plus a short subway ride) to Goltzstrasse in Schöneberg, which I like because of the high density of furniture and knick-knack shops...also a cute little bookstore called "Chatwins" specializing in travel lit.
*click click*

Translation: "We don't just want a piece of the pie, we want the whole bakery." Ahem. Fuck yeah. (near the S-Bahn Yorckstrasse)

It's funny, the longer I live here, the more comfortable I am with doing touristy things like taking pictures of neighbourhoods and street signs and the like. I also thought it was really cool that this one graffiti artist's tag appears to be Zeus.

Puppet theatre is a really big part of many German kids' childhoods:


So. many. memories! Also, such a classic.

This neighbourhood also had a really distinctive (and distinctively questionable) space age theme.

Later on in the day was sushi with colleagues, where I ordered fish and natto. Biggest. mistake. ever. but still kind of worth it. Looks like baked beans, tastes sticky, and has an after-taste of coffee. Have you tried it before?

Friday night, I went to an indie concert in Zapata on Oranienburgerstr., and it kind of reminded me of why Berlin doesn't really have the same indie scene as, say, London. Oh, and apparently there was a fire there Saturday night! o___O But still fun!

Saturday, I made pizza from "scratch"...suffice to say my kitchen did not look this pristine when I was done...there was a lot of improvisation involved!

I also watched "Fish Tank", which was absolutely brilliant, but also left me super-super-conflicted. It's definitely a film that needs to be seen to be understood, but essentially what makes it so difficult to watch is that we, as an audience, become entranced by the kind of general direction the film is headed, only to realize that when what was bound to happen eventually happens, it reveals more about our own morality and the weaknesses of our instinct than we are comfortable with. Does that make sense?

Watch the trailer here.