Berlinale 2007 is on!

Now there's good and much awaited news for all you movie lovers out there and anyone with some thoughts on their minds of making it to this year's Berlinale Film Festival: the final programme is to be found on the official website (here) from now on. Try out the scheduling tool as well; it really is quite helpful for keeping you organized and not missing out on your “crucial” picks. So eventually, the race for tickets to your favorite films is very much opened and I wish for an enjoyable and surprising Berlinale experience for all of us – bring it on!

But there is actually a bit of disappointing news to be added as well, namely that included in this year's line-up of almost 400 films being screened at the 57^th Berlinale, there is not so much as a single piece of film from Singapore anywhere to be seen, darn! Hey, all you aspiring young film makers from SG, just how daring are you, really? I may be entirely wrong in this but for all I know the doors to entering your film into the Berlinale Festival are open for you already. This has to improve, definitely!

I will try to keep you updated in here with impressions on some of the films I watch this February 8^th - 18^th (with a decidedly proto-ymagon focus, of course) as I try to assess the yield in film 2007. So far my personal two favorites to foreshadow some really rewarding screening sessions are: Lee Yoon-ki's (winner of the 2005 NETPAC for “Yeoja, Jeong-hye / This Charming Girl”) HD production “Aju teukbyeolhan sonnim / Ad lib night” and Oku Shutaro's “Kain no Matsuei / Cain's Descendant”, which looks very promising, very fatalistic indeed!
As far as documentaries (or the like) are concerned, the one about the workings of J-Democracy, “Senkyo / Campaign”, by Kazuhiro Soda and Amir Muhammad's “Apa khabar orang kampung / Village People Radio Show” from Malaysia are certainly on my watch-list.
Well, let's see just how good they'll turn out to be, alright!

(pic©berlinale.de)