Berlinale 2008 begins

Yes, it’s been a whole year and here again comes the big show we’ve all been waiting for, the one event that unlike any other manages to blissfully transform our city of Berlin for some ten days running into a continuous celebration of film and film internationalism: the 58^th Berlin International Film Festival aka Berlinale! I certainly can’t wait, especially since last year’s edition wasn’t particularly shining. So let’s all hope for an outburst of silver screen glory to light up this winter scenery of the bleakly factual world out there, and let’s make this an occasion to remember!

Surely the outlook, the concrete programme that is, doesn’t look too bad, I guess – but of course you can never know until you know, right? There’s many a familiar name included in the line-up (as usual) but hopefully there will be some fresh discoveries to make as well. As for Singapore, Anthony Chen has his latest short film “The Haze” entered in the respective competition – and I wish all the best for that one. Yamada Yoji (last year’s best, remember?) graces us again with “Kabei/Our Mother”, and the Talent Campus, now in its 6^th edition already, will definitely offer lots of inspiration and new insights into international co-production rules-of-the-game, so I hope.

As far as proto-ymagon is concerned, I will stick with the tested quantity of last time’s 10/1 formula: ten words per film to give you my first impressions as I proceed on my visual journey day by day. Stay tuned!

(pic©berlinale.de)