The main thing is the setting: if you want to help the cinema, you buy tickets for the cinema, not the Berlinale. Before we land in the delta wave – Cinema Moralia, diary of a cinema-goer, 250th episode
From Rüdiger Suchsland
“You want to tell us / you have a soul
They want us to believe / there is something to laugh about
They definitely want / That we are happy
And our passion / Is a mystery to them “Tocotronic
Will we ever live normally again? Everyone is already talking about Delta, about the next wave in autumn, when the election is over, about loosening up way too fast and way too early and way too much. I don’t think so, I find this pessimism more choking and more worried than Corona is the security virus, especially in its particularly dangerous variant of “security at all costs”, which has gripped many in Germany in particular.
But so be it. In any case, there is a great risk that the cinemas, which are not open again everywhere, will have to close again soon.
Therefore, if you really want to help the cinema, i.e. the distributors, the filmmakers and the good movie theaters, you should buy cinema tickets now. And with cinema operators.
All of us, who we like to call ourselves “cinephil” on good days, should better give our money to the cinema operators and distributors, the producers and the film directors, and not to a public film festival like the Berlinale that is run and financed by the federal government.
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It is difficult to understand why the Munich Film Festival is now, of all places Kaiserschmarrndrama as the opening film. Of all things! And this year of all times!
Does it really have to be? The last Munich opening film came from Claire Denis. What does Claire Denis’ cinema have in common with that Kaiserschmarrndrama?
One could have opened with any great author’s film. Especially this year you could have chosen pretty much anything, the pot of leftover films from the film festival that did not take place is large enough.
Why not Brasch by Andreas Kleinert, who runs in Munich and reminds of one of the best German directors of the last few decades?
Or do you have so little trust in your audience in Munich that you believe that there is no other way to get the open-air cinema to the full when it opens?
To avoid misunderstandings: I have nothing against the series of Eberhofer crime novels. If you love Bavaria but have to live in Berlin, then it’s a great pleasure to watch these films every now and then on any normal evening in the ARD media library. That’s where they end up sooner or later. And during the pandemic, I loved seeing them and had a good time. If you like, and if necessary, you can also watch them in the cinema. If necessary even at the film festival.
But why does the second largest film festival in the republic, whose makers I like to believe that cinema, i.e. cinema culture and auteur film, are really important to them, open with something like this?
This is definitely the wrong sign these months and is doing cinema a disservice.
Or is everything at the Munich Film Festival just as some nasty and less nasty tongues claim, and Berlin likes to imagine it: If Cannes doesn’t take place, Munich can’t think of anything to show. And every now and then someone from Constantin calls on the executive floor and says more or less bluntly: You have to show our film! As an opening film! And if you don’t show it, you won’t get anything from us for the next five years !!! Or something like that.
»… but that’s not our topic.« (See below)
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The Berlinale used to take place in the summer. Not today.
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Not very young Munich cinephiles will still remember Bodo Fründt. The long-time film critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, who unfortunately died much too early and who had unfortunately fallen out of favor there, and most important employee of the Munich Film Festival, worked for a few years as program director of the Berlinale around 1980. He was able to explain why his boss at the time, Wolf Donner, moved the Berlin Film Festival from July summer to February winter. “To be able to take a few films away from Cannes.” And “why that was a wrong decision in retrospect: Because February is cold and humid and people are all in a bad mood.”
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Normally, moving the Berlinale back to the summer would be the perfect step. Resourceful. Original. A real new start for this dumpy and pretty fucked up film festival.
It was moved to late summer, at the end of July, shortly before Locarno, which unfortunately would have to be closed, and in direct competition with the festivals in Venice and Toronto. It would be the logically correct step and you would also have a perfect location for it: The ICC with its charming 70s brutalist architecture, which is a bit reminiscent of the old SPD party congresses that took place earlier when the building was still full of social democrats could get – but that’s not our topic either – and a UFO from science fiction films, when there were still science fiction utopias and not just science fiction dystopias.
So the ICC, right next to the exhibition building, which together with the exhibition building could then house a great film market and enough cinemas, and would be a kind of Berlin Palais de Festival.
Unfortunately, Berlin’s and federal cultural policy is as retracted and bureaucratic and unimaginative as the Corona policy and all sorts of other areas of politics. If the political still exists at all and has not long since been replaced by emotional management, as Juli Zeh recently wrote in her new novel.
But that’s not our topic either.
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Just don’t pretend that everyone has been waiting longingly for it … At the moment, the so-called “Summer Berlinale” is taking place in Berlin to some extent unnoticed. But even if the local press trumpets – it’s not a film festival.
But another disservice to the cinema.
There are a few good films running and a lot of not so good ones, and everyone should believe that this has something to do with the Berlin Film Festival. But it didn’t, because the film festival took place in March, if you want to call it that. Actually, films for trade visitors were only streamed for five days and strange prizes were awarded. Only the pandemic can do something to ensure that all of this does not take place as usual.
Now you want to stick to the always half-correct claim that you are a “public festival” and therefore organize a couple of open-air screenings after sunset, that is, after nine thirty in the evening.
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In fact, it’s about completely different things. It’s about selling a few more cards. But it’s mainly about Berlin marketing.
The pictures reveal the purpose: In photos accompanying press reports, the monuments of the capital are impressively brought into focus. On the Museum Island, which was not completely renovated, an open-air cinema was specially built to create a postcard idyll that attracts streams of tourists.
But but…
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Why should people actually buy tickets that end up in the Berlinale box office, which is financed anyway, to watch films in the noise and mosquitoes and poor screening conditions, instead of tickets that benefit distributors, who have been starving for 15 months? Who help the cinemas directly? The filmmakers? And that in the air-conditioned, visually and acoustically at least no worse equipped cinema?
I haven’t got it yet.
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I also did not understand why the Berlinale summer special is allowed as a model experiment, but at the same time similar model experiments by cinema operators, i.e. private entrepreneurs who really have to make a living from it, in contrast to everyone who has anything to do with the Berlinale, are forbidden. Why is the united front consisting of the Berlin red-red-green city government and the black state minister for culture so hostile to business?
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The Berlin »Tagesspiegel« still bombarded its readers with so-called Berlinale reporting and delirious: »White Nights on the Spree«. You can also call it that when it is too bright to see the film properly.
Yes, film screenings also take place at 5 p.m. With LED video walls. Without a projector or beamer. Like the giant televisions that are on the stage at open-air concerts or fan miles.
In a good mood as it is, the »Tagesspiegel« continues: »If June rain falls on Museum Island, the demonstrations will continue. Only heavy rain and thunderstorms are reasons for the termination. Otherwise: put on rain gear instead of waving umbrellas. The fact that the atmosphere at the open-air festival is more distracting than inside is sure to get over the cinematic art in view of the great backdrop of the Museum Island and the Berlin Cathedral. “
Then it becomes clear what it’s really about: at least not about the art of film. But just around the backdrop.
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How the Berlin cinemas (and many others outside Berlin) are actually doing is suggested by the “Open Letter” that the Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Rehberge open-air cinemas wrote to the Governing Mayor and their audience.
»We have been operating our open-air cinemas as safe cultural places in accordance with the applicable Corona regulations and the hygiene concepts we have developed for well over a year. The fact that cultural events usually found attention later as gastronomy or sporting events in the opening steps has also shaped this period, as has a usually stricter interpretation of rules, despite – all sides now emphasize – the minimal risk of infection in the fresh air by far.
Two weeks ago the Senate decided to lift the obligation to test for outdoor restaurants. For example, up to eight people from three households can sit at one table. There are no personal limits for large beer gardens. In fact, in busy bar streets, the distance, test and mask requirements have fallen at the same time, but that is not our topic.
Since the Senate also failed yesterday to lift the testing requirement for guests in our cinemas, we would like to ask you, dear Mr. Müller, to stand by our side as we have to answer these questions countless times every evening at the cinema, for example when we are viewers * Have to send them to test stations in a hurry or not let them into the cinema:
Why do viewers who sit in groups of one or two in the cinema, observing the minimum distances, still have to prove a test?
What is the basis of the assessment of a higher risk of infection compared to the beer garden or public viewing before late night?
Why are the audience movements of those interested in culture into a cinema (mostly on foot or by bike) more dangerous than those towards shopping or sports?
If necessary, we would like to ask you to readjust this next Monday, because then the pilot test of the Berlinale Summer Special will end and we will be faced with the renewed task of rebuilding our cinemas (for the fourth time this season) and communicating changed access rules again.
If there are no corresponding changes, we would like to ask you and you, dear audience, not to turn this matter against us:
Take it sporty, rush past a test center on the way to the cinema or bring the other valid evidence with you to the movie night. We will continue to focus our energies on offering you great and safe cinema evenings (and a little regret that the culture in Berlin does not have such strong advocates as retail and gastronomy).
We are happy to answer any questions you may have. «
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“They want to tell us / we shouldn’t torture ourselves any more
And they are already satisfied / If we get the curve
Because for our self-pity / they don’t have time “Tocotronic
(to be continued)
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