Being at the Berlin Film Festival helps me appreciate the difference that a film-literate audience can make to the film making experience
Here is a city where people have attended the festival year after year and over time they have developed the ability to articulate their analyses and insights about film.
Even films from little known places have sold out screenings. The premiere of Invisible City, a Singapore documentary about history and memories, for instance, was packed to the overflowing, with some people sitting along the aisle. From what I hear, other Asian films at the festival are doing equally well.
I have had the pleasure of chatting with quite a few people who have travelled to the festival every year. I have also met individuals who have volunteered tirelessly at the festival for decades.
One of these chance encounters led to an interview about my Beijing Olympics documentary, Boomtown Beijing, on German radio. “35 mm” is regular film magazine show on Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, in the southwestern part of Germany.
Alexander Sancho-Rauschel, the radio journalist who interviewed me, also volunteers at the student cinema at the University of Freiburg. The Aka Film Club, or Academic Film Club, has been around for 50 years. It was started in an effort to enable students in post war Germany to watch more international films. Although the name of the club sounds very stern and seems almost archaic in this day and age, it has been retained out of reverence for tradition.
I wonder what the listeners of Radio Dreyeckland will think of the interview of my little documentary about the Beijing Olympics?
One thing, for sure, the passion for film seems to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries here. So I cherish the hope being a little known film director making a small film in the Far East might actually be an advantage, fuelling curiosity about the project.
