The first couple of days about a film festival, you realise, aren’t about the film festival. At least, not entirely. They’re about being in a new city, about the relief that most people here speak English; about remembering which section of the part-paved-part-cobbled footpath is for walking and which for cyclists; about the names of the streets, which are such fun to say inside the head, this-strasse and that-strasse, the s pronounced sh, making you feel so worldly and sophisticated; and about the cold air, which I’m getting huge lung-fulls of, like a miser hoarding pennies.
Note to self: Exit hotel. Take a right. Keep walking past store that sells Berlin knickknacks. Reach end of road, past stretch of the Wall (yes, that Wall), past building with gorgeous gold panels housing the European Film Market, take a right at the currywurst stand, pass Kingsman: The Secret Service poster ( The Sun declares ‘Mehr badass als Bond’), keep walking till you reach clock, the one on top of a replica of the historic traffic lights once used in Berlin, cross over, and head to the Hyatt, presently home to the press. The Hyatt is so centrally located, it’s unbelievable. The Cinestar complex (which has the IMAX screen on which I saw Fifty Shades of Grey ) is a five-minute walk. The Cinemaxx complex takes two minutes. And the Berlinale Palast, with the giant screen outside telecasting the press conferences, is a hop across, if you are the hopping kind. You could have yourself a sweet little festival without ever stepping out of Potsdamer Platz, which is what this area is called. It helps. It really helps when, sometimes, there’s just a half-hour between screenings.
But these are the logistics. There’s also the routine you get into. Never mind how late last night’s screening ended (or maybe you went drinking with friends? Bad idea!), you have to be up early, so you have some time to catch up on email, and what the papers back home are saying about AAP’s astounding victory. There’s something about being away that makes you realise how much home means to you, despite how much you whinge about it. After five days in Berlin, when a friend suggests we meet at an Indian restaurant named Amrit, I feel all sunshiny inside, as if the cold had abated by a couple of degrees. And the palak paneer isn’t even very good.
Note to self: Maybe it was the palak ? Because the cheeses here are mind-bogglingly amazing.
Mornings, after breakfast, I run to the Hyatt so that I won’t be too far behind in the queue at the ticket counter that opens at 8:30. Somehow, there are always many people already in line, no matter how early I am. When do they sleep? When you’re inside darkened movie halls for hours, the days blur into nights that blur into days. Few people here are qualified to answer the question: “What day is it?” That’s surely why the daily schedules exist. Ostensibly, the schedules help us decide which movies we want tickets for — films not screened for the press are ticketed; and these are what we are queuing for each morning. But looking at these schedules is how we realise it’s a Sunday or a Tuesday. I’m not trying to make it sound like the most exhausting thing on earth. I’m not saying it’s not fun. I’m just saying it’s work.
Note to self: Next time, come a couple of days early or plan to stay behind afterwards. Otherwise, the only sights you’ll see will be those on the screen. It’s cold outside, about zero, so you need the thermal innerwear and the layers of clothes. But once inside the Hyatt or a theatre, it’s warm and you have to take it all off. You don’t just walk in and settle into the first available seat. You take off your coat, then your sweater, you put down your bags (the smaller one with money and pens and phone, and the bigger one, the jute one given to the press with the image of the Berlinale bear that you use to carry the brochure and the apple and banana you’ve nicked from the breakfast buffet to save a few euros.) Walking past people to get to a seat at the centre is like clearing a minor obstacle course of coats and bags. Everyone keeps saying bitte, bitte, bitte… “please” or “pardon”.
And yet, despite all this standing in line and planning and getting tickets, there are films you miss. My two big regrets are two documentaries — Fassbinder - To Love Without Demands (“Danish film director and historian Christian Braad Thomsen’s illuminating, moving and intimate memories of his friend Rainer W Fassbinder, based on a long conversation held in a hotel room one late afternoon in the 1970s”) and What Happened, Miss Simone? (“[the director] Liz Garbus interweaves archive footage and interviews into a detailed and atmospheric portrait of a driven artist”).
Note to self: Do the glass half-full thing. You were one of the first in the world to see the new Terrence Malick movie, weren’t you?
