berlin, part ii

Toward the end of Wings of Desire, there is a sort of Psalm recitation. A soliloquy voice-over about what we long for and think about as children that remains a thruline throughout our lives.

"On every mountaintop," the voice says, "the longing for a higher mountain yet." And, "in every city, the longing for an even greater city."

This rang so true for me. I've lived in many many places, and in each one, after I've "conquered" them, I've thought - Onward! Upward! And whenever I've returned for a visit, I've often thought, "However did I live here??? [e.g. Boston, San Francisco] It's just so *small*!"

But Berlin seems different. I think it's quite ironic that a movie about Berlin claims that no matter the city, there is a longing for an even greater city. As I mentioned in my last post, I found Berlin rather impenetrable; a great unfurling metropolis... with so many layers.

After all, there isn't a spot of geography without history, but few have been emblematic of so many diverse ideologies in such a short span. This is the place of Prussia! Of Wiemar! Of Nazism! Of Sovietism! Of the Cold War! Of squatters! Of art! Of engineering!

So many elements, all heaped upon the next and then pushed out from the center into a sprawl of districts and neighborhoods so far-flung I couldn't begin to try and get to them. How could anyone really truly long for a greater city than this one? It seems the ultimate in challenge, in riddle. Berlin seems like a place that needs years of deciphering.

So with that as a caveat, since I had days, not years, I bring you some additional promised pictures from my journey there. Enjoy!


The predictable first pic - no? The Berlin Wall...



"Madness" - think that sums it all up nicely.



This footpath could not have happened a few decades ago...




There's a continuous line of cobblestones throughout the city that indicates exactly where the wall once stood.



Brandenburg Gate 50 years ago, when they rolled out barbed wire before the wall itself went up.



And Brandenburg Gate today.



Toys for tots in East Germany during the Cold War... Grenades are fun!




A luxury stretch Hummer going through the site of Checkpoint Charlie (which has all been recreated... and according to my tour guide, is now manned by Eastern European immigrants...)



No idea...




Love the options here.... "Do you vote?" Ha. "No - I don't care for nothing!"




Couldn't resist... a new cartoon character for 'Don't Walk'!



And walk!



Am I an idiot for not fully realizing that Berlin has a river running through it??



My hotel (a former bank) - the building beside the green dome (thank you corporate expense accounts that aren't mine). This is also the square where books from a university were burned during the Nazi-rise.



And where I spent a good dealing of my Berlin evenings... a few lovely receptions on top of this roof... (need to get my camera lens cleaned, clearly).



So this wasn't quite as fantastic as the to-die-for breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of every variety of fruit, muesli and yogurt you could possibly imagine (in an atrium setting, no less) but it also didn't cost 40 euros (whoops!)... Rhubarb Kuchen and Caffe Americano by the river.



This bird was seriously interested in my Rhubarb Kuchen... had to enlist that fork to try and fend him off!



The mall, Quartier 206, which looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher.



Nice pic from one of Berlin's many many wonderful parks. Which happens to go well with the last line from the Wings of Desire monologue:
"When the child was a child, It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today."

oh & hey, i went to berlin

Hello there. Long time. This post is brought to you by Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire - I had very little to do with it. Frankly, until watching Wings of Desire last night, I'd thought about shutting this whole blog down (so silent, for so long... it was becoming atrophy). But the film's message and setting jolted me.

See, a couple weeks ago I rode to LA with a filmmaker, a trunk full of art and the art's maker, a certain Jared Lindsay Clark, who'd lived in Berlin for a stint. A subject that came about because, oh hey, I just went to Berlin.

I told him how impenetrable I'd found it. He told me how much he loved it. I talked of Soviet culture. He talked of art scene rapture. I told him he needed to see The Lives of Others. He told me I needed to see Wings of Desire. "Okay," I said, "I will."

And being the sort of person who does what she's told when somebody with an artistic bent glows about a film, I did. (Had he mentioned that it was particularly timely given the recent passing of Peter Falk, I might have been even quicker about it).

Peter Falk. Berlin. Death. Life. Change. The film's subject matter. Its inspiration taken from the work of Rilke. Angels longing to be mortals. The incalculable value of eternity compared to the precious handhold we have on the current moment. The fact that I'd just been there; walking circles around the very same landmarks featured in the 1987 film, but in a vastly different political context. And yet, it was the same. Within the film's context, they felt the same.

Serendipity. Serendipity and footfalls.

I dug out my camera today and uploaded photos I hadn't bothered with yet. Just to prove to myself that what I'd seen had been what I remembered it to be. Felt no different. That I wasn't imagining it.

I wasn't.

If you've seen the film, you'll recognize the pic of Lady Victory at the top of this post. A guardian angel of military triumph built when Germany was still Prussia.


And the Mercedes sign [spoiler alert] such a prominent backdrop for the lovelorn man's suicide. An association I viewed with irony, since the familiar revolving car ornament was the first thing I'd recognized (with an internal yawp of glee) after getting a little lost around Tiergarten mere hours before my departing flight.


And Maxim Gorki Theater, like a linen-draped saint heralded with celestial glory.

Gorky's Theater wasn't in the film (it's in former East Berlin), but this seemed a fitting parting image for a post about angels and serendipity.

See... I hardly think Gorky's Theater is a landmark many people seek out. I didn't seek it out myself. It was just something I stumbled into during my directionless wanderings. Though once I saw it, I went right up to challenge its existence, head-on, like a windmill, saying, "Oh yes, Gorky, there you are! But of course! I know what you're here for! I know what you're after!" The theater stood steadfast, blinking back with no statement beyond its gold letters and embellished classical majesty, a messenger from Olympia, knowing that just by being there its point had been made.

For no matter where I go, its seems there are Russian playwrights whom I'm constantly bumping into, who stare at me... with knowing glances about the things I am to write -- and how they figure into it.

More Berlin pics forthcoming.... promise x

a lonely hunter

“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
- Carson McCullers (author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)

After a long stage of restless limbo, it appears I'll be on the road again very soon. I'm glad. I'm ready for a new place to settle. A place to put myself and breathe in a new routine. It's been an interesting and difficult couple of months - life has felt increasingly liquid, less concrete, like I can't get a grip on anything - am treading water in a vat of Jell-o. So many things up in the air - my emotions and things on no one geographical point on the map. Being a perpetual vagabond is a lonely endeavor. I know I do it to myself. But it often seems unavoidable. I long for roots, and I envy those who have them, yet I still can't seem to put them down - not for long.

In the days of old, gypsies used to move in packs. I guess I was born to the wrong time. I've been watching loads of Carnivàle lately, an HBO series that traced, you guessed it, a traveling carnival across the dust bowl of the Great Depression. It got cancelled after a couple of seasons about 5 years ago - I somewhat think it was ahead of it's time - I have a feeling people would relate more to the uncertain desolation of that era now. Me, I guess I've always related to the desolation of that era. But superimpose the magical wanderlust of a carnival on top of it... whoa... I know that. A life that's a series of places and incredulous events... I know that.

Maybe it's just a sign of being a life-thirsty American - who knows. But here's to getting back on that quiet road, to embarking on more jaw-dropping adventures, to hunting down a plot of land to stake a tent... and to writing about it.


Photo is by a guy who still travels with the gypsy packs, and astounds me with the emotion he can capture in a single still frame, Mike Brodie.

the baroque & the marvelous real

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
— Milan Kundera


I don't know how I missed the movie Everything is Illuminated when it came out five years ago. Surely, if I'd seen a trailer, I would have taken note - the film brings together so many different elements that resonate quite deeply with me: magical realism, Jewish history, a distinctly Slavic style, a quest into the past... Where was I when it was released? What was I doing? How did it so entirely escape both my sister's (a Slavic film buff) *and* my attention? I don't feel that I was even remotely aware of it.

Equally curious, is that while I was oblivous of its existence for 5+ years, as of about a month ago, I haven't stopped hearing about it. References, questions, mentions of "everything is illuminated" has been *all over* - even the Kundera quote above was something I just stumbled across.

I took the universe's hint and it became something of a quest to watch the film, which, after multiple set-backs, I *finally* managed to do a couple nights ago.

And?

Highly recommended. Set in the Ukraine about an American boy searching for the truth behind an old photograph of his grandfather and "Augustine"... it's heartbreaking, and funny, and surreal, and an all-around charming movie. Go see it if you also happened to miss it. Though I still don't know exactly what I was supposed to get out of it yet... perhaps that bit will come later... or maybe I also ought to read the book - ha - is that gauche?

Photo is by Tim Walker - appropriately, I thought, of a Russian household interior.

Nickelodeon Nožisková

Kasey created this mini character montage to show to a group of squatters in Soho whom we want to include in our latest documentary endeavor. We'd been pestering them/periodically visiting/hanging out with them at the squat for nigh a month, yet they were still trepidatious about how we might make them look.

After they saw this, however, they said "yes."

Na zdraví!

NOTE: For some bizarre reason my blog lops off a huge portion of the viewing screen - to propertly watch our little reel, go here. Enjoy!

Quixote

Behold the preview for The Windmill Movie - a sort of hybrid documentary/feature portrait of a conflicted artist (is there any other variety?), pieced together by a man who is also sort of a hybrid: tie-maker/budding (now budded) filmmaker Alexander Olch (his name is linked to an interview with the Boston Globe).

The crux of the movie seems to be about telling "the story," and telling it successfully - without really having a clear vision of what "the story" is. It's a storyteller's perpetual conundrum: how do I tell "the story" the real story, when its form is vague and hazy and elusive. This can feel a daunting impossibility - though you have a haunting sense that "the story" is nonetheless there and tugging at your soul to do it justice.

As a TV news reporter, I was regularly ramrodded by impossible stories that wanted telling. I would arrive on the scene of some "newsy" event, and feel, quite certainly, that there was nothing particularly meaningful about the house fire or the flu outbreak, but rather, the "real stories" were sliding around the periphery like shadows in a gyroscope. Feature pieces too - those spotlights on humanitarian workers and dog carers - seemed a sham. What appeared heartwarmingly straightforward always coursed with a more beguiling message bubbling just underneath the obvious song-and-dance.

It was a constant struggle, since while it was simple enough to capture the cardboard scene, and to report back the rehearsed answers, what I wanted to do was hone in on the heartbeat - reveal whatever it was that animated everything else. The story of life, seemed to me, the tale that was screaming to be told.

My news days are long past now. I've become a free storytelling agent. So when stories beckon me with shadowy hands and say "do me justice," I have nobody to answer to but me. Hence, why I've posted a lot about documentaries lately. It's what's on the brain, you see. I look to others who have gone before and struggled and ask:

How did they do it?

How did they do it?

How can I do it?

Can I do it..?

somewhere between dandelions & sunlight

“Everyone hears the future in a dream.” - Isaiah Zagar

Artist Isaiah Zagar is the subject of a new documentary created by a fellow Boston University alum. My jaw dropped when I read the filmmakers' philosophy on the style of this documentary - a difficult mix of surrealistic perspective with real-life - as it articulates exactly what I'd like to achieve through the documentary medium... a visionary inkling I initially saw long ago in a newsroom and a mere daydream. Could its realisation also be in my future...?

Photo is by the always-surrealistic Tim Walker.

This, Looks Bad

Sestra Nožisková wrapped shooting another documentary short this weekend. Our subject (victim) this go-round was my French flatmate, Guillaume.

Kasey dressed him in funky outfits.


I asked him irritatingly philosophical questions.


Our cameraman, Stefan, kept telling us to cut due to the noise of low-flying planes.


Guillaume really thought the way we posed him was excruciatingly uncomfortable and our film location was entirely unfitting of his personality (he would have preferred filming in a toilet - oy).


The end product is going to be very French... and (we hope) hilariously marvelous.

CCTV

Me. Waiting for the train.


Enter the long leg of Guillaume, my flatmate.


Wow. I didn't realise how dwarfed I look standing next to him.


Why are we the only ones standing on the edge of the platform?


Like impatient strangers...




If you care to turn sideways. I give the signal. We could be spies...

I love you for your Green Cadillac?

Sorry, just had to throw in the song for good measure.

But the GM news is official... a symbol of American culture and nostalgia brought down. What will all the Mary Kay ladies do? More importantly, what will all the people in Michigan who were already scraping together an existence do? Sad.

Maybe this is strange, but when I learned that the bankruptcy ax had finally dropped on GM, I actively wondered what the filmmaker Michael Moore's thoughts on the matter were since he's not only been such a vehement critic of the corporation during his career, but also such a sympathetic champion for his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Well, I found my answer on the Huffington Post today. If you're also curious how Moore felt about the death of GM, you can read his reaction here.

Agree or disagree with his bombastic style, but I think surely, surely some of what he says is in the right vein. Abandoning crews of skilled vocational workers isn't just anti-humanistic, it seems that to do so would also seriously jeopardize America's industrial might.

meanwhile, back in la la land...

Ahhhh, L.A., the city that sleeps early and doesn't eat. The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, says America is a nation of hungry ghosts, but I think no place is this sentiment more starkly felt than in the City of Angels.

Yet, somehow, seeing the video above made me strangely nostalgic for the empire of sprawling freeways. Entitled Lost Among Them, it's an entry from Brand X, the LA film festival's shorts competition - meant to depict what it means to live in "next generation L.A."...whatever that means. This was the short I liked the best by far... though I'm curious how the filmmaker is going to get the music rights (perhaps you remember the track from Garden State?) C'est...

Enjoy!

thing 1 and thing 2

Step right up folks! Presenting... zeeee trailer!

That's right, at last, a preview snippet of that film I've incessantly been going on about; the short that will eventually (post-festival season) be revealed to you in-full.

For now, please have a look at the mini trailers I threw together. The first is the 'real-deal,' but I kind of like the flow of the second one better. Unfortunately, the sound levels for the music on the second one are out-of-whack, and, somehow, I didn't manage to save it, so instead of just fixing the sound, I ended up working against the clock to re-cut the whole thing. Ahhh...some things never change...

Enjoy!





P.S. In case you're a bit confused as to what the short is about... this is how it's being described:

East meets west in this stylized character-piece documentary featuring the stream-of-conscious thoughts of a quirky young Indian man who has moved to London. His monologue brims with honesty and humour as he touches upon some of life’s biggest issues: identity, change, love, work, religion and, of course, success.

This documentary turns the oft-referenced “one billion plus people” analogous with India on its head by spotlighting just one of the subcontinent's citizens. This approach lends singularity and humanity to the abstract and populous concept of “India” rather than delivering yet another portrayal of the country’s population en masse.

A high-level of visual aesthetic is used to underscore this man's unique individuality, yet the ending nonetheless surprises the audience by highlighting the fact that he should not simply be viewed as India in microcosm, but a microcosm of the human race.

post tempest

So I owe you all an epilogue... to the day I was sending "goodbye - have a nice flight" emails to Kasey that had her thinking I was going to end up floating in the Thames rather than at the Fed-Ex office when all was said and done.

Well, I made it. Miraculously...truly miraculously... since I have no idea how I figured it out, but I did... I finally got the DVD to burn. I stumbled out of my warehouse and onto the DLR... at last emerging in Mayfair - looking like a slumrat compared to all the coiffed business beauties walking around me.

With the help of a hairdresser (who, no doubt, wanted me out of his posh shop) I found Kinkos/Fed-Ex... and the lovely people there seemed to take it all in stride... they're obviously accustomed to dealing with frazzled sleep-deprived Americans who treat their streamlined office with its "next day" guarantees like some kind of Mecca-sanctuary.

I put the DVD into an envelope. I marked it "for cultural use" and "of no commercial value" (ha), then kissed it goodbye.

Could all that have happened within a matter of hours? From "I'm never going to leave this horrendous industrial building" to "thank you kindly dear Fed-Ex man for taking my large sum of money and promising me my parcel will make it to Paris in time"? Crazy.

And afterwards, despite my sleepless exhaustion, I decided to walk back to my apartment. It was an unusally warm and beautifully pleasant day in London. I strolled through St. James Park, which was tingling and vibrant with the life of spring grass and blooming flowers, and then past Buckingham Palace, where I watched tourists taking souvenir pics as proof that once - once - they had seen this royal residence that I live in walking distance from...

With some trepidation, I arrived at my building, only to find myself immediately holding the door open for somebody who was serendipitously leaving (and who seemed as grateful for my chivalrous gesture as I was for their exit). I retrieved the keys Kasey had left me from my flat's mail slot. Then I rode the elevator upstairs and let myself into my little space, where I looked out over all the roof tops and an ancient church's steeple from my room's balcony and sighed relief.

What a fuss. What a wonderful fuss... for something that worked out in the end... as it always tends to... Can you see forever on a clear day? Probably not, but if the clear day follows a storm, you can certainly sense, touch, breathe, something like bliss.

I've been meaning to post a song from the Australian artist, Lenka, ever since the Sundance Film Festival, when I saw her at the Music Cafe. For some reason, it seems appropriate to attach one to this post. This particular song is called The Show and, besides the hoppy melody, the lyric "it's a joke, nobody knows, they've got a ticket to the show" strikes a major chord with me. But my favourite part is when she sings "I want my money back..." - referring to life, of course. Ha. As if - no? But sometimes, don't we all...?

Enjoy!

(I pre-apologise for the lame 'sing-a-long' version of this... it's the only youtube link they will let me play here in the UK... feel free to look up the actual video if you're in the States!)

fashion beat a la 'sestra nožisková'

Behold... Kasey's first video creation. This will give you a more, well, moving picture of London Fashion Week than what I normally provide. It is also the first of many such solo and collaborative creations we plan to deliver. Welcome to sestra nožisková. Enjoy!



P.S. This mini-film premiered on our friend Stefan's site Not Just a Label and is also where you can find Kasey's article on the latest exhibit at The Welcome Collection, Dressing Up Calamity.

Sundance Postmortem

Maybe I'm jaded, but Sundance just wasn't that great this year. Maybe it's that I'm simply less impressed with meeting people than I used to be (wow, you're the rep for Outkast, but you're also a self-absorbed jerk), or maybe it too keenly reflected the depressed state of the economy (30% fewer people attended, 70% fewer parties were thrown), or maybe it was that I was left in pain and debilitated from a really bad slip on the ice, or that I contracted food poisoning on the second-to-last day (more on both of those later)... but yeah, it wasn't my favourite Sundance.

However, among the rubble of movies I saw (Peter and Vandy, Barking Water, and Spread were all pretty dismal) a few were worth the hours of my life that they absorbed, and are films that you should undoubtedly aim to see once they hit theatres. So, in order of entertainment value and brilliance:

1) The Greatest
Thanks to the bad title, you probably think this film is about some great sports figure, but no, it's actually about a family grieving the death of their teenage son. It's a story that's been done before, but this is so unflinchingly real and gorgeously written and paced that it feels wholly new - it's incredible that this was writer/director Shana Feste's first project.

Starring Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon (who actually played another grieving mom in another favourite film of mine, Moonlight Mile), and the most adorable pixie of a girl, Carey Mulligan, who gives a performance that is so sweet and vulnerable and strong that you will absolutley fall in love with her. Ah! From start to finish... breathtakingly superb... it doesn't miss a beat... not one.


2) Endgame
I love political thrillers, and this one is fantastic. It follows a series of negotiations during the late 80's that helped bring an end to Apartheid in South Africa... the idea of watching a film about "talks" sounds boring, but this couldn't be more engaging, action-packed, and brimming with humanity. You come away feeling not only enlightened about this era of South African politics, but a little hopeful about the potential-end of long-waged conflicts all over the world.


3) Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

People are going to disagree with me that this is worth seeing... I encountered plenty of festivalgoers who thought this film was simply awful, and actually, I'd really need to see this film again before I could give it a solid rating... but that's also why I liked it. The film is based on a book of the same name, and it unfolds more like a play... the scenarios, dialogue, and characters are all reminscient of staged theatre, but I'm kind of partial to those devices.

Interestingly, I didn't think any of the men depicted/interviewed were that "hideous" - rather, I found them extremely typical as far as guys go and how I think their minds work. However, another gentlemen I spoke with thought this portrayal of men would surely frighten women since he believed the guys in the film were all sociopaths. Ha. I guess you need to see it to decide for yourself.


Meanwhile... at the Music Cafe tent....

Hurray! Rachel Yamagata performed!

I got a copy of her latest album Elephants.. Teeth Sinking Into Heart AND practically a front row live performance out of the deal.


A couple of less famous women on the red carpet... me with Dianne.


Me with Kasey on Main Street (those orange credentials are SUCH cute accessories... oy).

At the Big Fan afterparty... the writer/director is on the right... I hadn't seen Big Fan or his debut film The Wrestler either and, thus, when introduced, painfully had nothing to say!


See? Abandoned Main Street... and the fest wasn't even over yet.


Parting shot of the Sundance House.

Gone Sundancing!

Hence my absence.... expect a Sundance Film Fest post upon my return!

(I'm in the above photo somewhere, which is posted on Sundance's website: a snapshot of the Park City crowd watching Obama's inauguration.)