Seán McGovern completes his Berlinale coverage. Until next year's fest!
You're no-one in Berlin unless you're coughing, which is what 75% of people (myself included) have been doing this last week.
Negative temperatures make for more serious cinema goers, although 2018's edition had its share of sideswipes. The festival's director Dieter Kosslick has two years remaining before his tenure is up and many are anxiously awaiting a fresh vision. Nevertheless, Berlin has some of the most offbeat and independently-minded filmmakers showing their work, and the gems are absoultely there. Let's have a final look at some of the curiosities that may or may not end up in a cinema near you.
Golden Bear Winner - TOUCH ME NOT (dir. Adina Pintile, Romania/Germany/Czech Republic/Bulgaria/France)
The only premiere at the Berlinale Palast that I managed to go to also turned out to be the the winner of the Golden Bear...
A semi-pseudo documentary essay about a woman's asexuality and her atomised encounters with a range of "abnormal" sexualities: an older and wonderfully German transwoman, a conscious-kink instructor, a Bulgarian rent boy and a sexual group therapy/performance art troupe (??) - no wonder there were still tickets available.
Touch Me Not receiving the top prize has already gained vitriol from some prominent critics, with the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw calling it "embarrassingly awful." I viewed it as a difficult, but intriguing, self-satisfied but compelling curiosity. A pan-European production, quintessentially arthouse and making no allowances for accessibility or definition. You can choose to read that has highly complimentary or a complete dismissal. By the time it finished I had sensed that it was either going to win the top prize or disappear from our lives entirely - maybe it can do both? However this is the role of the Berlinale, rewarding provocative work that won't get the accolades anywhere else.
Latin America Rules the Teddy Awards
It was a near clean-sweep for films from South America. While a Lebanese short Three Centimeters won the Teddy for Best Short Film, all the other prizes going went to Latin American countries: Brazil (Bixa Travesty, Obscuro Barocco, Tinta Bruta), Peru (Retablo) and Paraguay (Las herederas)
Best Feature Film - TINTA BRUTA (dirs. Marcio Reolon, Filipe Matzembacher; Brazil)
Boys, Brazil and bodies covered in paint (plus a couple of hard dicks - hey, it matters in queer cinema!), Tinta Bruta was always going to go down well with a queer cinema audience and will certainly be screened in international LGBT film festivals. Tinta Bruta is about Pedro, who makes his living on Cam4 (never heard of it), with a unique selling point - neon paint, as well as a hot body. When he sees an imitator online, he needs to get to the bottom of it. If we're living in an age of New Queer Latin Cinema, then this is part of an urgent response to a threatened democracy, machismo culture and creeping homophobia. And alongside Obscuro Barocco and Bixa Travesty, these films are taking the cityscape and urbanism and making it a potent part of the storytelling.
Best Documentary/Essay Film - BIXA TRAVESTY (dirs. Claudia Priscilla, Kiko Goifman; Brazil)
It struck me how much documentary storytelling is a huge part of queer filmmaking. And watching Bixa Travesty, centering on the aggressively faggoty transwoman Linn da Quebrada and performance partner Jup do Bairro, I was reminded that fact is often more compelling than fiction. Quebarda is a force of nature, a freestyling, in-your-face presence who commands the stage. She raps forcefully against machismo and heteronormativity, against conformity of any kind, really, and with absolute sincerity. She is a complete self-creation, a fighter and a survivor. Bixa Travesty is a polemical rock-documentary cum character study cum personal memoir. And the best news: She's on Spotify.
Personal highlight - YOURS IN SISTERHOOD (dir. Irene Lusztig, USA)
Tucked away in the Forum section of the programme was a stunningly simple and effective feminist documentary: completely personal, political and intersectional. Yours In Sisterhood takes an idea and makes it an investigation. Director Irene Lusztig travels to towns across the USA where at one point in the 1970s, a local woman wrote a letter to Ms. Magazine. Due to the sheer volume the magazine received, so many had to go unanwered and Yours In Sisterhood gives voice to these letters, as well as to a whole generation of women who respond to the personal history - sometimes in disagreement, sometimes to challenge, often from a place of great warmth and solidarity. I left wondering if maybe a few miniutes could be shaved off the 101-minute running time. But quite simply: no. Every story has a place and I was invested in each one.