BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL 2005

Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) 10-20 Feb, 2005. I arrive as a guest of the "Information Tour for Film Experts" by Auswärtiges Amt / Goethe-Institut. Starting from the arrival at the airport everything is being taken care of. Hotel Angleterre by Checkpoint Charlie is within a 15 minute walking distance from the Festival center.
The touring group of 22 is global, with:
Gary Maddox (The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia)
Antonio Mazon Robau (Cinemateca de Cuba)
Christos Mitsis (director of The International Film Festival of Athens, Greece)
Blagoja Kunovski (The International Film Camera Festival, Skopje, Macedonia)
Ludmila Nemyria (The Ukraine Film Foundation)
Teboho Moseling Mahlatsi (film-maker, South Africa)
Mary-Beatrix Mugishagwe (tv and film producer, Daressalaam, Tanzania)
Youssef Sherif Rizkalla (director of the Cairo International Film Festival, Egypt)
Saleh Al-Suhaimi (film producer, Riad, Saudi Arabia)
Chalida Uabumrungjit (Thai Film Foundation), Bangkok, Thailand
Aviva Meiron (Cinematheque Jerusalem) Israel
Nicolas Deocampo (director, festival director) Manila, the Philippines
Ibrahim Moumni (Al Hayat) Beirut, Libanon
Bartosz Zurawiecki (Film monthly magazine) Warsaw, Poland
Misrobiddin Nugmanov (tv producer) Duschanbe, Tadzhikistan
David Melo Torres (film counsellor, Ministry of Culture) Bogota, Columbia
Futoshi Koga (Asahi Shimbun, film festival organizer) Tokyo, Japan
Ruoyu Yang (Radio and TV Team Shechuan) Chengdu, China
Alfredo Barría (film festival director, counselor of the ministry of culture, professor of film history) Valparaiso, Chile
Ricardo Bedoya (film critic and historian, co-organizer of the South American Film Festival) Lima, Peru
Mark Jenkins (journalist) Washington, D.C., USA
Our expert guides are Miriam Dagan, Anna Held, Luciana Sollero, and Hamza Chourabi.
We are invited to the Thursday evening opening gala, featuring Man to Man directed by Régis Wargnier.
On Friday 11 Feb we are given a special Information Tour Berlin by bus, hosted by the city planning expert Mr. Ares Kalandides. I have lived in West Berlin (Zehlendorf, Charlottenburg, Dahlem) for three years 20 years ago, and I was a Berlinale regular during the era of the great retrospectives (Babelsberg, Pommer, Special Effects, Colour, Scope) and before the film festivals boomed in Finland (we have film festivals every month now). Berlin has changed totally since: the wall came down, Berlin became the capital of Germany, and for years the largest construction site of the world. Now most of the re-building has been accomplished. The Tour offered an impressive view. We started at the Checkpoint Charlie, where a part of the Wall has been reconstructed in a new site. We toured through Friedrichshain, witnessed the impressive renovation of Karl-Marx-Allee, saw Prenzlauer Berg, drove thru the Jewish area around the Synagogue and the Charité hospital area, went past the giant Lehrter Bahnhof construction site, to be the hugest railway station in Europe, saw the new German government buildings and witnessed the finishing stage of the Holocaust memorial next to the Weimar-era Reichstaghaus. Of West Berlin we visited the tour of Staatsbibliothek, Nationalgalerie, Wittenbergplatz, KaDeWe, Kurfürstendamm, Bahnhof Zoo, and the Embassy Area. We drove through the Sony Center / Marlene-Dietrich-Platz media area, saw the Museum Island and witnessed the nothingness of Berlin Alexanderplatz, so central until the downfall of the Third Reich and so devastated since. We took a walk to the attractive Hackescher Hinterhöfe near the Goethe-Institut. All in all, it was a two-hour sighting of top architects from all over the world. Berlin with its huge area and many parks, forests and lakes is not a crowded metropolis. The big majority rent their apartments, there are not relatively many private cars, the BVG public transport system is excellent, and after the wall, brown coal is no longer used as fuel, as a result of which the air is cleaner and there are no longer smog alarms.