the grass is always green on the screen

Notes from the Berlinale

Berlinale 2023

The ticketing is broken, but the program is too huge to pick out any favorites. Given a chance I would just go to the retrospectives, considering a lot of classics there are films I've watched several times over (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) or films gestating on my watch list for too long (Aparajito). Considering that all the theaters are spread out in the city and the public transport can at times be whimsical, I figured the best strategy would be to pick times I'm comfortable watching a movie and then choose a theater that's easily accessible by public transport and then join this diagram with the tickets for shows that are available. Not being a picky watcher has its perks as I can watch anything thrown my way, which means my schedule for the Berlinale is unpredictable and the three movies I watched so far bear no relation with each other.

Though I tend not to watch animated movies, shorts or documentaries, everything else is on the cards. Having not been to a film festival in a while, I kind of forgot the commitment and stamina it takes to sit through movies at 10 in the morning or 10 in the night but as I get older, my movie going experiences have changed. I find it okay to now doze a bit in a movie if it allows for it (a pleasant movie will always makes space for a little nap, a great movie even aids in the dreaming process and a bad movie is a grating experience where no napping is possible) and also okay if a movie doesn't maximize my pleasure function. There is also the anxiety of the watching the movies itself, I didn't know that watching so many movies in such a short span is something I've done almost a decade ago, with streaming almost replacing my movie going habit. It's nice to rediscover the joy of being in a theater as it amplifies the out of body experiences movies induce me to. Center seats in the front third of the kino, here I come.

#Berlinale #kino #filmfestival