NUIT ET BROUILLARD
Rising Stars Falling Stars was brilliantine on Saturday evening at Arsenal Institute für Film und Videokunst. Canadian silent screen actress, producer/director and animal trainer Nell Shipman is really a feminist icon to be reckoned with. She is probably the only moviemaker to feature a dog having a flashback. Back to God´s Country 1919 was a tour de force. The flick was made even more enjoyable by the piano accompaniment of Ms. Eunice Martin who just came back to Berlin from China.
A vast array of visiting dignitaries came to the film and stayed to shmooze in the Rote Foyer during the after screening wine reception. Among the VIP´s: Canadian video artist Steve Reinke who curated his own program Monday, that also included two nights of screening his own incredibly whimsical videos. Steve makes the kind of work that i just love. We are both certainly cut from the same nutty clothe. One of my favorite of his videos featured portraits of slain soldiers in Iraq arranged via their attractiveness. God i loves me them Canucks!
Rising Stars is the most mixed event in Berlin featuring the hoite paloi and the nosferati. Saturdays guest list included Katherina Fichtner of the Canadian Consulate, CHEAP´s Marc Siegel with intermedia actress girlfriend Susanne Sachsse who stars in Ron Athey´s Daddy at HAU 3. Anna Muelter, DJane Olga Damnitz with gal pal Nanna Heidenreich of Arsenal Experimental, curator Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Rick Owens´cute assistant Asha Mines, experimental filmmaker Saul Levine, San Francisco punk legend Jennifer Blowdryer who gave me a copy of her latest tome Good Advice for Young Trendy People Of All Ages. Ms. Blowdryer now lives in New York where she is a spoken word star. Balkan beefcake Sasha of bbooks kollective, film historian John Paul Goergen, British artist Andrew Kerton and his posse of tall, thin, young art fagulas, Laurie Andersons right hand gal Ruth Schönegger, visiting American scholars Zach Blas and Megan Skanse, video artists Gunsi Holmstrom &
Cathy High, Scandanavian Muslim Daniel Hendrickson who is off to Japan for vacation, male ingenue Tamar Novas in Berlina straight from his triumph at Cannes with Almodovars latest film Broken Embraces, Orlando of the pop group The Maccabees, pretty British photog Elly Clarke (with her lovely blondine sister Laura who brought her yummy actor beau Toby) Ms. Clarke just moved to Berlin, and is a glam addition to Teutonic society. Oh and i can´t forget to mention that scrumpteous Norweigan art photographer Benjamin Alexander Huseby, he is one super hot dark haired boy vixen.