AGRIPPINA DELIRINA


Every year at the Berlinale the Forum section does a salute to a golden era Japanese director. This year its Keisuke Kinoshita the Japanese William Wellman whose films are beyond sublime. This afternoon I saw Konyaku Yubiwa(Engagement Ring) at the beautiful Delphi Theatre which features a young, very virile and handsome Toshiro Mifune packing some major duba in his swimtrunks as a doctor who falls in love with the long on the tooth but fashionable wife of one of his wealthy patients. After seeing this movie I am longing for a hot Japanese boyfriend. I also recommend the Kinoshita films Onna(Woman/Women?), Kanko No Machi(Jubilation Street), and Yuyake Gumo(Farewell 2 Dream).

With Manuel Schubert of FilmHighlights Magazine I went and saw the Perspektive Deutsches Kino presentation of Freier Fall  direcected by Stephan Lacant. The only reason I saw this film is because of the blondine boy beauty and rack on the German male ingénue Max Riemelt who I have had a crush on since I first saw him in a movie set during World War II where he plays a lovely Hitler Youth boxing champ. I also saw him in the film The Wave that stars the humpy German star Jurgen Vogel who is one saucy pud of an actor who is super sexy even with his bad teeth. Freier Fall was very TV movie, and it didn’t show Herr Riemelt naked enough. It was very embarrassing sitting in the audience during the premiere presentation of Freier Fall as the hack director invited the entire cast and crew including the grips, drivers and caterers on the stage to help congratulate himself. Can we say tired?

Last night I was back at the Prussian Crematorium in Wedding with Daniel Hendrickson for the Forum Reception. Someone decided not to have a big Forum party this year, and instead a more low key reception. Was glad not to have to trek to the Volksbuhner this year, and the Crematorium is a divine location, but whose idea was it to not have the installations running full mast? Ok I won´t go into my negative spiel. Berlin could benefit from taking lessons from the great hostess Elsa Maxwell on how you throw a proper gathering. Just saying. . .

Was about to leave the Forum party around 11:15 but then the Brazilians showed up led by the legendary artist Neville D´Almeida who is all warmth and generosity along with dashing and softspoken Cesar Oiticica Filho and posse. Cesar´s documentary film meditation on his art uncle Helio Oiticica is one of the most vibrant and dazzling films I´ve seen in quite a while. The movie brought back lots of memories of my dear late friend the Brazilian artist Wagner Vieira who designed the sets for my performances back in the 1980s with The Afro Sisters.

A few weeks ago I overheard some Americans on the SBahn talking about a cable program called Girls. I am not up on most US pop culture references, but right before the Berlinale I received a few episodes of this series from HBO. I gather someone at the cable station wants my Vagimule seal of approval. Well I did watch the episodes sent to me and I have to admit I found something intriguing about the series writer/creator/star Lisa Dunham --I believe that’s her name. I am a sucker for big boned gals –being one myself and Ms. Dunham is quite the spunky pepperpot. I have to give her credit in casting one lovesexy big dick thickerous as her boyfriend. She is no fool. I would be in heaven if I could have lovescenes with this young dark haired actor with milky white skin and pillow lips and talk about a chest cavity!----the boy is stacked. He´s definitely the most appealing male actor on this program.  

It was sad to see James LeGros on the show. I like him a lot and he is a fine actor, but he hasn´t aged very well. He use to be my neighbor in Los Feliz Village living right next door to Beck and Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. He was so cute in movies like Drug Store Cowboy, but now he just looks like some olde generic white dude. I didn’t even recognize him at first. Thank god black don´t crack! But it sure gets dusty unless you put some cocoa butter on it.

WIEDERHERSTELLUNG

That wonderful tiny Love Camel aka: Andrea Novarin has been staying with me attending the Berlinale International Film Festival.  We’ve had a blast together arguing and carrying on in utter nonsense.  On his last day in Berlin Camel took me to breakfast around the corner on the Marlene D. street of Lebener Strasse to a relatively new trendy boite called MokaLola where I had the most divine egg scramble with herbs and a plump croissant.  The owner was a spritely Turkish fellow who saw us standing outside and promptly invited us to come inside.  You never get that kind of gracious treatment at restaurants in Berlin.  Usually it’s the opposite along with a frown. 

So sad that Camel is going back to London, but I am happy for him as he has a brand new job working with the Internet Movie Database in Bristol.  Camel had worked for many years at the British Film Institute.  His new employ begins in March and he will sublet his beautiful and conveniently located London flat and move to Bristol where he has a six month contract.  Camel took me to Sunday brunch at More Café at Nollendorky Platz.  I have had lots of nice meals at this place, but the service and food was a little lacking on this particular visit.  Camel has been such sweatheart treating his Vagimule doll to an early birthday din din at Santa Maria and buying me a new computer as my last one went kaput.  I don’t have a good track record when it comes to technologies.

Love Camel and Jewish Muslim Daniel Hendrickson were my escorts to the Salzgeber Editions Sissy Magazine yearly Berlinale shindig this time located at their new digs on Prinzessinin Strasse at MoritzPlatz.  Jan Kuenemond the elfin editor of Sissy Mag is a cute, softspoken and sincere little booty pie that so many men and women in Berlin have the hots for.  The soiree was fun.    A woman from Leipzig who I believe runs a kino there was this year’s winner of the Salzegeber Prize.

Berlin parties never get down and dirty as people are too reserved here to let themselves go in the way that I require, but there was a hefty and generous buffet provided by an establishment called Hillmann , and free flowing liquor all night which makes up for the general Berliner social awkwardness.  Seen cavorting about:  legendary filmmaker Monika Treut  looking svelte and lovesexy, Manuel Schubert of FilmHighlights Magazine with his juicy pal Olivier and a posse of large peniled accolytes, humpy Toby Rauscher, French actors Jeremy Renier and his lover Gaspar Ulliel who met while filming the Yves Saint Laurant biopic, intellectual studkin Christian Weber with Ramon Zuercher whose film Das merkwuerdige Kaetzchen (The Little Cat) is screening as part of the Forum section of the Berlinale.

The film that excited Love Camel the most at the festival was a Dutch/German production called Its All So Quiet(Boven is het Stil) an austere and subtle six reeler from Netherlandic  auteur Nanouk Leopold.  The hornpig in the Camel was pickled pink by a Babylonian gorgon of a supporting player named Martijn Lakemeier who was the films youthquaking eyecandy.

The other night I saw a late screening of Deshora by Argentine Barbara Sarasola-Day which started off nicely with a premise involving a middle aged couple and a young interloper who I didn’t find all that attractive. What Deshora needed was Mehdi Dehbi the Arab/French star of Je Ne Suis Pas Mort(I’m Not Dead).  This boy and his perfect hair and pillow lips kept me completely enthralled.  I guess Mr.Dehbi’s director Medhi Ben Attia is also wrapped up in the house of Mehdi Dehbi, bathing him in nice languid closeups.  The director must be a closet shrimp-aholic because he lingered just a little too long on his star’s beautiful and manly bare feet in one early scene.  The  best way to describe Je Ne Suis Pas Mort is to say it’s a magical realism version of Freaky Friday with fey Frenchman Emmanuel Salinger in the Barbara Harris role, and the luscious Mr. Dehbi as Jodie Foster.  I could even forgive the film for letting glamour girl Maria de Medeiros run amok, but If I was them I would excise that horrible theatre scene-yuksville.

Excitement was stirring as I attended the world premiere of my former German\Polisch student Marcin Malaszczak first feature Sieniawka.  This flicker is a majestic tone poem, dazzling in its slowcore visual detox and Anti Benjamin Britten soundscore.  The Cinestar 8 house was SRO and I predict that my lovely young Marcin is going to emerge as a major film talent that everyone will be squawking about.  Not only did he direct the film but he was also the cinematographer.  Yowza!

Saturday I had to rush to Kino Internationale to catch a screening of Bob Fosse’s Cabaret.  I hadn’t seen it in almost ten years when it played at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd with a post screening Q&A with the films star Michael York.

It was important to me to see Cabaret here in Berlin where it really resonates.  Under the Berlinale Classics Retrospektive banner that highlights new restorations I was a bit perplexed as this is one restoration  that  could benefit from a little more fiddling.  But I shan’t get all nitpicky, after all the film is 42 years old, and its just as magical as when I first saw it upon its initial release in 1972 when I was in grade school.  I can’t get over how young Ms. Minnelli is, and Marisa  Berenson is a pure vision of fragile loveliness.  The films associate producer Harold Nebenzal told a bunch of amazing stories before the screening that I had never heard before.  Can you imagine gossip that the Vagimule doll doesn’t know about concerning a Hollywood musical film?

Also saw the odd documentary Naked Opera featuring a terminally ill middle aged status queen obsessed with Mozart’s Don Giovanni and an ungainly pumpkin in the form of French blue movie ingenue Jourdain Foxx.  I don’t really know what to say about this bad looking digital concoction or why I went to see it other then liking the title.

The opening of the 8th Forum Expanded at Kino Arsenal was very Fidel Castro porn translation as provided by Daniel Haji Henderson using his best Virginia O’Brian deadpan voiceover to the wonderful Cuban docu For the First Time(Por Primera Vez) where a Guantanamo Bay Village of peasants get their first taste of cinema, from Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.  

Everyone  in Kino I was in a whimsical mood, led by a relaxed and sparkling Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus doing a marvelous job as moderator and being very playful with the crowd along with host Harum Farocki with able assist from Uli Ziemons, Angela Melitopoulos, Nanna Heidenreich, the first family of German Arthouse Cinema La Gregors, Constanza Ruhm and projectionist Anselm at the giant editing machine.

The next program that was part of Living Archive restored digitalization featured the discovery by Goldsmith scholar Nicole Wolf that Deepa Dhanraj’s 1986 documentary  film What Happened to this City? That she had been trying to find was hiding in plain site at the Arsenal’s archive all along.  Hollywood actor Tim Robbins taking time out from his jury duties was one of the notables in the crowd along with the delightful wife of Harum Farocki, Antje.

Saw the wonderous Robert Siodmak film made in France in 1938 Mollenard which isn’t dated in the least, but actually touches on some themes that are quite current. 

Was so happy I got to see Richard Foreman film Once Every Day at HAU 1 that was part of Forum Expanded.  The film features a young lanky Jewish man of such inescapable beauty and presence that I wanted to see more of him on the screen.  Being the HavaNagila queen that I am my lust couldn’t be satisfied.  This young man looked like a Jewish Anthony Perkins circa 1960 when he starred in the film Tall Story with Jane Fonda where he plays an unlikely basketball player. 

It was my first time at HAU under the new artistic director.  The brightly lit décor is horrible.  Even someone in radiant youth would look flat and washed out with the lighting employed in the lobby and bar areas.  The new furniture is also horrid.  Everyone I talked to was complaining about it, and told me its even worse at the WAU café. 

Didn’t get to see the end of the movie as I promised my friend I would see his movie that was screening as part of Panorama section.  Richard Foreman was supposed to be in Berlin for his screening at HAU I  but his plane was cancelled because of an east coast blizzard.

A sexy Korean friend of mine worked on the movie Behind the Camera by director E J-Yong where he supposedly directs a feature film via Skype.  The best part of the movie was the older Korean actress who reminds me of what Margaret Cho will be like in 25 odd years.  I really liked the opening short Jury by elderly first time director Kim Dong Ho.

This morning I rushed out of the house to meet Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muslim at this new Turkish boite on Potsdamer Strasse at Kleistpark.  The food and atmosphere is quite charming but we had to scarf the food down to make it to the Forum Expanded panel discussion at this museum next to the Kulture Forum.  Film historian Marc Siegel was the moderator along with gorgeous German/Bolivian curator Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz and artist/filmmaker Nelville d’Almeida, Thomas Valentin and Cesar Oiticica the nephew of Helio Oiticica whose film about his legendary uncle is the cornerstone of the Forum this year.  So much gleamed from the panel discussion touching on Quasi Cinema, Tropicalia, Experiments in Cosmococa and Walking Delirium.  I beg you to go and see the documentary by Cesar.  You won’t regret it.

Tonight is the big installation event at the Liquidrom(Natural Hot Spring Spa) which is another must see happening of Forum Expanded and will definitely be the talk of the festival.  There are some surprises that I won’t divulge here you just have to see it for yourself.  Going to take a disco nap so i don't look like the walking dead later tonight at the Liquidrom----ta!