Thursday, February 19, 2015

SPRITZIGE VERSUCHUNGEN



During the Berlinale after a Forum screening at the Delphi Kino I stopped by the California Burito joint Dolores at Wittenbergplatz for some soup and got into a conversation with a sweet young Black American opera diva named Monica from Ohio who has lived here for over ten years in a suburb near Spandau and her nutty blondine friend from Texas via Shanghai who has only been a Berlin resident for six months.  Monica saw my accreditation badge from a distance and at first mistook me for the gay black B-movie director Tyler Perry of the Madea franchise.  Now ain’t that a hoot?
From my German trolley Dolley pal I just got this hot bit of gossip that Deutsch super model Heidi Klum was recently removed from a Luthansa flight because of her ADD bratty mulatto brood.  Ms. Klum always travels first class but sticks the nanny and the kids in business class.  Well the kids were out-of-control Regis Philbin style and the nanny couldn’t get a handle on them so the flight attendants naturally came to the mother to intervene and she calmly  uttered it wasn’t her problem to solve so she and her entire entourage were unceremoniously left on the tarmac.
Sad to report the recent deaths of 1960s Lesbian pop songbird Leslie”You Don’t Own Me” Gore at age 68 and Galic charmer Louis Jourdain of Gigi and Letter From an Unknown Woman fame age 93. Stars always die in three’s so who will be next? I wanted to see Jourdain and Jean Peters in the movie Anne of the Indies which was screened as part of the Technicolor Restrospektiv at the Berlinale, but because of my tired gout condition I wound up missing many films this year and restricting most of my Berlinale activities to the Akadamie der Kunste screenings and Think Film Congress lectures.  I saw nothing from the Competition section so I missed films by Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, Margarethe von Trotta and Peter Greenaway.  The Herzog flick I heard was a big dud, but I did want to see the new Greenaway and Guy Maddin films which got rave reviews from those whose opinions I trust.
Uli Ziemons of Forum Expanded just sent me a list of the people who were at the Forum Party that I didn’t mention in my earlier post:

Felipe Braganca (director of Escape from my Eyes), Leila Albayaty with co-writer (forgot the name), Islam Mohammed, Michel Balague (producer of Leilas and Islam's films), Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Black President-director Mpumelelo Mcata with producer Anna Teeman, Mostafa Youssef (producer of Egyptian film Out on the Street), prolific experimental filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson.
Brazilian director Helvecio Marins Jr., Austrian director with film in Berlinale Shorts Sebastian Brameshuber, Forum selection committee member Ansgar Vogt, artist Simon Fujiwara, Stephan Geene and Marietta Kesting of b_books, and Berlin film director Henrieke Meyer, Toby Ashraf, Mark Pennock, curator extraordinaire Anja Lueckenkemper, art dealer Jose Garcia Torres, Chinese director Jian Wen, Haitian director Raoul Peck with his stars August Diehl who plays young Karl Marx and Alexander Eehling who will play Friedrich Engels.

Had a delightful time at the Cheese Endique Trifecta studio with young Israeli artist Liad who I will be mentoring while she is working on her graduate program at UdK.  Also spent some quality time with my former Weissensee Akademy student the French tyro artiste Christophe de Rohan Chabot who accompanied me to one of Manuel Schubert’s infamous  Laundry Parties held at the brand new renovated wash haus on the Haupstrasse. Monsieur de Rohan Chabot is curating an exhibition that opens Feb 27th 7pm at the Auto Center  Gallery Leipziger Strasse 56 10117 Berlin that features the work of Pizza Suicide Club, Joep van Liefland, Maik Schierloh, Mark Stroemich and Alexander Lieck.
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Received this announcement from one of my very dear LA collaborators the amazing young artist Marcus Pontello who worked with me on my project at MoCa in 2011 called Dejecta.  He is trying to raise funds for a new film he is working on that he needs financial assistance with.  The project sounds incredible so please contribute and pass the word on to others.  As you know I don't usually support crowd funding unless its something that i really believe in from people i believe in.  Here is  Marcus' sincere plea:
 
I want to share with you a documentary film I've been directing for two years now called Friday I'm In Love.  It's about the legendary Numbers Nightclub in Houston Texas that has a pretty amazing history.  It started as a gay disco in the late 70s, and became an alternative dance club/music venue in the 80s becoming home to goths, punks, queers, drag queens, and misfits alike.  Almost every obscure and alternative band of the 80s and 90s performed at Numbers.  It's a really special place and Houston is really lucky to have it.

We just launched our Kickstarter campaign- which will be our first attempt at an actual budget.  Maybe you'd be interested in putting it on your blog or sharing it with friends.  We need all the help we can get!


xox
Marcus
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