If anyone out there in the known world has an extra lap top they are not using and want to send it my way It would greatly appreciated.
At the beginning of Feb I went to the Berliner Institüt fur Psychotherapie und Psychoanalyse and met for an hour with the kindly Frau Klingeberg. Yes the little Ms. Davis doll is seeking help from a therapist to tackle her increasing mania tissues. Even Ozma of Oz the all powerful ruler of the Fairyland of Oz has problemas of histrionic porportions.
I spent four days and up to four hours plus in the Forum Expanded exhibition space until my back went out. I just couldn't get enough of the granada on display. My personal highlights: Girl Talk a single channel nugget by my LA homegirl and child of high art Wu Tsang that features poet and critical theorist Fred Moten in ecstatic rad fairy drag. Hygiene/Swachh by Pushpamel N. where she is washing the right rev'rend brain out of the hairy headula of a highly cooperative vassel. James T. Hong's Terra Nullius or: How To Be a Nationalist which was downright upright motherfucking son of a preachers bitch perfection in addressing the East China Seas cunnundrum almost better then the Jean Harlow MGM classic from 1935.
Covering similar terrain in a unique fashion was the brilliantine The Refrain. The best ever by Angela Melitopoulos and her dynamic collaborating posse headed by that genius Angela Anderson with Maurizio Lazzarato and Aya Hanabusal. Ms. Anderson, besides her yearly ForEx duties as exhibition designer and technical coordinator also contributed to Natascha Sadr Haghighian's stellar soundscape phonetic survey denouncing Germany's top selling tank export as realized in Lego paillettes. Yowza!
Seen hovering in the exhibition space incognito: David Gandy the hot holy dark haired British manq with the proud crotch and polar nips, Matthew Rushing of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and Hollywood director Adam McKay of The Big Short which my old LA gal pal Crepe Suzette(Susan Mathelson) is the costume designer of, Thorsten Schumacher of HanWay Films, actor/lovers and other strangers Roman Kolinka and Dan Stevens.
Judy LaBruce was in town to walk the red carpet as an actor playing the Canadian Prime Minister in the Competition feature Boris sans Beatrice by Denis Cote. Didnt see the flick but heard that La Judy was the best thing going for it. I have always said that Judyline is a magnify whitetress. Fearless Leader of kollektiv CHEAP Susanne Sachsse had Judy and I over for one of her stylish dindins and you should have seen us ladies having a hoot of a time.
In the Forum Expanded Program Screenings and Think Film Congress #4 the archeologic river running through motif was present in Canadian ForEx veterano Mark Lewis' Invention, Ahmad Ghossein's lecture performance When the Ventriloquist Came and Spoke To Me and film The Fourth Stage, Joe Namy's Stones God People, the sublime As Birds Flying by Heba Y. Amin and Larissa Sansour's In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain. The Think Film lecture starinas: Ala Younis and her The Unbelievable Photos Taken by the Crazy Russians Who Illegally Climbed Egypts Great Pyramid, bigger then Cher and Beyonce together Edwin of Indonesia and his Rotting Away Behind Locked Doors Lab Laba Laba Initiative, reclaiming History, Unveiling Memory by off Nollywood filmmaker and critic Didi Cheeka, VHS Cypus: A Lost History by the energetic Constantinos Tallotis and the new wave comedy team of Mariam Ghani and Engineer Latif Ahmadi in What We Left Unfinished which had the audience cracking up about the Afghan Film Industry where they don't use blanks but actual amunition, and all the actors perform the most dangerous stunts. Because of using real amo its not unheard of that death will occur on set as they take realism further then any Hollywood production that likes to toss the word authentic around.
Because of my back problems I didnt see so many films this year. Loved Austrian director Ruth Beckermann's Die Geträumten that featured the letters of Ingeborg Bachman and Paul Celan as read by cute Anja Plaschg of the bad haircut. Couldnt stand the tiny actor Laurence Rupp reading for Celan with his small hands and feet that resembled satanic hooves.
For some strange reason i felt compelled to see the Sci Fi flicker Midnight Special by Jeff Nichols which isn't a great film but i did enjoy the earnest portrayals by Kirsten Dunst,young Jaeden Lieberher, Henry Fonda-ish Michael Shannon, Sam Shepard and humpy humpies Adam Driver and blondine beauty Joel Edgerton----who I can´t live without him digging in my sugar walls.
The Panorama Doc's Strike a Pose, Uncle Howard and Kiki were only good because of the subjects on hand. I was expecting to hate Strike which profiles the boy dancers from Madonna's 1990 Blonde Ambition tour and Truth or Dare film. It was lovely seeing Carleton who Judy LaBruce tricked with at the Detour during her first film tour in LA with No Skin Off My Ass and Kevin who modeled along with me for the Michele Lamy menswear line. Uncle Howard is about the late handsome film director Howard Brookner. It’s a family tribute by his sexy look-a-like nephew Aaron Brookner. I kept thinking of the Danny Williams docu by his niece that was part of Forum Expanded in 2007. I must say that Brad Gooch the 80s golden boy who was Howard Brookner's lover has aged well.
I got to meet two of the delicious stars of KiKi at the Panorama reception and in the movie I was mesmerized by the beautiful and articulate Gia Marie Love who i predict will have a very bright future.
I wasn't expecting much from horn pig French directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's Theo et Hugo which starts off with a very long explicit sex club scene with the young skinny, narrow shouldered and pigeon chested actors. Once the boys had their clothes on they grew on me and when I saw them in person during the Q&A they looked downright adoreable.
Hate that I didn’t get to see everything on my viewing list like Kate Plays Christine, Le Fils de Joseph, Andre´Te’chines’ latest Quand on al 17 ans, the Berlinale Classics screenings of John Huston’s Fat City with my late dear friend Susan Tyrrell and James Whale´s The Road Back.
Glad to report that this year there weren´t so many ugly men at the festival. Next year I will have to check out the Berlin Talent Campus as I´ve been told by multiple sources that its where the juicy boys reside. You all know how the Doll needs her fill of eye candy.
This year the Forum Party was smaller and held at the AdK for the first time. Usually the soiree takes place at the Volksbühne. Since I live close to AdK in the Tiergarten I was overjoyed at the new location. The AdK staff are a little precious, but the mid century building and furnishings are major Ms. Gorgeous so I can understand how prickly they can be.
My DJane set went really well and Frau Birgit and her crew did a great job in presenting my little station with a modernist sculpture flanking me with excellent flattering lighting. Was lucky that DJane extroidinaire Olga Damnitz, the sexy popular Berlin baby dyke spinmistress gave me a pee break by taking over for an hour or so. DJane Olga is a real DJ and knows how to properly mix and do all the things that I can´t do. She was laying down some very wicked beats.
Thriving on the spacious carpeted dance floor: Nick Jonas of the pop group The Jonas Brothers, who was starring in a Panorama film called Goat, was wildly dancing to The Misfits, “London Dungeon” with what must be his hunky beau. Logan Lerman the male ingénue and star of the film Indignation was getting cozy with Swiss German weenager Joel Basman and mulatto hottie Kelynan Lonsdale while power press agent Stephen Huvane was giving the youngsters the old hairy eye ball. Hidetoshi Nishijima(Creepy) was spending a lot of time slow dancing to fast songs with Benjamin Millepied. Isn´t Ben married to Natalie Portman? He wasn´t acting very married, but was all boymantic with a bunch of nubile male acting gorgons like Victor Ezenfils, Miles Teller, and Kacey Mottet Klein. I´m not one to gossip so you know you didn´t hear this from me.
Who else was at the party you ask? well here is just a partial list compiled by my Stassi Spies------
Raphel Grisey, Havarie team & cast: Rhim Ibrir and Abdallah Benhamou, Houari Bouchenak Khelladi,73 years young Ulrike Ottinger who this year made a 12 hour endurance film where she was camping in Siberia and hiking but still had energy to dance with her beautiful girlfriend Katharina Sykora, the art historian deluxe, some Canuckians including Coral Short, sexpert filmmaker, Lauren Howes from CFMD, Steve Reinke and his lovely Chicago husband Brian. Handsome manchild Uli Ziemons and his lady love the feminist art supercurator Anja Lückenkemper. Video documentarian, artist and forex setup team captain Noam Gorbat, Bbooks Stephan Geene, gallant Markus Ruff who is the undisputed King of Archiving with Clarissa Thieme, the very smart video artist / filmmaker, Mediterranean hottie Angela Melitopoulos, Manuela aka djane Bianca kruk, who is also a great sound designer, Masha Nehls who was big heart and big brain of organizing Forex exhibition this year and is part of the Entzaubert Festival Collective, Fine Freiberg also from the Forex team and Entzaubert Collective and Berlinale projectionista, analog-inclined filmmaker and also dj/musician---whew! Everyones fav party central “It” girl Diana McCarthy who is the brainy muscle of Reboot FM radio, Filipa Cesar, the beautiful Sisters Schulte Strathaus Stefanie & Bettina of the famous Schulte Strathaus clan. Also shmoozing Anselm Franke, the wonderful Angelika Ramlow, Ousshi the Arsenal´s number one projectionist idol who retired last year. So great seeing Ousshi as its not the Berlinale without an Oushi sighting. Volker Sattel, Marcuse Siegelstein and Fearless Leader of CHEAP Susanne Sachsse who led the crowd on the dancefloor, Forum crew: Sara, Caroline, Marie, Anna Hoffmann, Christoph Terhechte, the divine Dorothee Wenner who always looks like a billion dollars,Adina Pintille (director of Bucharest International Film Festival)Sonia Campanini, film scholar with her sexy lover from Naples Luciano, Gizem Bayiksel from Ankara Pink Fest,Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger with their big Pong film team families, Colorado Velcu and his Roma family Melissa Dullius and Gustavo Jahn the Brazilian filmmaking partners of the film Muito Romantico, Nicole Wolf, Tamer el Said, Marcin Malaczsak of the Caligari prize winning film In the Last Days of the City, Michel Belague and his ravishing girlfriend, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, the French directors of Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau - the film with the notorious 18-minutes-dark-room-sex-scene, which won the Audience Teddy Award on Saturday, Geoffrey Couët and François Nambot, their two sexy young actors, Ramon Zürcher, director of the Forum-hit from 2014, Das merkwürdige Kätzchen, and documentary veteran Volker Koepp.
Plus Katya Diefenbach, Daniel Haji Hendrickson, Karim Ainouz, Christian Weber of Salzgeber Editions with the directors of Theo et Hugo and the films young French stars who requested the doll play Madonna,the wonderous Theodora Tabacki, Nora Melitor, Florian Zeyfang who is the nice&very sweet Florian,Alyosha, Ela Wuensch,Ewa Szablowska and Ula Sniegowska from New Horizons Film Fest in Wroclaw Poland who brought CHEAP to Polski for the first time in 2002.
See u next year filmfilas!