WIE SCHICKEN CHICKEN

The grand opening of The Berlinale Film Festival 65, Internationales Forum des Jungen Films 45 and  Forum Expanded 10 year anniversary Exhibition with the wonderous and beguiling theme: To The Sound of the Closing Door at Akademie der Kuenste on Wednesday Feb 4^th began with Doors Opening and Greeting by Berlinale Chief Dieter Kosslick.  The opening film a screening of the silent short by Friedl vom Groeller called Ruhe Auf Der Leinwand then more introductions and speeches by Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and her Forum Expanded rock steady crew of Anselm Franke, Nannootchka Heidenreich, Bettina “Sandy Dennis” Steinbrugge and Ulrich Ziemons then another film Zur Bauweise Des Films Bei Griffith in honor of the late Harun Farocki. Short and sweet  presentations by Constanze Ruhm and  a clever linguistic curry from Ala Younis, another screener by Forum Expanded stalwort Michael Snow See You Later-Au Revoir ending with the spirited spoken word performance Love Letter to a Union:  The Falling Comrades by Palastinian artists working the European circuit Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili.  The Palastinian couples piece included the films The Diver by Jumana Emil Abboud and the Story of Milk and Honey by Basma Alsharif. Kollektiv CHEAP presented our hand made and limited edition artist notebook You’ll Never Know If You Don’t Know Now designed by CHEAP and made by Sally Sachsse the talented artist/restorer sibling of CHEAP’s fearless leader Susanne Sachsse that was gobbled up quietly as the proceedings began as part of a temporary contemporary Minnie Pearl necklace installation featuring the singing voice of Alice Faye and dialog from the 1943 film Hello, Frisco Hello. My colleagues  Susanne Sachsse and Daniel Hendrickson the Scandinavian Muzlim convert were looking very fetching as they were mobbed by international CHEAP fans: Isabel Coixet,Matteo Creationi,Daryl Els, Joachim Fjelstrup,Kodi Smit-Mcphee,Chino Darin, Daniel Wagner of Fortitude International, Paz Vega,Victoria Schultz the star of Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents who use to be the girlfriend of my godson Richard Gersch who works with the Ausstellunhgsaufbau, Sissy Magazine’s Jan Kunemund, Lucas Till, Jannis Niewoehner, Milo Parker, Kristen Wiig with Chilean director Sebastian Silva, horndoggy pie film sales agent Harry White, Caleb Freundlich the ginger haired son of Julianne Moore(why was he at the Berlinale?), Ethan Peck, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and juicy red hot and blue sweet & sour lovers/ film financier life partners Alex Walton and Ken Kao the heir to the Garmin fortune.

The Vagimule Doll was wearing a couture gown by the young French designer Aude.  I was a little annoyed that several people kept saying I had on a wedding dress just because I was in a light color while all the other people about were in boring Kunstler black. There were no sexy antics involved during the opening which is typical for the Berlinale but I did get into a nice conversation with a sweet young couple who work for Akademie Der Kuenste named Tomas and Camille.

At the opening I didn’t get a chance to see anything in the exhibit as an Eroeffnung is for socializing so I came back the next day to spend several hours perusing.  There is so much to see that I couldn’t possibly describe everything but will mention that for me the highlights were Beauty and the Right to the Ugly a three channel videoinstallation by Wendelien van Oldenborgh about the utopian architect Frank Van Klingeren’s Het Karregat commune from  the 1970s. Also loved The Nameless a two channel video installation about Lai Tech a famed Malaysian triple agent whose story is told through the many filmic guises of handsome Chinese acting royal Tony Leung, Opaque by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz continuing their study of the queer historic, Roy Dib’s masterful A Spectacle of Privacy which cleverly used the voices of a man and woman while showing two lovesexy male bodies in flagrante dishabille and Wie soll man das nennen, was ich vermisse? A most fitting tribute to the late great Harun Farocki by his beautiful and  loving significant other the talented artist in her own right Antje Ehmann.  I still have very found memories hanging out withMs. Ehmann at the CHEAP Gossip bar during my first Berlinale many moonlite bay nights ago. Major kudos should be given to Empress Stefanie and her couterie of curators and special honors devoted  toward Angela Anderson aka: Olga Damnitz and her dynamite installation retinue for mounting such a spectacular exhibit that overwhelms and looks utterly amazing. Angie is Forum Expanded’s secret weapon so we should all bow down to her.

The official opening of the Forum section was Friday at the Akademie der Kuenste with Marcin Malaszcak’s beguiling, austere and simply ravishing film The Days Run Away Like Wild Hores Over the Hills. Usually I am turned off majorly by a movie with precocious children, but this intimate film wowed me with its long absorbing pastoral sequences and the obvious love of all things feminine that Marcin possesses in his sensitive young soul.  I originally met Marcin at my first Berlinale when he was a 19 year old student.  He was so tall and handsome that I unsuccessfully tried to pick him up at the CHEAP gossip bar but we became fast friends instead.

The standout of the Forum Expanded films of the first full evening was Leila Albayaty’s Face B.  Ms. Albayaty is a luminous star and quite the screen presence with great style and panasche.  Not only did she shine with a sparkling film but she also treated the audience to a mini concert as well that featured the charming Amelie Legrand on cello and Cristofo Sproto on guitar.  Her back up singer Nina Berclaz has a nice voice but someone needs to strap her down and keep her from dancing to the music as her spastic moves are way too overpowering and makes it seem like she is trying to steal  Albayaty’s thunder.

Had to satisfy my classic Japanese cinema mania that the Forum provides every year at the Delphi Kino by seeing two films by the great Kon Ichikawa 1958’s Conflagration from a  nobel prize nominated story by Mishima involving a humpy junior monk enamored of  a hot-to-trot gimp.  The tryo Monkette whose love for beauty and spirituality cause him to have a nervous breakdown and he winds up burning to the ground  the historic Shukaku Temple in Kyoto.  The poor pretty disturbed and sexually frustrated little Japanese boy just needed a good honest plowing up his twitchy tight young booty hole--and 1960’s Her Brother/Ototo with its airbrushed Marcella Borghese eyeshadow colour palette offers standout performances from the leads pert Keiko Kishi the Japanese Jean Simmons and beautiful pillow lipped bad boy Hiroshi Kawaguchi.  Also went to the Technicolor retrospective of the restored 1945 20^th Century Fox melodrama Leave Her to Heaven starring the psychotically alluring Gene Tierney with a nicely underplayed Jeanne Crain and too much pancake make-up queen Cornel Wilde.

On the gossip front was sent a quick text by Berlin journalista supreme Manuel Schubert of Filmhighlights Magazine who told me and I quote, “Heard nothing really scandalous-Natalie Portman and Christian Bale only exhausted all Berlinale press-conference capacities . . . professional press people behaved like teenagers screaming for their silly stars.”

I wonder if Natalie’s ballet dancer husband Benjamin is still involved in a precocious incest bro-mance with young ginger haired blue movie ingénue Christopher Tavi aka:  Josh from the model studio Corbin Bernsen Fischer?  I’m just a little lady with an inquirying mind.

Oh and lets not forget the Think: Film No 3 Congress which further sheds context to the film  screenings and the Forum Expanded Exhibition.  Mongay Feb 7^th the superstars of  discourse Gertrud Koch and Diedrich Diederichsen sparkled along with Ekaterina Degot and Haytham El –Wardany with Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili.  Sunday Naum Kleiman and Maxim Pavlov were in conversation with Ms.Degot and Monday Feb 9^th under the heading of What If? Revisiting Images 1 Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Nanna Heidenreich sublimely led a timely panel with the earnest Jasmina Mewaly of the kollektiv Mosireen who has been creating activist work surrounding the volatile political situation in Egypt.  Remember Egypt? The industrial media entertainment complex has certainly forgotten them.

International artist Angela Melitopoulos a great friend to Forum Expanded did a fine job as facilitator in the second part of the  Revisiting program with the reviting master narrative disrupters Oktay Ince and Alper Sen who have been collaborating with Kurdish and other minority villagers in Turkey dealing with forced migration since the 1990s.  Think Film Congress rocks.

WERTHERSFIEBER

Just returned from one of the best queer art congresses I have ever been to with the dynamic title of Perverse Assemblages-Heteronormative Ordnungen Inter/Medial Queeren held at the Institut fuer Kunst und Visuelle Kulture Helene-Lange-Kolleg Queer Studies & Intermedialitaet Kunst-Musik-Medienkulture at the Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg.  It seems like the bold scholarship is bubbling forth from these small provincial university towns and hamlets.  I had a blast in Oldenburg which is quite pretty and inviting.  It was great to get away from Berlin and be someplace a little bit more laid back.  The atmosphere generated by the organizers of the conference was very congenial, open and gracious.  I want to give open mouth shout outs to Professor Dr. Barbara Paul the big boss at the University, creative instigators:  Atlanta Ina Beyer a lovesexy butch, Rena Onat a Turkish/German glamorour girl young scholarina and Natascha Frankenberg a willowy Amazon with personality plus.

Things started off with a nice low key bang in the form of a roundtable discussion under the heading: Queering and Decolonizing Art and Visual Culture with British writer, activist and interdisciplinaryartist Raju Rage and gorgeous Afro German blacktavist, curator and scholar Sandrine Micosse’-Atkins whose new tome Little Book of Big Visions I am dying to read.

The second day the theme was Queer Temporalities, Film & Movement and the first lecturina was by the dazzling Katrin Koppert, “Tableaux and Tableaux Vivants of Pain and Queer Time in Photography and/as Film. Katrin lives in Berlin but works in Linz Austria and collaborates with Todd Sekular.

My CHEAP kollektiv co-hort Marcuse Siegelstein also shined with his Catskills circuit talk Images From the Post Heterosexual Age.

I felt bad that I missed most of the vivacious Eliza Steinboch’s Puncture Wounds, Sensing Gender-Nonconformity Stigma in the Anti-Portrait and the personable and engaging Anthony Clair Wagner’s REappropriating the Monster:  From Stigma to Empowerment part of the Trans Media-Trans Bodies program as I had to get into hair & make-up as I was the keynote speaker that evening under the heading of Queer Punk Politics. 

Special thankx to my juicy & lovely personal assistant Marieka who is an undergraduate student who devoted herself to me during my visit and did a wonderful job doing my hair and make-up.  I love you Mareika you are the bestest!  After my artist talk there was a delish catered vegan dinner at Club Polyester in the Olde City Center and after party which featured the famous feministische Djane from Aotearoa, New Zealand Bella Cuts aka: Jen Bell who makes u dance on the ruins of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.  Miss Bella Cuts has relocated to Berlin and I hope to be seeing lots of her in the future as she is the one adoreable young woman.

The last day of the festivities WoWed and featured academic super shtar Mimi Thi Nguyen  an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign who presented with punque aplomb Minor Threats.  Mimi has brought to her university my old comrade in femme arms Alice Bag Armendariz and is such a solid archivist of all things punc having written for Maximumrocknroll, Punk Planet and her own compilation zine Race Riot. Katherina Wiedlack who is based in Vienna Austria closed things beautifully and sonically with her lecture Loud, Rude and with an Attitude:  Queer-Feminist Punk in/as Form, Meaning and Affect concentrating on letting us hear some amazing new punk bands of color based in Portland and Seattle while mixing in a little theory via  Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.  Honey it doesn’t get any better then this.  But yes it did get better with a nice summation by the famed lesbianfeminist Antke Engel of the legendary Queer Institute Berlin.  Yowza!

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For those of you visiting Berlin in February and want to have some alternatives to the International Berlinale Film Festival please check out this exciting event by underground film legend Wilhelm Hein and his art photog girlfriend Annette Frick:

IN KÜRZE GROSSES TAMTAM!!!!!!!!!  

WIEDERERÖFFNUNG 

ZEIG' WAS DU WIRKLICH KANNST!!!!!

COMING SOON!!!!!!! RE-OPENING!!!!!!!!!

BIG WHOOPY-WHOOPY !!!! 

SHOW WHAT YOU REALLY CAN DO !!!!!!!!  

Achtung: neuer Termin:

Samstag 7.2.2015 ab 18 Uhr 

PFUSCHEN VERBOTEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO MESSING AROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

schummeln und flunkern erlaubt

fudging and cheating allowed

YOU HAVE 3 MINUTES TO CREATE YOUR PIECE OF ART

DU HAST 3 MINUTEN ZEIT  (D)EIN KUNSTWERK ZU SCHAFFEN!!!

SEND US YOUR CONTRIBUTION: IMAGE,  SOUND,  TEXT,  FILM,  FOTO,  MUSIC,  POEM OR  PERFORMANCE TO THE FOLLOWING ADRESS: 

Kintoppp@gmx.de  or: Frick@gmx.de 

or analogue  Post to

Wilhelm Hein -  Seest.107 - D-13353 Berlin

or bring it personal at least one day before the big WHOOPY-WHOOPY !

oder bring es persönlich mindestens 1 Tag vor Eröffnung

schick uns deinen Beitrag: Bild, Sound, Text, Film, Foto, Musik, Gedicht, Poem, Performance, per mail an Kintoppp@gmx.de  oder Frick@gmx.de oder per Post an 

Wilhelm Hein -  Seest.107 - D-13353 Berlin

herzlichst Wilhelm Hein und Annette Frick

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And this happening by Basso Art Guru Yusuf Etiman:

dear friends of audio pleasures

i am very happy to announce that i will be programming some 'sonic adventures' at the non-profit exhibition space between bridges in schöneberg for the whole month of february. since september, between bridges has installed a playback room featuring a high end stereo sound system, which not only in its sweet spot provides a fabulous hearing experience.

the rough framework of the programme is like this:
throughout the month, between bridges will be open wednesdays to fridays from 3pm and i will be present during opening hours.
every wednesday at 7 pm, we will screen a film programme with a special emphasis on the soundtrack.
saturdays is open house, where everybody can come and share their favourite tracks (or video clips etc).
thursdays and fridays, there is the opportunity to put up special listening events…

so all of you, from high end nerds to disco fire birds - this goes out to you!

let me know if you have ideas! let's take the opportunity to spoil our ears… the only limit is that we keep it to the playback framework, meaning no live gigs/performances etc.

with great help of some of our friends, the space will be transformed for leisurely comfort and there will always be a hot tea waiting for you. i would also be very happy if this month gives us the framework to further reflect about spaces for sound presentation, which, as some of you well know, has been a main topic in my research since basso closed down. in recent time, i teamed up with mate galic and barbara architects to push and further crystalise the ideas about purpose building a sound space for our community. if you have any ideas, tips, knowledge, whatever you might think is important to share in this context - this february we can talk about all of that.

you will get a weekly programme email from between bridges on every sunday in the coming month - please let me know if you do not wish this. i know that some of you are abroad or packed with other things and can not join physically. but please, if you have any proposals for listening adventures, get in touch with me. i will be happy to spread your sound in your absence. also if you have friends who you think might be interested, please forward them the programme, or send their email to me or between bridges, so we can include them in the mailings.

there is a cd player, a turntable (not two!), a projector and the possiblity to play sound files - which preferably should be really good quality, not lores mp3s or so…
if you want to know precisely about the tech set up, please download: www.etiman.de/Techniks.pdf

i hope this finds you all well, and i wish all of you could pay a visit to

Bring Your Own (Playback Room part III)
a month of sonic adventures
04.02.2015 – 28.02.2015
www.betweenbridges.net
Keithstrasse 15, 10787 Berlin

a big hug, can't wait!
yusuf

FILMERFAHRUNG UND ZUSCHAUER

Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music was SRO and jam packed with so many celebutants anxious to get swept up in the beauty of Chantal Akerman’s musical Golden Eighties starring the luminous Delphine Seyrig and pop star Lio. Golden Eighties or Window Shopping which was its title in The States is beyond brilliantine and uses language in such an innovative manner. Heading the Belgium contingent at our screening the lovely Anne Quirynen the video artist and Professor at the University in Potsdam with her girlfriend Bettina Knaup the performance gender curator of React: Feminism, Koen Claerhout of Haus de Kulturen die Welt, the vivacious DJane Manuela Schinina aka: Bianka Kruk, Michaela Wünsch, film scholar and bbooks kollektiv diva extroidinaire, Nanna Heidenreich, Uli Ziemons and Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus all overworked and exhausted from their tireless efforts with the Berlinales Forum Expanded Section, Trixie Schoenherr, Yusuf Etiman the creative director of Berghain Niteclub with humpy SouthAfrican artist Adrian who is Rosemary’s Baby all grown up, Marcuse Siegelstein the Goethe Universitaet film historian, visiting NYU student Marina C. Roselli who is the intern of the fab Art Forum writer Alex Jovanovich, Rami Malek the super handsome Egyptian/American male ingénue and star of the Twilight films, The Master and Night at the Museum franchise with supermodel Yasmine LeBon daughter of Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, Stephen Ira the 21 year old trans son of Warren Beatty and Annette Benning with Salome Gersch and film editor Ruth Schoeneger, choreographer Assaf Hochman, USC music fagademic Sean Nye, film scholar Christian F. Weber and his super lovesexy intellectual posse of queer activist Rufus Sona, Karsten Schubert and her handsome pal Rasmus,wealthy art patron Harry dÁvigdor-Goldsmid,Stanford University visting scholars Sianne Ngai and her life partner Mark McGurl who are fellows at the Wissenschaftskolleg for the next school year with a Romanian film critic and his artist wife Eike Wittrock. All the bottoms in the audience were going stir crazy over my partner in grime the power top Daniel Hendrickson, the Scandanavian Muzlim Mulatto who was so superlative on klavier and who curates the musical portion of my film event every month. There were so many famous people at RSFS that if I forgot to mention you please send my young student assistant Gleeson Brevard at GleeBrevard@aol.com a note and I will rectify the situation ASAP. I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off because I leave for the town of Oldenburg for the Perverse Gefuege Art Congress. Thank you for being patient with the Vagimule doll.

PUTZFIMMEL

Rising Stars, Falling Stars - January 2015 - Vaginal Davis, Chantal Ackerman, FORUM EXPANDED & CHEAP by Filmanzeiger on Mixcloud

HOERSTURZ

Saw the last of the Hollywood Musicals Festival at the Arsenal with Scandinavian Mulatto Muzlim Daniel Hendrickson.  Kino 1 was packed liked it is during The Berlinale for the rare screening of the 1943 all black musical Stormy Weather starring the incandescent Lena Horne who looks so much like my mother Mary Magdelene Duplantier.

The film also stars Bill “Bojangles”Robinson” Cab Callaway and his zoot suit, The Nicholas Brothers stealing the show in the final production number, Katherine Dunham, Ada Brown and Fats Waller.  The last time I saw the film was in the early 1970s when it was on TV so I forgot that it was fashioned as a semi biopic about the career of Bojangles.  Besides getting to see Ms. Horne in all her glamorous glory I was very impressed  by Fats Waller being allowed to be the queenly queen that he is.   Fats basically plays himself and I doubt if a mainstream audience of that time was aware that his references were towards people ‘in the life’ as they use to say in Harlem Renaissance days.  The blues singer Ada Brown is also a standout and I even liked the black face vaudeville bit by two black comics who darken their skin just a shade or two from their natural color which was oddly riveting. The films humour was so olde school its new school.  The Katherine Dunham ballet sequence was also intriguing, but the costumes for her gany male dancers was the ultimate in homo poovah.  Of the two all black musicals that came out in 1943 the other being Cabin in the Sky from MGM directed by Vincente Minnelli starring Ethel Waters I think I like Cabin better.  Cabin also features Lena Horne.  There is more of Ms. Horne in Stormy but when it comes to greatness no one can surpass Miss Ethel Waters.