docublog

1000, 1001, and beyond

Journals inspired by 1000 Journals are popping up at McGill, a university in Montreal, Canada, in a bookstore in North Adams, MA, and plenty of other places: Lil Blume told me 50 journals have been circulating Hamilton, ON, Canada, in a project initiated by McMaster University. I wish we could find and document more of them, but as they happen off-line, hand to hand from person to person, we may just not know about them until someone decides to share them on the web.

At McGill, 30 journals are passed around the university's campus, to then travel on to friends and strangers. They are part of a whole night of collaborative projects, the Nuit Blanche, a culture festival held in cities across the world, and will take place for the first time at McGill on March 6.

Terry Clark, a native of North Adams, now living in San Francisco, is asking N.A. residents to fill the journal with "with words and images describing their favorite haunts and recollections, what they treasure and why they call this place home." The journal will reside at Papyri Books on Eagle Street.

I Heart Berlin

Once the Cubix ushers had cut-off the overtime Q+A's and herded us out of the cinema, quite a few people stayed in the lobby to see more of the journals we brought. Among them was Frank, a writer for the iheartberlin blog, who took pictures, and then posted a story in the blog, in German, and English. He sent me an email the next day with the link. Frank has a great eye: he photographed random pages in Journal 987, and along with Tracy Moore's and Seelenbücher's entry, ended up posting the page LindA Zacks created while Ralph and I were filming her in Brooklyn, March 2006. That day marked the beginning of a wonderful friendship, and collaboration on the animated title sequence... I heart LindA!

Press Day

The Brandenburg Gate as back-drop for the interview with Spiegel-TV. Producer Melanie von Marschalck had contacted me upon arrival at Frankfurt Airport, and I met her and her team in Der Spiegel Magazine's offices at Under Den Linden.

You can see me taking these pictures in the clip of the interview, which will be on the Spiegel server until mid March.

From the Brandenburg Gate to the building of State of Schleswig-Holstein's representatives, where Ulf Engelmayer and his team has set-up a radio studio for a daily report from the Berlin Festival.

Before we went live, at 6:00 PM, we had time to flip through the journals I brought, and after the show, Ulf and his wife showed me their personal journals and asked for an entry. Eventually, there will be a podcast of the interview we can link to.

Cubix Screening

Whereas our Berlinale Premiere was in a historic movie palace in the former West Berlin, the repetition screening, at multiplex cinema Cubix, brought us into the former East, onto Alexanderplatz. The Tuesday screening was as packed, and followed by an interesting Q+A session going into overtime.

Gudrun Wendler, artist, dear friend, and fan of the 1000 Journals Project, hosted our very first semi-public screening of the teaser, in 2005, when she lived in Los Angeles. The Wendlers moved to Berlin two years ago and came to see the finished film, her husband Jürgen on Sunday, and Gudrun on Tuesday.

After the screening and Q+A's, we continued in the lobby...

Dieter at the screening

Dieter Kosslick talking about 1000 Journals being "the human version of the internet," in his wonderful introduction to our film. Moments later, he surprised me with the Cashmere Berlinale shawl he himself is wearing day in and out. Rumor has it Mick Jagger came to the Berlinale for this much coveted trophy.

The International Premiere

Sunshine and blue skies, 10 degrees centigrade (50F), people sitting in street cafes or walking around with ice-cream, that's the new Berlin in February. Our house at twelve noon was packed. This was our first screening to an audience of non-English speakers, our first outside of Los Angeles, our third ever. Dieter Kosslick, the Berlinale director, introduced the films and the new screening slot we were inaugurating: the Sunday Matinee. A short film (Bruce Weber's Wine and Cupcakes), followed by the feature. Dieter's charming and loving welcome, and Bruce Weber's shots of Central Park in the Fall, helped me settle in my seat and relax and enjoy those two hours that mean so much to me, and I felt profoundly happy: Ralph and Nic on my side, Louise in the row behind, four journals in the audience, and most wonderfully, several of our German interview subjects who had traveled to Berlin: Elfy from Cologne, and Eva, Chris, Gerald and Heiner from Braunschweig. If only Someguy could have made it, too…

Elfy and her Berlin friend, Gerald and Heiner, Chris, and Louise...

... and Eva with Journal 878.

There are many more photos but so little time right now in between the screenings... Just this: it went really well!

Saturday

Sooner or later, everyone attending the festival will show up somewhere between Potsdamer Platz, the Hyatt, and the European Film Market. And sure enough, there's Ralph and Nic, who had come in from Los Angeles the night before, partied until 5:00 AM, and were getting ready for the movies.

I also ran into AFI Fest's Lane Kneedler, who's scouting for the 2008 edition, my old friends and Bookies production partners Sabine De Mardt (formerly known as Müller), Alan Greenspan, and Gerhard Schmidt, and uncountable colleagues and friends from the past. Just like way back when we were filming 1000 Journals, and in Washington, D.C., ran into an intern of my former Munich based company, I met Susanne, an assistant in that same company, in a Sushi snack bar...

Day one in Berlin

The queues are unbelievably long here. People are standing in line for hours to buy tickets to the 1,256 screenings of 384 films selected for this year's Berlinale. As I'm already into stats: 5,328 films were submitted to this 58th edition...

Parallel to the festival runs the European Film Market, with 120 exhibitors from 51 countries selling films to 790 officially registered buyers. The EFM hosts 1,069 additional screenings of 714 films.

Most film companies exhibit in the beautiful Martin Gropius Bau, others are out on the street, or in hotels in the neighborhood. The French company Wild Bunch has set-up this cool office to sell Steven Soderbergh's Che:

I went to the screening of the documentary Secrecy, which Louise is handling as well. It ran in the EFM section Straight from Sundance, will next be at SXSW, and many other festivals. Try to see it if you can!

Louise, Secrecy Co-Directors Peter Galison and Robb Moss, and I had dinner in the mall after their screening. We were too exhausted to go for anything fancy, and just wanted to sit down and talk. Besides seeing our film with an audience, meeting other film makers and exchanging notes is what makes festival outings so great. We all go through the same stuff, good and bad...

We are sold out...

I just received a comment from Andrea in Berlin to andrea in Berlin -- 1000 Journals tickets are gone. That was fast. 480 seats sold in under 24 hours.

Berlinale opens

So many people, so much glitz and seemingly miles of red carpet. Films are loved and celebrated here. And filmmakers get spoiled. I met with Louise Rosen, our sales agent, and Ulrich Schmieder, who works for the festival and helps us every step of the way. We got organized, badged, ticketed, keyed, we picked up a few of the 2,100 press kits we had printed, then worked our way from Potsdamer Platz, the H.Q., to the Martin Gropius Bau and the European Film Market, to the Hyatt Hotel, Berlinale Palast, and back. If it wasn't for winter and Berlin, it did feel a bit like cruising the Croisette in Cannes, the two miles strip along the beach, festival hotels, to the Palais: stop and go to say hello to friends and colleagues.

Then we rushed to the hotel to get ready for Opening Night, and the world premiere of the Rolling Stones concert film, Shine a Light by Martin Scorsese. They were all there: Marty, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood.

Louise Rosen, and Eva Lindemann, the producer of Bruce Weber's short Wine and Cupcakes which is screening back-to-back with us.

Ulrich Schmieder... Vielen, vielen Dank für Deine sagenhafte Unterstützung!