a.) The Kubrick exhibit, as guided by Christiane Kubrick (still as lovely as she was in Paths Of Glory) and Jan Harlan. I did indeed have tears in my eyes throughout it. After the tour was over, I spent another two hours in the exhibit, just soaking it all up. I mean, can you imagine gazing into the eyes of the actual Star Child prop? Enough said.

b.) Chris Doyle. He was there for two days and was sorely missed after he flew off to begin work on Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's new film. He had one panel to himself, participated in another, and the rest of the time he hung out in the cafe at the House Of World Cultures, chatting and giving out advice and, of course, drinking beer after beer after beer. A crowd of devoted followers constantly surrounded him, and he loved it. He was the warmest, friendliest guy imagineable, and is in person both as crazy as he comes off in his interviews and also incredibly lucid (when he wants to be) on the subject of filmmaking.

c.) Seeing Battleship Potemkin on the big screen with a live orchestra. I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch the film again after that. The standing ovation went on for at least ten minutes.

d.) Going to the Film Museum and seeing every original stop motion puppet from just about every Ray Harryhausen film ever. For me, that was even more exciting than seeeing the Maria robot from Metropolis or F.W. Murnau's test screening scorecards.

e.) Mike Figgis, Walter Salles and Peter Cowie discussing the use of music in film. I'd missed the earlier Salles panel on filmmaking in general, which was apparently wonderful - but this one was great, and Mike Figgis is awesome (even if the film he presented the next morning wasn't).

f.) The massive closing night party. To be more exact: chatting with Peter Cowie about Bergman films during the massive closing night party. He gave me his card and told me to let him know when my film starts getting reviewed.

g.) The very insightful panel on film marketing and festival planning, with a bunch of people whose names I don't remember except for Michael Barker, the head of Sony Pictures Classics.

h.) The panel on film criticism, involving Peter Cowie, Michel Ciment and Dai Jinhua.

The best part of the best of these panels was that the panelists generally regarded themselves on the same level as the audience; when Chris Doyle or Walter Salles talked about trying to get films made, they always used a first person plural - "we" or "us" - meaning, of course, that they regarded all of us as peers and not merely fans. Which was indeed the case - but it was still wonderful and gratifying to see that they acknowledged and embraced this (this was not the case with the event Ridley Scott was involved in, which would have been useless were it not for the undying charm of co-panelist Dante Feretti).

As far as the Berlinale itself went, we had access to free tickets to all the screenings after 6pm (they wanted us to attend the panels, of course). I tried and for the most part succeeded in seeing two films a day, focusing on works that a.) sounded promising and b.) that I would have less of a chance of seeing in a few months in the states (a la The Ballad Of Jack And Rose or Thumbsucker, which are both playing at SXSW). I didn't get to see all the movies I wanted to see - most noticeably and regrettably, Tsai Ming Liang's The Wayward Cloud, which I actually have an untorn ticket for - but I did see a fair amount, some of which were actually screened at the Talent Campus as part of various panels. These were:

The Dying Gaul (dir. Craig Lucas)
Yes (dir. Sally Potter)
Asylum (dir. David MacKenzie)
Plastic Flowers (dir. Bingjian Liu)
The Goebbels Experiment (dir. Lutz Hackmeister)
Mars (dir. Anna Melikian)
Lost And Found (dir. Nadjeda Kosva, Jasmila Zbanich, Stefan Arsenijevic, Mait Laas, Kornel Mundruczo, Cristian Mungiu)
That Man: Peter Berlin (dir. Jim Tushinski)
Transamerica (dir. Duncan Tucker)
Tori (dir. Asano Tadanobu)
Coma (dir. Mike Figgis, et al)

The best of these were Yes and Lost And Found. I do wish I had seen Paradise Now, Tickets, Ghosts and maybe one or two of the many retrospectives, but there are only so many hours in the day.

I also saw a lot of shorts, including the Silver Bear winner The Intervention, directed by Jay Duplass, who I believe is/was from Austin, and whose feature The Puffy Chair will be at SXSW. He mentioned before the screening that the film cost 200 dollars. I couldn't believe it while I was watching it - how could you make a 16mm film of that length that cheaply? Afterwards, he explained it was shot on the Panasonic DVX-100A, and my jaw dropped. That's probably the best 35mm transfer I've ever seen.

Preceeding that short film was one of the minor failures of the Campus - a walk down the red carpet at the Berlin Palast. It was all fine and good, complete with cheering crowds who of course had no idea who anyone was, until we got to the end, at which point we had to turn around and walk back, because the short films we were all going to were all screening in a different theater. It was sort of pointless, although I think we all managed to end up on TV.

The closing night party was sort of crazy. It was the same free beer and free wine that was available every evening, but I think everyone just drank a whole lot more of it. I slept for an hour that night, and then set out for the first of three flights over the next 20 hours.

It was a great experience, and a great precursor to SXSW. I can't wait to go back next year.

All that said, I'm going to go back to bed. I forgot that I keep my clock at home set four hours ahead, and thus woke up after only four hours of sleep.

P.S. I took a lot of really bad pictures. Here are a few that are passable.

One of the omnipresent bears in Potsdamer Platz.

The House Of World Cultures, where the Talent Campus took place.

Bai Ling doing what she does best, which is being cute.

Chris Doyle, blushing.

Another one of Chris Doyle, just because he rules.

Me on the red carpet.

Waiting for the bus to take me to Potsdamer Platz to see some films. I remember being slightly tipsy at the time. Pink light courtesy of Arri.

The carpet at CineStar, notable for being made up of the screenplay for Taxi Driver.

Me in the airlock set from 2001.

Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan.

Christiane Kubrick leaning against Stanley Kubrick's collection of books on Napoleon.

Jan Harlan discussing how a certain mask ended up on a certain pillow in a certain favorite film of mine.

The closing night party.