yearbook 2004/05 - The European Film College

The Berlinale Experience
By Kjetil Mørk &
Kasper Tornbjerg
AWAY FROM THE EFC
We set out an early – very early – Saturday
morning in February, leaving behind a bunch of
drunk EFC students and heading for the centre
of German culture – Berlin, City of Sausages.
The man in charge of our trip to Berlin was a
crazy, but very organized Albanian guy – Indrit.
On the train he tried desperately to communicate
with the train personnel, not helped by the
fact that they refused to speak any other language
than German. Yes, arriving in Berlin nine
hours later was indeed a relief.
The Berlinale Talent Campus – set at the
House of World Cultures – was filled to the
brim with creative energy. 520 people from
around 80 different countries were gathered for
the five-day intensive programme with lectures,
workshops and – last but not least – parties. We
were fourteen students from the EFC attending
the Campus, and a lot of us made connections
to other young, aspiring filmmakers or business
professionals willing to give us advice on our
future film careers.
The main attraction and the lecture that attracted
the biggest audience was “Editing the
Sound and the Music” by Walter Murch, editor
of Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and
The English Patient, among others. Visualizing
his theories with clips from his films, he
talked about dimension in film, the merging of
sound and picture and how he started American
Zoetrope with Francis Ford Coppola and
George Lucas.
“The English Patient” is just one of the classic films
edited by Walter Murch, who lectured at this year’s event.
A strange character also showed up to give a lecture.
Irish DJ and film composer David Holmes
added some funky energy to the Steven Soderbergh
films, Out of Sight and Ocean’s 11. He described
his development from being a DJ in the
80’s (releasing such records as This Film’s Crap
Let’s Slash the Seats and Let’s Get Killed) to becoming
a composer for the big screen without
knowing how to actually write music.
The rest of the lectures varied from being blown
away by the IMAX experience to an intimate
lecture with Argentinian writer/director Daniel
Burman about his movie “Lost Embrace” which
was part of the main competition.
Although we were in the middle of the festival
activities, tickets to the films outside of the Talent
Campus were mostly sold out, leaving us
with nothing to do on evenings but party…
The European Film Market – officially a market
place for distributors and other very important
film people – were to us mostly a gateway
to the parties arranged by different distribution
companies. This allowed us to explore a new
country every night. Danish, Norwegian and
Lithuanian parties were all attended by students
from the EFC.
Making contacts is one of the most essential
things in the film business, and the Talent Campus
is a great place to do that. The Campus itself
has a lot to offer creatively, while at the same
time being a good base for exploring the city
of Berlin. The Berlinale Experience is definitely
recommendable to anyone interested in film.
After an intensive week, we rounded it all up
with a big farewell ceremony with a party following
. Having enjoyed our last free drinks, we
headed for Ebeltoft and a half a month of the
TV/Documentary-project. Trying not to think
of the busy days that were ahead of us, we spent
the trip home trying to catch up on our lost
hours of sleep and arrived in Ebeltoft late that
same Friday evening.