Exberliner Issue 167, January 2018

WHAT’S ON — Film
Preview
Princess Cyd The Florida Project Tonsler Park
The whole nine yards
The ninth Unknown Pleasures
film festival brings the best of
the US to Berlin.
This smartly programmed showcase of recent
American indie cinematic highlights
includes Oscar hopefuls, festival darlings
and under-the-radar gems. It kicks off on
January 12 with charming teen lesbian drama
Princess Cyd, which sees writer-director
Stephen Cone strike a deft balance between
coming-of-age tale and coming-out
story. Giving it a serious run for its money
as the programme’s most empathetic film
is Sean Baker’s unmissable The Florida
Project, an exuberant and profoundly
moving portrait of American poverty
which proves that 2015’s Tangerine was no
fluke. Having presented The Experimenter
at Unknown Pleasures in 2016, Michael
Almereyda returns this year with two
films: Escapes, a documentary about the
life of actor and Blade Runner screenwriter
Hampton Fancher; and Marjorie Prime,
a meditative, Black Mirror-esque sci-fi
story based on Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzernominated
play about an old woman (an
excellent late-career turn by Lois Smith)
who speaks to a holographic projection of
her late husband (Jon Hamm). Almereyda
imbues it with poignant musings on mortality,
exploring how we dissolve and bend
memories in order to better deal with the
tragedies that befall us. Also making a
repeat appearance is actor John Cho, who
stars in both Aaron Katz’s mystery thriller
Gemini and Kogonada’s formally striking
feature debut Columbus. Set against
the impressive architectural backdrop of
Columbus, Indiana, the latter film takes
a familiar, Garden State-like premise and
steers it away from maudlin territory. The
languorous pace may frustrate those looking
for a wordier, more upbeat boy-meetsgirl
encounter, but this artfully shot story
of two souls caught between obligation
and desire is well worth a look. Tonsler
Park, a 16mm black-and-white doc filmed
at Charlottesville polling stations on Nov
8, 2016, sees filmmaker Kevin Jerome
Everson observe the African American
men and women working in the stations
before Trump’s unexpected presidential
victory, allowing viewers to project their
bittersweet hindsight onto proceedings.
And receiving its belated German premiere
is Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey,
Terrence Malick’s 2016 experimental doc
which sets itself the lofty goal of recounting
the history of the known universe
in 90 minutes. Predictably for Malick,
it’s both narratively baffling and visually
sumptuous. — David Mouriquand
Unknown Pleasures Jan 12-28 Arsenal
and Wolf Kino, full programme at
unknownpleasures.de
ULYSSES
based on the novel by James Joyce
With his novel Ulysses, published in 1922, James Joyce pushed
the art of storytelling to new limits. Taking Homer’s Odyssey as
a framework, it follows the peripatetic wanderings of Leopold
Bloom in the course of a normal day in Dublin on 16 June 1904.
Joyce builds up layer upon layer, moves between different linguistic
registers, styles and discourses, interweaves the hissing of
frying kidneys with discussions on Shakespeare with the cemetery
with the brothel. A momentous 20th-century text, which,
by applying multiple perspectives, creates a fragmented picture
of the characters, showing that language not only depicts and
describes, it can also convey the manifold possibilities and conditions
of modern subjectivity.
Director: Sebastian Hartmann
Premiere: January 19, 2018
upcoming dates with English surtitles: January 28, February 18, 2018
For tickets and more information visit deutschestheater.de/en