Berlin.Babel.Blog

European Shooting Stars 2013 - Laura Birn

sandro — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:37:00 +0100

Cafébabel had the opportunity to talk with Laura Birn, the Finnish actress recently nominated as a SHOOTING STAR.

The pan-European initiative SHOOTING STARS puts a spotlight on Europe's best young actors. Every year, since 1998 European Film Promotion (EFP), a network of promotion and marketing organizations from 32 European countries, presents the most talented young actors from throughout Europe to the press, public and industry during Berlinale.

What does it mean to become a Shooting Star?

"Once chosen as a Shooting Star, the impact is often immediate. Actors with established national careers are suddenly on the international stage at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival. "Shooting Stars put me in the right place at the right time" said Daniel Brühl, Shooting Star 2003. Among the actors recognized with the SHOOTING STARS AWARD over the years are such top-flight actors as Daniel Craig, Ludivine Sagnier, Maria Bonnevie, Rachel Weisz, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek and Nina Hoss."

More than an interview it was a nice talk in the best Babelian style, jumping between languages, from English to Portuguese and the other way around.

Laura Birn explains us why she speaks Portuguese so well. We then talked about her role in Purge, the multi awarded movie by Antti Jokinen.

Purge is a tale of “deceit, desperation and fear. Aliide has experienced the horrors of the Stalin era and the deportation of Estonians to Siberia, but she herself has to cope with the guilt of opportunism and even manslaughter. One night in 1992 she finds a young woman in the courtyard of her house; Zara who has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia who held her as a sex slave. Aliide and Zara engage in a complex arithmetic of suspicion and revelation to distill each other's motives. Gradually, their stories emerge, with the culmination of a tragic family drama of rivalry, lust, and loss.”

Later we talked about the benefits of linguistic diversity and multilingualism, and about how it is to be a Shooting Star.

The interview was conducted in cooperation with Nisi Masa and Cineuropa.org

Interview:

The following underlined text refers to parts of the talk that were held in Portuguese.

Cafébabel: How is your Portuguese? Do you still know Portuguese?

Laura Birn: I know, I know! I already forgot a lot because twelve years have already past since I came back from Brazil. But I still can talk. Ah! So you are from Portugal?

Cafébabel: Yes, I am from Portugal (laughs).

Laura Birn: Portuguese from Portugal is a bit different; it’s more difficult sometimes…

Cafébabel: …On phonetic terms. To understand the pronunciation from Brazil it is easier, that’s true.

Cafébabel: Do you have good memories from Brazil?

Laura Birn: I do, I do have. It was lovely to live in São Paulo. I was with a Brazilian family and they were super kind...Really nice people…I loved it!

Cafébabel: We could continue in Portuguese I guess, but I don´t know if you would understand everything... Now, more focused on Purge: During the process of learning your character, Aliide, did you also got into that period’s History to get to know how to build the character? How was it?

Laura Birn: I read about History and some books concerning the subject and I think it is interesting and good to understand and know about it. But always when I build a character it comes from inside the character and then there are the circumstances which affect how it behaves…

Cafébabel: Because the movie’s story deals with Trauma, with traumatic experiences. It is something still present which comes from that period. It is also important for Aliide, for your role, no?

Laura Birn: Of course, of course, yes…

Cafébabel: From what’s related with this time, this story, what would be the most important lesson that you would like to recall us, today? How people deal with this emotions and what comes after…

Laura Birn: Oh! It feels a little bit too big for me to tell what would be the right lesson but, very sadly it hasn’t disappeared from the world. The way power can make people sick, although women and men are getting more equal there are still a lot of abuses towards women. We still need to work a lot on Women’s Human Rights. I think it still is a very important issue.

Cafébabel: Now for something completely different… (Laughs)How is it to be a Shooting Star?

Laura Birn: (laughs) Well, it is a lot easier than what this people go through. You meet nice people… It has been fun and quite relaxed I would say.

Cafébabel: Really! Do you see it more as a personal distinction or as a responsibility?

Laura Birn: I see it as a very nice opportunity, a chance. It is very good and positive…

Cafébabel: In a way you are like ambassadors for European Cinema. You are presented as young actors and actresses that represent something like the European Academy. You will have to travel a lot during this next year, no?

Laura Birn: I don’t know actually what will happen or what will come after. I am proud to be one of the Shooting Stars and I don’t see it as a heavy thing.

Cafébabel: I already asked you about your Portuguese…

Laura Birn: (laughs) we can continue in Portuguese if you prefer…

Cafébabel: (laughs) then, let’s continue in Portuguese…

Laura Birn: …But you have to speak slowly because you have that accent from Portugal…

Cafébabel: Yes, that is true…

Cafébabel: You came from Finland, a country with two official languages, Swedish and Finnish. Do you see Multilingualism, just as it exists in your country as an asset? Is it important for you to know other European Languages? As a professional, for instance, it gives you the opportunity to act in several other countries…

Laura Birn: Yes, I do think so. It can be like that. It is very good for an actor to speak other languages. I love to do it. I love Portuguese, Spanish…I also find Swedish lovely. I did learn it at school, though I understand it better than I can speak it. Also when you travel it is so nice to speak with others in their own language (laughs)…

Cafébabel: You have a new film in pos production …filmed after Purge.

Laura Birn: I don’t know how it will be whit this film. There were some recent problems with it and I don’t know if it will come out this year. I hope so, but it may not be the case…After Purge I did two other movies, still in pos production and before Purge I did Naked Harbor.

Cafébabel: But it was by your performance in Purge that you recently got the Jussi Award in the category Best Actress in a leading role in Finland?

Laura Birn: You know about it!

Cafébabel: Congratulations, congratulations.

Cafébabel: Was it always your dream to become an actress?

Laura Birn: Not always. I guess I was 17 or 18, when in Brazil. There I started acting with this lovely people from São Paulo. But it was not a dream of mine.

Cafébabel: Was it then something that simply happened by chance?

Laura Birn: Yes, in a way it was like: let’s see what is going to happen. After that it toke me a few years until I got the courage to start thinking in becoming an actress, one day…Now I am really glad with what is happening to me.

Cafébabel: Then, enjoy it but don’t forget to be happy!

Laura Birn: (laughs).

Edited on:February 24, 2013 Sources: shooting-stars.eu, efp-online.com

Photos: Katarzyna Świerc

Ready to act - Berlinale 2013 on youth dealing with the economic crisis

DanielTkatch — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:40:00 +0100

The recent years has made us almost numb to seeing politicians around the globe in their seemingly ceaseless efforts to address the lingering economic crisis which is ready to encircle ever more countries. Intergovernmental agreements are being worked out and then, finally, met. Banks and financial structures are saved and the ATMs still work, but, for the large majority, the amounts that can be drawn there are ever diminishing. Several films during this year’s Berlinale are giving a stage, both fictional and documentary, to the affected individuals, whose situations are often disastrous.

Notwithstanding the global character of the economic crisis, it is still astonishing to see how any two films can be so similar both in the issues they address and the narrative mechanisms they use. The Daughter (Greece, Italy 2013) tells a story of a 14 years old Myrto that resorts to extreme tactics in order to return her father who disappears following the financial problems and unpayable debt that his business faces. The 280 cinema seats during the press screening were fought over. Such an unusual interest of the German press in a Greek film from the quite experimental festival section Forum can be easily explained in the context of the discourse of debt and repay, that has been haunting the relationship between the two countries for over a year now. A story that circles the topical concepts of laziness and laboriousness, of responsibility and retribution, of guilt and innocence was given an extraordinary cinematic form. However, the oversaturation with Christian sacrificial symbolism and the rough thriller-like suspense will probably not make it everybody’s cup of tea.

Financial trouble also hovers over the Israeli middle class family in Youth (Israel, Germany 2012). The aging father loses his job, is unable to find a new one and is gradually vanishing into depression. His sons, twin brothers – a fresh army recruit and a high school pupil, – secretly scheme to fight the menace of losing the family’s apartment where they share a room covered with posters of action films. In this film too, we see that typical reversal – a victim, when cornered, is readily turns into a villain. And the retribution of injustice, as it is often the case, leads to even more injustice and draws even more innocent people into the circle of violence.

The shared economic problems are so sincere that they may sometimes seem unsolvable. However, the youth, whose future are at stake primarily, will often be the first one to defy that pessimistic realism of the adults. Of course, both sides can be suspected of disavowal. While the older generation tends to dismiss the possibility of radical or systemic changes, the youths are inclined to defy reasonable, slow and moderate solutions. While adults take refuge in pessimism, the youngsters will sometimes be ready to take the matters into their own hands and, often simplifying both the problem and the solution, battle the dangerously torpid desperation by adopting equally dangerous methods.

European Shooting Stars 2013 – Arta Dobroshi

DanielTkatch — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 22:14:00 +0100

Interview: Daniel Tkatch
Foto: Katarzyna Swierc

Arta Dobroshi’s role in Lorna’s Silence (2008) directed by brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne brought her a triple nomination for best actress and a worldwide renown. She is just back from Los Angeles where she received a best actress award at the Women's International Film & Television Showcase (WIFTS) for her role Trois mondes. It was in L.A. that she got to know about her selection to be a European Shooting Star 2013.

Somehow, your being here among the Shooting Stars doesn’t really seem suitable. Aren’t you a star that shines quite steadily already? How come you are here?

Thank you! Well, actually, when I did Lorna’s Silence my country could not nominate me because we were not a member of the European Film Promotion, we weren’t even a country back then. I’m not sure whether Belgium could have nominated me. I don’t really know how it works. I had many people telling me: But why are you a Shooting Star? And still, I really do appreciate being one.

What does it mean to you?

It’s really good. One meets casting directors and loads of other interesting people. You can initiate many contacts and even if there are people whom I already know it is still nice meeting them again. It’s good to have everybody at the same spot. It’s easier than going to individual castings. Shooting Stars exists since 1998, so for 16 years now, and a long time ago, when I was in Berlin in 2003, I was watching the Shooting Stars catalogue and booklet and I thought that that would be nice to become one. Additionally, it also means a lot to me as a way of saying to others that they should believe in their dreams. Because everything is possible, if you are persistent and you keep on believing in whatever makes you happy. It could be anything really. Above that, it’s the first time there is a Shooting Star from Kosovo. We had a war, you know, and so it sometimes gets emotional, for example when they called me on stage by my name followed by “Republic of Kosovo”. So far, we could never represent our country, because we didn’t have one and we were suppressed.

Are you still confronted with a lot of question about your origin and about your nationality?

Nowadays, it became much less of an issue. It is more about my acting now. But in the past the war was still a fresh memory. Until 1999 I practically lived in a war zone, where just being able to walk freely was a luxury. And here you have wonderful people taking care of you, promoting you and meeting you with a lot of good people, organizing interviews with them and so on. I mean, I appreciate it much more considering where I am coming from and the experience I’ve had.

Where does this dress come from, this astonishing green?

It was made by Krenare Rugova, a designer from Kosovo. She is really talented and we’ve been working together for years now. I was wearing her stuff in Cannes and other festivals. I love her stuff. It’s really feminine. But it also means a lot to me that I am wearing clothes from Kosovo. We are such a new country, you know.

Yes, you seem to be representing your country quite extensively. Is it, at least to some extent, a role imposed?

(laughs) Yeah... Good. I don’t think of it like that, so I am not under any pressure. I just try to be natural and down-to-earth about it, just enjoying the moment. I don’t think of representing, because then it becomes too much.

Being an actress probably means a lot of travelling. Can you say that you live somewhere specifically? Is there a place you call home?

No, I don’t yet have a base. I travel a lot, really a lot. Now I’m going to fly to New York and I was in L.A. just before. The world becomes smaller and smaller and it is so easy to travel now. It feels I am just changing neighbourhoods and not countries. You come to a neighbourhood and you spend there some weeks or months and then you go further. It helps to keep some routines though. I love swimming and dancing. So when I came here, the first thing I asked was: “Is there a swimming pool?”

And are you thinking about working with Dardenne brothers again?

Not for now. I exchanged emails with them a couple of days ago because I was selected for the César Award. They are in a phase of writing now. They normally take two years off to write and then they do pre-production etc. But also yes. It was great working with them and I would definitely do that again.

What women roles would you still like to play?

I would like to play a female version of Superman, the Superwoman. It would be great. One doesn’t have that many roles of women who are superheros and I since I was little I liked the figure of the Superman with that music and so on. We used to watch it a lot. And then I thought why not make a woman version of that role and play a Superwoman role, so she saves lives, goes around the world and flies. That would be great!

Were you exposed to a lot of Western film productions and culture in general when you were a child?

Oh yeah, we were watching a lot of that. We were very much connected to America through TV and culture. That was more America than Europe. We grew up with American films and music. We were watching that on TV. So I was probably very influenced.

Is it still like that? Are you still attracted more to US than to European productions?

Maybe. But now everything is more global. I was just in LA and you could see how close it is. Everything is very connected. This is how I feel now.

Are you perceived as a European in the US?

Now, so far just as Arta. Not like a European or as Balkan, it was more as an individual. After all we are all very different. How can one say here is a border and the person that leaves on that side is different from you. It is ridiculous.

Could you tell me something about your experiences during Berlinale 2009 when you were a member of the international short film jury and compare them to now?

In many aspects it was similar. I had a lot of interesting meetings with people, but I also had to watch a lot of film and decide. It is very crucial which film you choose. We watched around thirty films and at the end we unanimously chose David O’Reilly’s animation film Please Say Something. I later met him during the Sundance Film Festival where I was with the short film Baby and we spoke a bit. He was very excited to tell everybody: “She chose me, she chose me!” which was very sweet of him. It is so important to make the right decision as a jury because you are changing somebody’s life.

What are you working on nowadays?

I can’t say much about it for now. Only that it’s going to be in New York and will probably be shot in the next months. This is why I am going there as soon as I am done here.

Berlinale 2013: Day Five

sandro — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:52:00 +0100

The Babelinale Moment of the Day was this time a moment of truly Babelian disconnection.

The program consisted of two movies from Japan, one from Republic of Korea, one from Italy and the last one from the French director Jean-Bernard Marlin. After the session with the first group of films, Berlinale Shorts I, an Artist talks was programmed where normally the audience puts its questions to the directors.

The young directors coming from Asia were helped by a professional interpreter. It was a delightful linguistic experience. No one got lost in translation. Next came down the Italian director, Mario Rizzi, just after the screening of his documentary, to explain the circumstances in which he made his movie about a Syrian refugee’s camp in Jordan. Director and session conductor both speak in English.

The last short, coming from France, dealt with youth delinquency in Marseille. Jean-Bernard Marlin comes to the stage to talk about is movie. Just as he arrives he is asked if he is going to speak in German. The poor guy seems surprised. If it was a private joke coming from previous encounters between them we don’t know. The person in charge of conducting the session tries English but he is still lost in this Babelian irony. The person who you could expect to be more easily understood was precisely the one who got lost in translation. Just after the film exhibition and during the Artist Talks. Maybe they both over trusted in their language skills but the result was a complete failure of understanding.

Filmstill: La Fugue, Adel Bencherif, FRA 2013

The full program was: Love Games, Joung Yumi, 15’; UZUSHIO -Seto Current- Naoto Kawamoto, 10’; The Silent Passenger, Hirofumi Nakamoto, 14’; Al Intithar, Mario Rizzi, 30’; La Fugue, Jean-Bernard Marlin, 22’.

Berlinale 2013: Day Four

Christiane — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:19:00 +0100

The Babelinale moment of the day

Ten excited, young and ambitious European Shooting Stars are waiting to meet...

...the European Media...

...cafebabel.com was there!

photos: Katarzyna Świerc

Berlinale 2013: Day Three

sandro — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 23:59:00 +0100

This afternoon the Cafébabel Berlin Team met to talk about the film of the day "I Kori - The Daughter" (Regie: Thanos Anastopoulos). A girl in her teens, an eight-year-old boy, and a father suddenly no longer there. When fourteen-year-old Myrto learns her father has fled to avoid paying his debts, she kidnaps the son of his business partner whom she blames for bankrupting her father’s joiner’s workshop

The film is capturing the interest among journalists and the public. To Berlin traveled also the main actress Savina Alimani, who plays the role of Myrto.

It was a true babelian moment in Berlinale and it qualifies as our Babelinale Moment of the Day.

Our question was: Are we facing an universal problem or is it confined with Greek reality?

Thanos Anastopoulos employs precise images and a protocol-like dramatic structure infused with thriller elements to portray a society whose key players flee their responsibilities. He shows us images of the crisis that have already become symbolic: the black market, invoices no-one can afford to pay, Molotov cocktails in the streets.

The crisis is there but, to some of us, it might be disguised with too much symbolism.

The morals underlying this dramatic events is that in an estate of exception everyone can turn out being the bad one. As Myrto puts it, "There are no monsters, only bad people." Myrto is the amazon trying to put some justice in a land in chaos. Who's the strong? Who's the weak? Are we all lambs after all?

photos: Katarzyna Świerc
''comments: Sandro Candido Marques and Christiane Lötsch' "quotations: www.berlinale.de

Berlinale 2013: Second Day's Best Babelian Moment

DanielTkatch — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:55:00 +0100

I think we can allow the English blog to choose its own Babelian moment, can we? After all, today we were a part of that rare feeling that history was taking place here and now, there and then. It was during the world premiere of The Pirate Bay - Away From Keyboard.

Even before the screening one could sense the excitement. Panorama's director Wieland Speck was present and visibly frenetic. Surprisingly, he took over seating arrangements to try and fit more people in. And when the majority had found their places, the director Simon Klose went on stage, took out his smartphone and called to a friend to tell him to unblock the YouTube video of the film we were about to see. It was running in premiere around the globe. An upheaval or solidarity spirit expanded over the audience. And then, after the opening Berlinale logo and jingle, there came that copyright infringement notice, menacing with penalty on any recording of the viewed. Which this time wasn't correct. This film is a freeware!

Watch the complete film online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8

Berlinale 2013: "Lose Your Head" cautions party tourists

DanielTkatch — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:05:00 +0100

British ministers are reportedly considering to launch a negative campaign in Romania and Bulgaria to try and discourage potential immigrants with more or less the following message: Britain’s streets are not paved with gold, the weather is depressing and the few vacant jobs are underpaid. Some viewers might be amused to think of Lose Your Head (D: Stefan Westerwelle, Patrick Schuckmann, Germany 2013) as a kind of artistic petition of a similar kind directed at potential party tourists and hipster immigrants magnetized by Berlin’s alternative charms.

Leaving his ever-busy boyfriend behind in Madrid young Luis lands in Schönefeld Airport full of undefined hopes, excitements and expectations. Expectedly he soon ends up queuing to a club where with the help of an arrogant local girl attracted by his undisguised innocence he manages to pass the doorman.

Once inside the dense and bassy techno microclimat, there is usually one more portal to pass. The remedy against alienation and loneliness is cheap and easily accessible. The drug dealer’s “you’re gonna lose your head” rings like a prophecy and the film’s psychothrillerlike plot takes the action from there. Luis meets Viktor, a slightly older and bigger eastern european guy. With his somewhat sloppy, mysterious and, at times, even menacing appearance, Viktor functions in the film as a kind of impersonation of Berlin itself. All the same, he exerts a powerful attraction and Luis soon falls for him.

It seems that the film doesn’t really want to escape a few stereotypes. Maybe it scatters them around as orientation clues in a complex plot that jumps between several alternative realities. On the other hand, it also makes the story more universally recognizable and discloses a pursuit of a more effective moralistic statement.

At the same time, in addition to being topically relevant, Lose Your Head brings genuine authentic moments. Of course, the film does not get even close to passing the infamous Bechdel test, but feminists might still enjoy the curious mutation of the male gaze in its scopophilic objectification of a male gay youth. The sex scenes are bold but sincere and convince in their depiction of passion and intimacy. In general, the depiction of a gay relationship is almost emancipatory in its avoidance of the metrosexual visual platitudes.

for more infos and screening times see Berlinale Programme

Berlinale 2013: Day One

sandro — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 23:49:00 +0100

As announced, starting from today and for the next ten days until the very end of this festival, Berlin’s Café Babel team will be catching up with you about the events of the day. We have named it: Babelinale Moment of the Day.

Obviously, we were preparing the grounds even before the red carpets hype started. Since a week or so we are scheduling, planning and, of course, watching the films at the press screenings in order to pick the best.

We will be covering every possible angle while being true to our mission of doing it authentically different than our big brothers – the larger media. Our message to them: little brother is watching you!

The jury seems to be prepared and ready to wink at us. The president Wong Kar Wai seems to enjoy its female majority and appears to stands his ground firmly.

Babelinale Moment of the Day
Even our team can be the centre of attentions so, you better be prepared.

A festival for everyone, Berlinale 2013 as started. And in order not to ruin your spirits we decided not to show you the long lines at the other ticket booths.

Rumours
While waiting for the stars people talk and guess what we heard. It is possible that Lady Gaga is coming to Berlinale. We hoped to get at least some of you excited.

photos: Katarzyna Świerc
comments: Sandro Candido Marques and Daniel Tkatch

Watch out, the bears are coming!

DanielTkatch — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:21:00 +0100

Hey, it’s already next week – 63rd Berlinale film festival’s hustle of films, exhibitions, press conferences, workshops, handshakes, camera flashes, flickering of projectors and lights going off and off again. On Potsdamer Platz the empty tickets booths are already waiting for film enthusiasts of one sort and the red carpets – to be rolled out for another, and the fresh, out of print programme brochures await your notes, dog-ears and markings.

The festival committee board selected 400 films from more than 6000 applications. Wieland Speck, the director of Panorama section, alone viewed reportedly close to 1000 films in order to pick the lucky 52 for Berlinale’s biggest section. The festival goer too is now confronted with as difficult a task of skimming the rich programme to what would be worth the time of standing the lines and sitting the darkness. The good news are that Café Babel’s multilingual team will be reporting directly from the scene in the effort to make the selection task easier and more informed. As a matter of fact, we already started previewing.

According to the festival’s ever jolly director Dieter Kosslick press conference note on Monday, this years Competition section will try to make a balancing act between big commercial productions and contributions from the independent film scene that becomes increasingly more active, makes films quicker and more of them. Women, both as filmmakers and protagonists, will constitute a guiding thread of this Competition. That emancipatory trends are a core of Berlinale’s self-identity as a film festival is not very surprising. Facts on the ground are always much more inspiring. For example the fact that for the first time in its history, the majority of Berlinale’s jury – four out of seven jury members – are women.

Berlin’s traditional role as the gateway between East and West, even though this polarity may sound outdated, still brings a great number of films from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia to festivals screens.

The above mentioned bear-less but trend-setting Panorama section allots a high portion of its selection this year to brave independent cinema from the Americas. According to Speck, there are positive signs that the US film scene has finally recovered from the “airless Bush era” and we can now enjoy its comeback and a fresh spirit of arrogance and self-criticism. Latin and South Americas also produced a filmic abundance and an effort was made for it to be reflected in the programme. Middle East remains to be one of the central topics of Panorama. The recent elections in Israel create some hope of improvement for the deadlocked situation in Palestine which is in focus of many films. Another focal point of Panorama, the examination the consequences of the lingering economic crisis and the fears of the middle class, also occupies the attention of Forum. Being Berlinale’s most daring section, Forum is dedicated to the cinematic productions which lie in the overlapping area between film and other visual and performative arts and pushes the limits of the formal conventional borders of film as a medium. Being maybe the most challenging section, it does usually succeed avoiding to fall into the trap of the museum-like and sterile abstraction mysticism and remains devoted to giving new forms of expression to relevant ongoing issues. Forum's director Christoph Terhechte announced that during this Berlinale many important contribution will be coming from Europe and especially from countries that are recently mentioned mostly in the context of the economic crisis.

Commemorating Hitler’s rise to power 80 years ago is one of the reasons to dedicate a Homage to the French documentary film director, author and journalist Claude Lanzmann and award him the Honorary Golden Bear. Lanzmann is mostly known for his renowned monumental documentary on Holocaust, which is still one of the foremost influential films on the subject. Another reason for the retrospective is an opportunity to show most of his films in digitally restored format and to prevent his paramount work from sinking into oblivion.

Café Babel’s editorial team in Berlin will abstain from the auratic question à la Bild, which superstars are coming to Berlinale this year, at least for now. In a city, where the alternative becomes a kind of a strong, almost conformist obligation, answering such a question becomes structurally impossible, as there is no consensus about the definition of a star. “But what about George Clooney?” asked a curious journalist referring to the current filming project in Babelsberg. “He was not invited”, Kosslick nonchalantly replied, “because he is already here”.

Portrait #1 Djerdj Horvat: I couldn’t be doing my PhD in Serbia in this field because it doesn’t even exist there

Karolina — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:46:00 +0100

During the October 2012 Babel Academy in Brussels young babelians came up with an idea of conducting a series of interviews with young people who for professional reasons decided to move to a different country within Europe (not only within the EU!) The aim is to present journalistic portraits of these people and to trace, through their stories, current migration patterns of young professionals. We are interested in movements in all directions, so East –West, West-East, East-East, West-West and straight through the middle.

The draft of the project was presented by Cafebabel teams from Berlin, Belgrade, Budapest and Warsaw. Editors from other countries are now also involved. Here the first interview of our series.

Questions: Karolina Golimowska; Photos: © Sebastian Walther

Djerdj Horvat, born in 1983, is half-Serbian, half-Hungarian. After having worked as a consultant in Serbia, he decided to return to academia and is currently working on a PhD in innovation management at the FU in Berlin. He likes creative solutions which enrich the life of the city and the (urban) individual.

We meet in Berlin Mitte. It is winter and the darkness outside almost complete. Djerdj is flying “home” for Christmas the next day. I am going there too although my “home” is elsewhere. We talk about the feeling of being different, about cold and warm cities and people and about the magic place called “home” which becomes more and more abstract.

Djerdj Horvat: Before you ask any questions, I would like to start with telling you a little bit about myself as an introduction.

I come from Serbia, from Subotica – a small town close to the Hungarian border. The region is called Vojvodina and until 1918 it belonged to Hungary. For centuries it has been marked by cultural diversity and the presence of differences. Hungarians, Serbs, Germans and Austrians have been living there for ages. My grandmother, of instance, was Swabian and spoke beautiful German, at least to my ears. Unfortunately I didn’t pick it up from her and only tried to catch up with learning the language much later. The fascination with the sound of the language has accompanied me since early childhood.

Vojvodina is now Serbian. As a Hungarian I’ve always been part of a minority, so, you see, I could practice before coming to Germany (laughs). In Serbia I studied business administration, afterwards served a 9-months community service instead of going to the army. In the meantime I learned German, at home with a teacher. Then I applied for a stipend at the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation and went with its help to Mannheim to learn German at Goethe Institute. Mannheim made the impression on me of being a rather cold city; people didn’t appear to me as particularly open or welcoming. I generally didn’t feel very well there.

After I finished the course, I returned to Serbia and started to work at the university as a member of the research staff in the field of finance mathematics. But that wasn’t really good either. Innovation management – the field that interested me most, does not exist in the Serbian academia. I started to think about doing a PhD. Under the circumstances this meant going abroad. I started to look for a degree programme that would allow me to be accepted as a PhD student in Germany. I found one in Potsdam, a Master of Business Administration with the focus on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I packed and moved back to Germany.

When I graduated with the Master’s degree, I returned to Serbia again and worked there as a consultant for the German market. The company produced packaging in Serbia and was then selling it in Germany. This kind of job has always been an idea for life for me; I could very well imagine doing it in the longer run.

Suddenly I had the feeling I do not belong there any more though. Everyone knew I was coming from outside and perceived me as a stranger. I was offered temporary contracts only. The situation was similar at the university. When I was away, groups were formed and I found myself not belonging to any of them. That felt really weird. Life can be hard in Serbia if you don’t have the right connections. Being good in what you’re doing does not always suffice. It is different in Germany and I like it.

After playing with the possibility for a long time, I decided to return to Germany again, because of professional reasons. It was January 2012. I got married while still in Serbia and so I arrived here this time with my wife, who also comes from Vojvodina. Right now I am a PhD student at the Freie Universität Berlin and I am working on a thesis in the field of innovation management with a stipend from the Adenauer Foundation.

Karolina Golimowska: I know why it is not Mannheim, but why Berlin? And why Germany in the first place?

DH: I think that the Hungarian culture is much closer to the German one than it is to the Serbian. Also in terms of religion Serbs and Hungarians are not particularly close to one another. We are catholic, Serbs are orthodox. As already mentioned, I also like the German language. Berlin has been very welcoming to me; from the first moment on I felt really well here. I was lucky to meet many great people here, with some of whom I became friends. Thanks to long conversations my German got better and better. People here are generally very open, even if sometimes they claim the exact opposite. For example, I am friends with my neighbors – true Berliners who say they have never befriended a neighbor before. I showed them that it’s actually possible (laughs). I like Berlin very much because it is so multicultural and open and offers many options in my work field. What was of course important in choosing the place was the fact that I’ve found here a supervisor for my thesis. Luckily that wasn’t very hard.

KG: What are your favorite places in Berlin?

DH: Potsdamer Platz, of course! I like new things – I am interested in how the 'new' emerges, how it is being created, what are the projections and ideas for the new in the urban context. I find it fascinating how the new as a final product of innovation reflects the process of cultural, social and urban development. That’s why I write about it in my thesis. I live in Wilmersdorf, actually Schmargendorf to be precise, and I like this part of Berlin very much too. People are friendly, the church is close by, everything that you need.

KG: __ Do you feel discriminated sometimes?

DH: Hardly ever. It has never happened at the university. I’ve always had the impression that what I do and how I do it is more important than my nationality. My professor is actually quite proud of having a PhD student from Serbia who writes his thesis in German. What about you, have you ever felt discriminated in Berlin?

KG: I had troubles with finding an apartment and twice I was told that foreign tenants were not welcome and hence I shouldn’t even apply. It made me feel really awful actually, totally helpless.

DH: Oh yes, I had a similar experience. At first, I kept saying I come from Serbia and my quest to find a flat was quite unsuccessful. It probably has something to do with the stereotypes about, you know, Kosovo and people who come to Germany to apply for Harz IV (the social help for the unemployed) When I changed the strategy and said I was Hungarian the next time, I got the flat straight away. By the way, my wife and I always pay attention to the language we communicate in. At home (in this case in Schmargendorf) we speak Serbian; outside we use only Hungarian.

KG: Wow. Why?

DH: When we speak Serbian, people often ask us whether we’re Russian or Polish and this annoys me because I am neither Polish nor Russian. I come from Serbia and it does make a difference although people here seem not always to understand. When we speak Hungarian, nobody confuses it with anything else. It is not a Slavic language and nobody asks us anything. Hungarian sounds like nothing else in this world, it gives us our peace.

KG: It happens to me a lot that when I say I come from Poland people react by saying “Oh really? It doesn’t show!” Although I think in most cases they mean it in a good way, I am often perplexed and unsure what to do with such a statement.

DH: But in your case it really doesn’t show!

KG: Very funny! Back to you: What exactly is innovation management?

DH: It is a part of strategic management and consists of two major aspects: the economic one, so innovation policy and the operational one - innovation management. My PhD focuses on the business side of the micro level of innovation management.

Serbia could make use of both of the mentioned aspects but unfortunately none of the fields exists in an academic/scientific context. That means I couldn’t be doing my PhD there in this field because it doesn’t even exist.

An example of innovation management in the Serbian context would be if the foreign companies who moved their quarters over to us did not only focus on production but also invested in research and project development on site. That would be an improvement for everyone involved. My topic is: From production to innovation, precisely in this context.

I would like to stay in academia although I am aware that it could be difficult. Consulting would also be an option.

KG: What was it like to return to university?

DH: It was a little bit difficult, of course but thanks to the work and consulting experience I came up with the topic for the dissertation. In this field theory and practice are very close and complement each other very well. Without the practical experience it would be difficult to find a suitable topic for a scientific work. Back at the consultancy I was responsible for the German market. Now I work in the opposite direction, so about the relocation of companies from Germany into the so called developing countries.

KG: Do you consider going back to Serbia after the PhD?

DH: Right now I don’t. But who knows. You have to stay open to new options and possibilities. You know what I’m saying: be open to innovation!

KG: Is there anything that annoys you in Berlin?

DH: Not really. Berlin is sometimes dirty and stinks. But the people are wonderful. It is a little bit more difficult for my wife who doesn’t know the language very well. But I’m sure it’s just a question of time.

KG: What is it like paperwork wise, do you need a visa to live and work/study in Berlin?

DH: Serbian citizens can enter Germany as tourist and stay here up to 3 months. If you want to work here, a work permit and a residence permit are required – both not that easy to get. Do you know the building at Friedrich-Krause-Ufer by any chance?

KG: Oh yes, quite well actually. The Aliens Authority!

DH: Exactly… It’s much easier for EU citizens.

KG: Apropos EU, what do you think about the future of Serbia in this context?

DH: We made a big step with Kosovo – this brings us closer to the EU but the remaining process is still very long, I think. We are still quite far to fulfill all EU’s expectations comparing to Croatia for instance.

KG: You said you feel well in Berlin because the culture is not strange to you. There must be some cultural differences that you encounter on daily basis though, right?

DH: Yes, of course, quite a few ones. The Serbian culture is a Balkan culture, i.e. people are warmer with one another than the Germans. The relations between them are tighter, stronger, based on mutual trust. I haven’t experienced this kind of interrelations here. It is a very different story altogether. People back in Serbia, orthodox or catholic are also very religious comparing to what I’ve experienced in north Germany. The society is generally more conservative and you can feel it. Probably similar to Poland?

KG: Yes, in terms of the position and power of the church as institution in political context it certainly is very different to here.

KG: Would you like to stay in Berlin then?

DH: There are more chances to find a job in my field in southern Germany, in Bavaria or Baden Würtenberg. I would of course consider moving down there although I haven’t been charmed by the cities there yet. I would love to spend a semester in the US first. That would really be fantastic!

KG: Fingers crossed! Thank you for the conversation.

“Changing things with little steps”

Christiane — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:22:00 +0200

Text: Christiane Lötsch // Translation: Jorin Eichhorn // proof reading: John Neilan // Photos by Jorin Eichhorn, Alex Yair von Pentz and Torsten Seidler

At the end of the Euroadtrip2012 project Jorin from Germany, Alex from Italy and Ondrej from the Czech Republic are standing in front of a kebab shop. They order Turkish pizza, falafel and doner – Jorin does it all in Turkish. Alex and Jorin met in Istanbul last year and together they came up with the idea to initiate a hitchhiking trip through Europe in order to support social projects. The route was from Istanbul to Berlin passing through 17 countries on the way; the participants came from 10 different nations. The only precondition was that they had to have an account at the travel platform couchsurfing.org and be willing to work during their summer holidays.

What was the concept behind your project?
Jorin: We wanted to travel with other people from Europe by hitchhiking. In every city where we’ve stayed we wanted to have a street art campaign to raise funds for two social projects we were supporting in Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina. We didn’t do this trip just for ourselves, but also for the public.

Alex: In every city we’ve stayed we asked the local authorities for permission to do our campaigns. Most of the time, we didn’t have any problems. We painted walls and held art workshops for kids. This way we got into conversation with the local people and were able to explain to them what we were actually doing there. They gave us massive support, both material and financial: Food, accommodation, a ladder, lights!

Sounds like you slept in some interesting places…
Alex, Jorin, Ondrej: Oh yes, we slept in our tents; in city parks, student residences, on balconies, in gas stations, in an abandoned factory, on camping sites, on beaches, in squatted houses.

The ever changing team you’ve been on the road with was made up of 10 different nationalities. How did this work out?
Jorin: It was more difficult than we expected. One of the biggest challenges was to tell people that we were not on vacation; rather we needed them to help out. We were travellers, not tourists. We were not the kind of people who just came randomly to hang out at a beach and go to a club at night. We were interested in the people living there. Not everyone understood that right away.

What did you learn from it?
Alex: The way to cooperate and collaborate with people you don’t know. How to convince them of what you would like to do. How to figure out the personal skills of each person and implement them into the project. Artistically it’s been great to paint on large house walls. From the paper to the wall!

Jorin: I’ve learnt quite a few practical things: how to program a website, how to do marketing for the project and PR work and how to approach people. There’s always a point where things get stuck and you need to overcome them. To deal with setbacks and criticism, to let things go and to tweak ideas. You simply have to get things done and find a solution.

What has been your personal highlight during the trip?
Alex: When people were happy with the mural I painted and gaining their recognition. You simply can’t buy that kind of satisfaction.

Jorin: When I realized for the first time that we had become a team that was working together in a productive way.

Ondrej: I remember the small things we did in particular. Like when we were playing with the kids in the street or when people stopped in the street and starting talking to us. You can change a lot with little steps.

The trip managed to raise 825 Euros. But we can raise more! Please donate here:
http://www.betterplace.org/de/groups/euroadtrip2012?utm_campaign=widget&utm_content=euroadtrip2012&utm_medium=iframe_widget&utm_source=group_widget

What keeps societies together – Richard Sennett and Richard David Precht discuss in Berlin

Karolina — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:07:00 +0200

Last night the anthropologist Richard Sennett talked to the philosopher Richard David Precht on the main stage in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele about his new book Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. The event took place as a part of the International Literature Festival and brought together many people curious to experience the scholars in person and to find out more about the nature of cooperation as a social process and about the exclusively human problems of living together on a daily basis.

The conversation was held in two languages and translated simultaneously. It clearly pointed out to the differences of academic discourses within these two cultural and linguistic environments. Sennett spoke slowly and always made his points very clear using examples from other disciplines and arts. Precht spoke fast, made use of monster compounds and long sentences typical for the German language and drew many references to the history of mankind and philosophical theories. Both of them showed their sense of humor and made it a highly interesting and very inspiring hour and a half.

“If I was to write the book a year later, I would have written about the European crisis” started Richard Sennett when introducing his newly published work. So it would have been about the crisis because it perfectly illustrates the theory that our societies are characterized with lack of social understanding of the Other and of what cooperation is about. One of his main points is that cooperation is founded in natural behavior and that it is not ethical – i.e. we need to cooperate in order to survive. We would not be able to learn anything if we did not cooperate with our teachers. Our skills of cooperation tend however to be very weak if we have to use them towards people who are different than ourselves. It is easy to be nice to people who are like us, claims Sennett but what is a real challenge is to develop a skill to cooperate in order to cross cultural borders. According to him, this very skill is a bridge, a mediator between the natural and the cultural. Cooperation does not equal ethical behavior, nor is it based on altruism (which does not involve an exchange and which is not dialogic) and insofar it is against the principles of protestant ethics.

Precht adds that we do not always cooperate for economic purposes, i.e. there is not always a cost-benefit-analysis that can be conducted as a result of cooperation. He points to the fact that this very nature of our mutual coexistence has not been thoroughly discussed as yet. When he asks Sennett, whether maybe sociology had an explanation of this purely human phenomenon, the answer is “Never!” followed by a charming laughter and expression of his attachment to anthropology rather than sociology.

What distinguishes us from other animals, claimed further Precht, is the ability of recognizing the intentions of other people even if they are not being verbalized which makes certain kinds of cooperation possible or impossible. We are also capable of rewarding ourselves - we do not necessarily need other people to do it for us, what according to Precht draws on Kant’s idea of moral imperative being within us. We are also capable of fiction, meaning that we can convince ourselves about certain personal qualities and believe in them in order to feel better about who we are. All this does not exactly make any kind of collaboration any easier.

Do not judge it by its results

Cooperation is a process of exchange that does not always end in success. Understanding this means that one cannot judge the quality of cooperation by its positive results. Sennett mentions here his experience as a UN diplomat and recalls endless discussion led between representatives of countries in which a solution or a common position could never be reached and yet they had to be continued for the sake of staying in touch and of showing mutual respect and the will to cooperate.

EU as an orchestra

In politics, just like in any other field, cooperation is about acknowledging differences and coping with them so that they can coexist in order to form a coherent entity. Here, Sennett refers to musicians in an orchestra who all play different instruments so very differently and yet after learning how to rehearse, they can all contribute to a coherent sound. This metaphor can also be related to the European Union whose strength should be seen in its diversity. The lack of intercultural bridge-building skills makes this diversity a reason for an international crisis.

Social networks make us less socially skilled

The second part of the discussion was devoted to social media and their influence on the development of social skills. According to Sennett, social networks like Facebook that started as dating services and platforms for self-creation and display “in order to meet someone from Harvard”, should but do not make us more cooperative. For its creators and developers, Facebook has primarily had a commercial use. This stopped being the case when it was used for political purposes, e.g. in the Arab Spring. No one in Libya is going to buy what is being advertised on the social network’ page, claims Sennett.

Flâneur killed by GPS

Precht stresses here the fact that in the history of mankind technology was used in order to survive whereas culture defined social life. Nowadays technology tends to replace culture in this context. We become more and more addicted and dependant on different devises which functions create solutions to problems we did not have before the technology had been developed. Why to create an app that will tell a woman when she is fertile if she can find it out without it? Introduction of new functions to a mobile phone or the future can-do-it-all-device can also make some cultural practices vanish. GPS is right now killing the flâneur in Benjamin’s sense, says Sennett. Becoming dependant on more and more technological inventions, we have the impression of getting more independent from other people what in a longer run can make us very lonely and diminishes our social skills, also the crucial one: to cooperate with others.

Richard Sennett Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. Yale: YUP 2012.

German edition: Zusammenarbeit - Was unsere Gesellschaft zusammenhällt. translated by Michael Bischoff, Hanser Verlag 2012.

KLONE YOURSELF

Christiane — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 21:29:00 +0200

text and photographs by Alexandra Belopolsky

I've been following his strange creatures for years. Fox-like predators with sharp teeth, giant birds with menacing beaks, monstrous fish. All staring at the passersby through big, human-like eyes full of sadness. You can see them all over Tel Aviv - on crumbling buildings and electrical cabinets, on walls and on rooftops, in hidden corners and in plain sight. Klone Yourself (or simply, Klone) is one of Israel's most prolific and creative street artists. His pseudonym is a comment on the modern lifestyle. "We all go to school, enlist in the army, carry smartphones, watch TV – it's a form of self-cloning. We all follow a norm. The point is to be a different type of clone, a clone of yourself, so to say. An original one".

I meet him at his studio, in a warehouse in Tel Aviv. Looking at him you would never guess that this 29 year old guy, of average height and build and straightforward features, is the mind behind some of the most haunting images of the city. Throughout our conversation he never stops cutting shapes - on August 23rd he opens his first solo exhibition abroad at the Urban Spree gallery in Berlin, and there is still much work to be done. It will be a massive paper installation, mostly in black, white and brown, akin to the one he presented in Tel Aviv in 2011. Klone's art varies in accordance to the location – his gallery work, his street work and his studio work are all inherently different. "I believe that what's done in the street should stay in the street. A gallery is a completely different stage, and it needs to be treated differently in terms of space and medium".

This moto is carried into his street art as well – he never repeats the same work, making it a point to create something unique for every place where he leaves his mark, especially in the past few years. "I no longer paint simply for the sake of there being a painting", he clarifies, "I paint for the sake of leaving a particular painting on a specific location". Recently, his palette changed as well, leaving the bright multi-colored works a thing of the past. "I don't see the need for color now", he says. "I can now express myself well without hiding behind the colors. A lot of times when you create a colorful work, the viewer is hooked on the colors. I like dealing with my subject by going down to the basics – black and white, and maybe an additional color. I think it tells a lot more about me as an artist, in the same way that a good sketch tells more about an artist than some amazing painting where you can't see the brush strokes".

As someone working in a field where his work can be, and often is, destroyed at any given moment, Klone is more than comfortable with that risk. He has been known to go back and paint over locations where his previous work has been erased, sometimes several times on the same spot. But that, to him, is an essential part of being an artist, street or otherwise. "Things need to be erased and renewed", he states, presenting a philosophy that might sound radical. "Nothing should be eternal .I think it would do the art world a lot of good if we were to dilute about 10 percent of it every year. This incisive preoccupation with what's already been done… Just the sheer costs of storing all that! When they could have gone into supporting young art and new generations. How many people do you know who have actually seen the real Mona Lisa? Is that really important? It's already public domain as far as images on the internet go. No one has actually seen it. People know the image, they learn about it, but when you go to look at it you find some picture behind glass as thick as a wall and guards. You don't get to really see it."

The Berlin exhibition came about after the curator of the gallery discovered online the book which Klone had independently published last year – a collection of works he describes as a travelogue. It was the curator's first encounter with the artist's work, in spite of the fact that there are places in Berlin (as well as Amsterdam, Paris and Saint Petersburg) where he left creative testimonies of his previous visits to the city. But perhaps it is understandable, since he makes sure to choose the less central and more run-down spots for his art wherever he goes. "I want to relate to a place that accepts me", he says when I wonder whether painting in a posh part of the city may not be considered as a challenge, to bring his world view to the people who want to hear it the least. "In an overly primped area the painting would look like mere decoration, regardless of how subversive it might be. The most subversive work, if you put it in a gallery in a nice frame, under good lighting, would look like something to be hung in some rich man's living room. I prefer to work in less groomed areas."

Yet groomed or not, painting in a city where he doesn't live is a completely different experience for Klone: "I'm not used to how the city reacts to me. It's a different vibe. When I travel, I stay in the city for a while and only then do I paint something. But it still doesn't feel like, say, Berliner art. It feels like my own art. When I paint in Tel Aviv it's different, it's a part of Tel Aviv. It's Tel Aviv art".

Klone was not, however, born in Tel Aviv. He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, back when it was the USSR. When he was 11 years old his family immigrated to Israel. The uprooting from his home and the displacement did not come easy for the young boy. Five years later he took up a can of paint and, years before evolving into street art, joined the world of graffiti tagging. For the young émigré struggling to fit in, it felt natural. It was a way of bringing himself out, of leaving his mark on Israeli society, of saying "Here I am!". He was not the only one – many graffiti and street artists were immigrants. They still are - Klone is a member of a group of artists, which include such locally well-known names as Know Hope, Foma and Zerocents – all immigrants. They hang out together, and often go out on painting missions together. Some might argue that perhaps it was the immigration experience that turned them into street artists in the first place. "Had we stayed in Ukraine, I would probably have become an engineer, like half the people there", laughs Klone. Seems as though design of urban spaces is in his blood, after all.

Madame Mephisto - A.M. Bakalar's New Novel: A Review

Karolina — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 22:05:00 +0200

Madame Mephisto - A.M. Bakalar’s debut novel published by London’s Stork Press talks about the new generation of Polish immigrants – a result of the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. A very powerful account of the liberating and sometimes bitter experience of living abroad.

by Karolina Golimowska

After Poland joined the EU in May 2004, many mostly young Poles decided to leave the country and search for luck elsewhere. Most of them left for England, Ireland or France - the first countries to “open their borders” for the new member states. A whole new wave of immigration began: all of a sudden Polish high school teachers were brewing coffee at Starbucks in London, fresh university graduates worked as barkeepers or receptionists in Dublin; people who had been effortlessly looking for jobs in Poland found them elsewhere. And off they went. Some of these people decided to stay, others returned to their home country but all of them changed due to this experience. Living, working, paying taxes abroad; speaking a foreign language on a daily basis and meeting people of different nationalities and creeds gives a whole new perspective on one’s home country and on oneself. And this is priceless.

Too British for the Poles and too Polish for the Brits

A.M. Bakalar’s novel is an often bitter and aggressive account of Magda’s life in London. She is the first-person narrator of this 220-pages long monologue directed to a “you” that at the end of the plot turns out to be a five-year-old child, too little to understand. Magda is one of the pioneers of the EU enlargement immigration - she came to London in 2004 after graduating from a Polish university in search for a job and a new life outside of the “xenophobic and nationalistic”(1) Poland. She is angry and extremely critical. She disagrees with the “backward” norms imposed on women by the Polish society, including her own despotic Catholic mother. She escapes in order to live a different life and eventually pays the price of feeling foreign in both of the countries: “I was too British for the Poles and too Polish for the Brits” (165), she says. Magda is skeptical towards Poland, but she also criticizes the English; she says they “can be pussies. Nobody complains about anything. And if you do, you can be certain that nothing will be done. Absolutely nothing!.” (36) She also tends to be very self-critical. In fact, sometimes she feels so estranged from herself and so ashamed of things she has done that she refers to herself in the third person, as if Madame Mephisto - the devil inside her - was a wholly independent being.

The insatiable goddess in a haze of weed

Magda would be just one out of many Polish girls looking for jobs in London if it wasn’t for one thing: she is a professional marijuana grower and distributor and her office work is just a “cover”. She employs people in both countries, bribes the custom workers and smuggles big transports of Polish plants to the UK. She also maintains a greenhouse in her London garden. “Everyone has their price” she says and so her network includes bribed policemen and lawyers.

In a foreign environment the Other becomes exotically attractive and interesting and so a whole new spectrum of possibilities opens to Magda in London. She is pretty, intelligent and popular with men. She enjoys casual sex and distances herself from the Polish Catholic morals, which according to her are often marked by hypocrisy. Living abroad contributes to the process of Magda’s personal emancipation from the burden of Polishness and of looking for herself. She is furious about the situation of women back home which she ironically comments on:

“Polish women make good housewives; a two-course dinner is always ready on time, the house is scrubbed clean, the children are taken care of, and at night we transform into sexually insatiable goddesses. Making a career is the last of our worries, because it is the family, husband and children who always come first. Simply put, a Polish woman is one of the best deals on the matrimonial market.” (7) Magda also meets other Poles in London who mostly think they should stick together just because they are all immigrants. There is the POSK (Polish Social and Cultural Association) environment where she once attends a Polish wedding after which she states: “I did not achieve a renewed appreciation for my countrymen; instead my heart was hardened with increased aversion, especially towards Poles in London.” (33)

The Eastern European Dream

Everything becomes relativized when the only truly important person in Magda’s life dies. The novel ends with a funeral for which she needs to return to Poland. It is left open as to whether her life will change drastically afterwards. Although some of the characters are portrayed very stereotypically and the dialogues are not the strongest side of the novel, many of the issues that A.M. Bakalar addresses are very true and very poignantly described. The action is tense.

The first piece of fiction that I know of that in a playful and ironic way talks about climbing up the ladder of the Eastern European dream lived abroad. Hopefully only a start of a larger writing movement.

A.M. Bakalar, Madame Mephisto. London: Stork Press, 2012.

Photo by Alexander Gumz

The numbers in brackets refer to the page numbers of the novel.

The Queens of Queens

Karolina — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:04:00 +0200

by Karolina Golimowska

If you take train line 7 from Manhattan, you can watch the streets of Queens through the windows. It is a sunny day in spring, the train is pleasantly half-full, we leave the Downtown skyline behind us and enter Long Island City. Outside, at a crossing a bus is burning, orange flames reach for the sky. I can hear a siren speeding up, the train keeps going. On the next stop a dark-haired man wearing a sombrero enters the carriage. He is selling Oreo cookies 1,50 dollar a package of two. Nobody is buying. I get off at Jackson Hights and change to the E train that takes me past LaGuardia Airport and Forest Hill to Kew Gardens.

Mila meets me at the station. We drive to dry cleaners to pick up her jacket and then go shopping for groceries to a Russian supermarket called “Kalinka”. We buy eggplant salad, herrings, Polish sausage, cottage cheese and dried cranberries. Since we spent 20 dollars, we get a bar of chocolate as a bonus from Ivan who works at the till. On our way back we drive past a huge metal globe in a park and several buildings that have been there since the World Exhibition of 1964, almost entirely forgotten, rusting slowly in the sun. A family of four prepares a barbeque; further down some men are playing cricket.

Mila has lived in Queens for the last 20 years. She came here from Texas that she loved but decided to leave after she got a divorce from her now ex-husband. Before Texas there was Warsaw that Mila cannot stop missing. She is in her late 50s, elegant, attractive, big eyes, young smile and voice. Good job, handsome boyfriend, nice flat, no kids, Eastern European accent and “Polish dreams” as she says.

***

Barbara landed in New York after having been on the infamous 1968 train from communist Warsaw to Vienna that took many Polish Jews abroad with a one way ticket. It was hard at first; she worked at a grocery shop on weekdays, cleaned flats at nights and turned into a baby-sitter on Saturdays. She didn’t know any English, “learned it all by herself”. Life has been good to her though, says Barbara. She has run a German deli in Kew Gardens for the last 22 years. She has never been to Germany but it does not seem to matter. She employs three people and her daughter Agata is helping too.

They sell “the original German strudel” that very much resembles the traditional Polish cheese cake. Most of the other products are Polish, made in Brooklyn or imported from Europe via Chicago - hometown to the largest Polish community outside of Poland. “It’s been a great business, people love it”, says Barbara while filling our glasses with homemade lemon liquor. Mila comes here every other day to talk to Barbara in the backroom of her shop after closing. They talk about work, love, food, Poland, clothes and shoes, ideas for new businesses, politics and men. Sometimes they order a sushi plate, Chinese fried noodles or a pizza from around the corner. Barbara is married for the second time but I don’t get to meet her husband since he never shows up in the deli. “It’s my thing” says Barbara, and Mila adds “we are the superwomen here, we don’t need to rely on any men”, we raise our glasses and cheers to that.

***

Next weekend more people come to stay in Mila’s flat - her old friends from Texas. Mila leaves them the bedroom and makes herself comfortable on the floor in the living room. She is smiling as always. Next morning she announces: “I love to sleep in big rooms. That is why I should be a queen, you know. I would make a bedroom out of this living room and have a huge bed in here. I would also have a lover whom I wouldn’t have to take any further than to the bed. And the kitchen being close is just fine.” We both laugh. Monday morning after breakfast Mila is leaving for work, elegant, dry-blown hair, carefully put makeup, black ballerinas. “After 9/11 we all stopped wearing high heels” she explains. “It’s easier to run away in flat shoes”. When it happened Mila was in her Midtown office and facing the burning towers. The whole building was evacuated. She and her colleague tried to catch a cab to go to Queens but there were no cabs. Finally a car stopped, the driver was Muslim and extremely frightened. On the way they picked up two more people and drove east.

Mila was a part of the first Ground Zero rescue team and so was Mo – the taxi driver. Downtown Manhattan was then completely empty. Only one retail store didn’t close for even one day. Mila shows me her t-shirt with “Manhattan Rescue Team” printed on it. Now she is running late though and has to leave. “Manhattan changed after 9/11”, she tells me. “People lost orientation, lost their reference point; the absence of the Towers confused them. Queens hasn’t changed. Queens is still Queens, thanks God.”

Two evenings later we sit again in Barbara’s shop. Her son and daughter in law are meant to arrive next day from Warsaw. “They bring this Poland with them that I have no clue about” she says. “I suppose I am a New Yorker now”. After all these years she was offered to take up Polish citizenship again that she was forced to give up in ‘68. She refused. “My life is here now”. Mila raises her glass filled with home-made lemonade, “To us! To Queens!” and Barbara looks at me and asks: “So when are you moving here?”

All names have been changed.

“Does Wolfgang Schäuble really understand what it means to be a young Greek in these times?”

Tobias — Tue, 29 May 2012 11:22:00 +0200

by Tobias Sauer, translation Carmen Melchers
Café Babel Athens was recently awarded the Charlemagne Youth Prize in Aachen. In the train on the way back from Aachen we had the chance to talk with Elina Makri of Café Babel Athens. While the conductor was checking tickets and an anonymous voice was announcing the upcoming stops and the hills of North Rhine-Westphalia were passing by, Elina told us about the feeling of confusion among young Greeks today, about the lack of knowledge of European journalists about their own continent and about the projects of Café Babel Athens.

"Café Babel Athens is helping to develop a European public sphere", Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, said when awarding the Charlemagne Youth Prize to Elina Makri of Café Babel Athens. (Picture: European Parliament)

Café Babel: Elina, congratulations on winning the Charlemagne Youth Prize! Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, also a Charlemagne-Prize-recipient, said it was an important sign that a participant from Greece had won the prize at this time, because this was a time of crisis. How did you feel when you heard this from Schäuble? Elina Makri: I hope he means it.

Do you doubt it? I don’t doubt it but I think it is very difficult for him to imagine what it means to be a young Greek right now. But I also think it is hard to imagine what it means to be the German minister of finance. You have responsibilities. If an Italian finance minister had made such a remark, I would have said: ok, he might really mean it, he might be better able to understand.

If Schäuble were to ask you: How does it feel to be a young Greek at this moment, what would you answer? Being a young Greek, today, is very confusing. You don’t know where to turn. Honestly, before the award, even in the airplane, I was thinking what am I going to do in Aachen? You know, being asked all these embarrassing questions about Greece and not knowing what to answer.

"All the news about Greece is bad news."

Do you try to deal with this feeling in your texts at Café Babel Athens? The last articles were about modern start-up companies in Athens, situated between ancient books and Greek columns. That is currently a huge trend in Athens that nobody in Europe talks about because this group of Greeks doesn’t look to Europe at all.

Where do they look instead? Their focus is on California, China, and Israel, because there are a lot of venture capitalists there. That is a big trend and, right now, you will find a lot of cooperative work spaces in Athens. These start-ups are usually mentioned in the New York Times, but never in any European news media.

How do you pick the topics you report on? Café Babel Athens is a Café Babel inside Café Babel. We are always criticizing the European view on things. I think that many Europeans are Manicheans - you see a fact, and you interpret it as either only good or only bad. I am trying to convey the message that there is not always only bad news. The idea is to offer a new perspective.

Elina Makri (centered) with Renata Kopřivová (left) und Daniel Vérten (right), who were awarded with the second and third prizes (picture: European Parliament)

I’ve seen you read the Financial Times. What kind of story about Greece is missing, for example in the Financial Times? In the media you find only judgments. They don’t promote alternative scenarios. I don’t understand, for instance in the financial realm, why Greece needs to either leave the euro zone or meet harsh austerity measures. Why can’t Greece be given more time? Public servants are laid off. Why kick them all at the same time, and not, say, double their work? That way, public work would grow and investing would increase. I don’t understand why there are no alternatives in the discussion.

"At the Greek-Turkish border, you would find a third-world situation."

In Aachen, you also met Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament. In his laudatory speech, he said Café Babel Athens is helping to develop a European public sphere, which is important for European democracy. In Europe, as journalists, we have to know more about each other. Imagine going to the Greek-Turkish border right now and seeing this third-world situation. Once you are exposed to that you are much more sensitized. And this is what is important about our Café Babel project “Europe on the ground.” We’ve sent a lot of people out of the country every month to see things with their own eyes, to understand the facts. So far, only a small elite has been reporting from abroad. It is difficult to find newspapers that are willing to pay for foreign correspondents. To change that is extremely important to me.

Elina Makri (left): "Solidarity is not only about money!" (Foto: Lucy Patterson)

What will you and the Café Babel Athens team do now, after winning the prize? I am so happy! We have all these beautiful projects, so we will continue with them. Last month, we had five journalists visiting us - from Britain, Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and Hungary. It was a very nice team, investigating multiculturalism in Athens. They were writing about the situation of illegal immigrants in Greece, a situation that is quite depressing. They were following the path of asylum seekers. In Greece you can ask for asylum only on one day every week and it’s always a Saturday at 5 a.m. In the past, there were people who were killed for queuing. With “Europe on the Ground,” we tried to inform people about the problems with migration in Greece. You have 300 to 400 persons entering the country every day. It is one thing to discuss this theoretically and something else to experience it. Some people drown when crossing the river at the Greek-Turkish border. We are burying them without knowing what their religion is. We just have a Mufti saying verses from the Quran, and that’s it. But these are European borders! We also discussed Dublin-II, a disgusting European regulation stipulating that all immigrants can apply for asylum only in the European country they first enter, a fact that is largely unknown in Europe. Especially in the case of immigration there are huge social costs, but, generally, little solidarity or sympathy with the problem in Europe. You see, solidarity is not only about money.

Elina, thank you very much for your time and good luck with Café Babel Athens!

Looking for the Meaning of Life… in Lodz

Christiane — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +0200

by Juliette Vazard

The city rally organized in Lodz, in parallel with the exhibition “Einblicke” (“Insights”) taking place in the Prexer Culture Centre, represented for me an unmissable opportunity, or perhaps an excuse, to make my way back to Lodz. Forming the only foreign team of the game in Lodz, together with the German Marcel, we got to know the city, its creative spots and inhabitants in the most intense and exciting way!

Insights to the mysterious treasure chest, photo: Sandra Wickert

The rally started on plac Wolnosci (“Liberty square”), under the heavy rain than had replaced the thick snow and the icy wind which had blown on the city the whole morning. A young man in a long black coat was preaching through a loudhailer about the Meaning of Life –which the wisest and luckiest among us shall have the unique opportunity to discover during the game. When we received the first clues, the Lodzians started running and the rally was on! We first followed as we could, but soon we split in different routes and started evolving from one task to another: “cooking” and eating a typical Berliner dish - the famous “Currywurst”!- in a home in which we were warmly invited by a young woman from Lodz ; driving a rickshaw ; creating a piece of jewellery out of rubbish (drawing inspiration from the artists of the “Tacheles” in Berlin) ; composing a postcard for Berlin out of German newspapers and magazines, etc. Tasks where also given in which we had to cooperate through skype conference with a team playing in Berlin, for example to look at old black and white pictures, and find out whether they were from Lodz or from Berlin. Of course, the game made us walk through the whole city centre, from the plac Wolnosci to the various university buildings and to the theatre, getting the chance to admire in passing the impressive colourful murals that spread on several walls of the city.

At each step, we were asked questions which we had to answer anonymously in writing: “What was the most important event in your life?”, “What scares you most?”, “Which place in your city do you most like visiting?”, an so on. We were also asked to interview people in the streets: “If there was one question you could ask to someone you do not know, to get to know him/her better, what would it be?” These questions are closely related to the current exhibition “Einblicke” (“Insights”) at the Prexer, which is the result of a project realised with the Studienkolleg of Berlin, in which thirty people in Normandy, Transylvania, Lodz and Berlin were interviewed on the basis of the same questionnaire, containing such very personal questions.

Originally a fabric for projectors, the Prexer was turned into a cinema, and is now hosting a dynamic Culture Centre, run by a group of very energetic and creative young people, who propose their help to anyone who steps in with an innovative project and the will to realise it. In a post-industrial city where the unemployment rate is particularly high at the moment, and from which more and more people are moving away, personal initiative and creative ideas to revitalize the activity are most welcome. It was in the Prexer that the game ended, where prizes were awarded to the teams which had collected most points, for their creativity, originality, rapidity, and of course knowledge of the Berliner culinary tradition! While a cloud of smoke invaded the lounge where we were seated, a mysterious suitcase was brought for the winner team to unlock and discover the meaning of life: an installation with a large mirror in which they could see…themselves!

In accordance with the principles on which the “Einblicke” project was based, the game offered me an original and fun way to catch a glimpse into the way people in Lodz live, as well as address them and myself with fundamental, personal questions. If I probably did not find the meaning of life during this rich and intense day in Lodz, I definitely got closer to it.

Tacheles: artists vs. capitalism

Christiane — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:23:00 +0200

text & photographs by Nicola Zolin
www.nicolazolin.it

Tacheles Berlin closes at opens again. The continuous fight between the HSH Northbank who bought the area of the building and the resident artist it is still pending. On March 21th the bank occupied the building with the intention of closing it. The news spread all over the world.

Activist and artist gathered to protest against the decision of the bank who want to turn the building into a shopping mall. Two days later, with a symbolic party, the artist entered the building again and re-established their moral and artistic ownership om the building. Today life in Tacheles looks as it has always been in the last 20 years.

Some of the artist are preoccupied that the situation could change again. "We never know what will happen in the next days" says Falko, one of the resident historic artist in the Kunsthaus. The building of Tacheles represent an historic heritage of the city of Berlin and represent the counter-culture movement which has developed after the Berlin wall fall in 1989. Since the 1990 Tacheles is visited by more than 4000 people every year. Nowadays the banks tries to take possess of the building while the artist are struggling to defend it.

more impressions by Nicola Zolin

Berlinale: Observations in and on “Bestiaire”

DanielTkatch — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:22:00 +0100

Watching monkeys at a zoo, one can never be quite sure who is observing whom. During one of my few visits to Berlin’s Zoologischer Garten, a smart little caged creature held its hands to its face as if holding an imaginary camera. It looked at me through the thus formed frame, and I was almost sure I glimpsed an ironic smile. Even if it was but a clever imitation of the gesture the observant creature is surely often faced with, and even if I project too much of an anthropomorphic interpretation, it still made me realize how arbitrary that role division was—the fact that I am on this side of the cage, having paid to look inward.

Filmstill, Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin

Observation is both the main topic as well as the main formal characteristic of Bestiaire directed by Denis Côté. We observe the concentrated faces of young people during a drawing session—their eyes move back and forth between the animal on the paper and the object, which is disclosed as a stuffed animal at the moment of the last shot; a safari park during a snowy winter with animals walking outside, while others from warmer climates are locked indoors; taxidermists going about their work, creating frozen counterparts of what we just saw alive; and, finally, the summer crowds of visitors apparently so busy taking photos of the animals that they actually fail to see them.

The observational character of the film is further enhanced by its form. The camerawork is carefully pre-composed and static from the very first scene. Even the focus plane remains at the same depth while subjects move in and out of it. As an introduction to the film screening, Côté recalled a remark made by a viewer at the Sundance Film Festival: “This film is about an audience watching a film.”

Indeed, Bestiare’s technique reminds me of another, unfortunately quite unknown film entitled Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003) by the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Therein too, during the long, static scenes in which almost nothing happens, a reflective process is initiated in the viewer, who thus becomes aware of and preoccupied with the process of watching itself. In Bestiaire, this effect is even stronger. The animals we observe do not hide their awareness of the camera’s presence and often look directly at it. Sometimes, it becomes so unsettling to sit in the dark while a melancholic bull is staring at you from the screen for minutes, that the film inevitably tries to relieve the tension by cutting to a comical intermezzo—an ostrich, with its long neck and big eyes, which expresses nothing, really nothing else, but curiosity.

Filmstill, Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin

This film obviously does not pretend to be ordinary entertainment. It is also full of ethical connotations. It is the pity we feel for the animals that have to spend long, cold winters in bleak cramped spaces made of concrete and metal; anxious, nervous or just looking desperate. It is the taxidermic techniques of separating skin from flesh and flesh from bone that provoke disgust, a feeling closely connected with our sense of morality. The title itself refers us to the illustrated compendiums of animals that have placed such creatures in a religiously moralizing textual context; for example, the presentation of pelicans that pull out their chest feathers in order to feed their young ones on their own blood, thus saving them from starvation, as an allegory to Jesus’ sacrifice in order to save the sinners from eternal death.

February 12 2012, Sylvain Corbeil, Denis Côté, Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin

Having said that, the director’s vehement denial that this beautiful and unusual film’s ethical component is something arbitrary, and only something the viewer may or may not “project into it”, was somewhat irritating. Of course, no artistic work can be reduced to its moral message, but when the latter is as powerful and as well-aligned with the aesthetic form as in Bestiaire, such a dismissal seems suspect. The silent producer, who stood by the director’s side during the Q&A session that followed the screening, could not introduce any more clarity regarding the question: Why deny?

(Bestiare’s last screening is on Thursday, February 16 at 22:45 in Kino Arsenal.)